Last year, California passed Senate Bill 1008, making phone calls free for the roughly 90,000 people incarcerated in the state’s prisons to remediate decades of harm that overpriced prison phone fees have caused incarcerated people and their families.
This change followed another communication announcement by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). In March 2022, ViaPath Technologies became the provider for all communications services in California’s prisons. As part of the agreement, ViaPath would provide free tablets to each person incarcerated in the state.
“We know staying in touch with loved ones on the outside is important,” former CDCR Secretary Kathleen Allison wrote in a memo in 2021. “Not only to remain connected as a family, but also to help you stay motivated and get ready to return home.”
But over a year since CDCR signed the contract, some California prisoners say that CDCR and ViaPath have failed to deliver on their promises. Overcrowding and increased demand have kept incarcerated people waiting for an hour or more to make phone calls. Meanwhile, ViaPath’s email system has experienced outages lasting several weeks or more at San Quentin and other facilities across the state. Compounding these issues, legal challenges to the ViaPath contract placed the distribution of tablets more than a year...
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