science

Inmate telephone system

Inmate telephone system is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Inmate telephone system rather than just read about it. In short: An inmate telephone system, also known as an Inmate Calling Service (ICS) or Inmate telephone service, is a telephone service intended for use by inmates in correctional facilities in the United States. The service is intended to support inmate rehabilitation by allowing consistent communication with their family and legal counsel while incarcerated.

Key takeaways

Inmate telephone system belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Inmate telephone system to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Inmate telephone system from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

An inmate telephone system, also known as an Inmate Calling Service (ICS) or Inmate telephone service, is a telephone service intended for use by inmates in correctional facilities in the United States. The service is intended to support inmate rehabilitation by allowing consistent communication with their family and legal counsel while incarcerated. In the United States, prison telecom is a $1.2 billion industry, mostly controlled by two private equity-backed companies: Global Tel Link (GTL) and Securus Technologies. While there have been attempts by the United States' telecom regulator, the FCC, to regulate the costs of inmate telephone services, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that its policy violated the Telecommunications Act, which forbids the FCC from regulating intrastate communications.

Operation In order to use an inmate telephone service, inmates must register an account and provide a list of names and numbers for the people they intend to communicate with. Call limitations vary depending on the prison's rules, but calls are typically limited to 15 minutes each, and inmates must wait 30 minutes before being allowed to make another call. Calls are generally recorded and monitored by the prison’s staff for security and oversight purposes. Phone credits are typically accessed via an inmate account card. Since 2001, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has limited calls to 300 minutes per month. As of 2025, the system gives 300 free minutes to any adult inmate who participates in a First Step Act (FSA) Evidence-Based Recidivism Reduction (EBRR) program, but they must pay for their phone minutes if they are not in a program.

Providers In the United States, the inmate telephone market is dominated by two providers, Global Tel Link (GTL) and Securus Technologies, with Global Tel-Link controlling approximately 50% of the market and Securus with 20%. The New York-based private equity firm Veritas Capital, with assets of over $5 billion, acquired GTL during the tenure of Veritas' founder and CEO Robert B. McKeon. Mobile, Alabama-based GTL was a subsidiary of GTEL Holdings in 2009 and offered "inmate communications, investigative, facility management, visitation, payment and deposit, and content solutions." The global private-equity company Castle Harlan purchased Securus Technologies from Miami-based private equity company, H.I.G. Capital in 2011. New York-based American Securities purchased GTL for $1 billion in 2011, and then Boston-based ABRY Partners purchased Securus in 2013 for $640 million.

Service rates Rates for the telephone calls from prisons and jails can be exorbitantly high, especially for low income families who are trying to keep in touch with their loved ones. Data has shown over the course of 10 years leading up to 2021, phone call per-minute rates have steadily declined; however, the rates are still generally too high for many people to stay in contact. Contributing to the high cost is the fact that providers charge two separate rates depending on whether the callers are from the same state or different states. On August 9, 2013, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a report on the high cost of inmate calling services and proposed reforms. A 2013 FCC analysis described how, in some cases, long-distance calls are charged six times the rate for the equivalent call on the outside, or in other instances, a 15-minute call could cost upwards of $15. Acting Chairwoman Clyburn, Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Pai dissented and issued statements about their dissent. It also reported that phone rates had "caused inmates and their friends and families to subsidize everything from inmate welfare to salaries and benefits, states' general revenue funds and personnel training." At that time the FCC proposed capping the charge for interstate inmate phone calls at $3.75 for 15 minutes. The proposal was approved in 2014; a cap was also implemented to reduce the high long-distance charges that inmates incurred to eleven cents per minute, so that a 15-minute call should not cost more than $4. According to the FCC, Global Tel-Link had been charging as much as $17.30 for such calls under contracts with facilities in Arkansas, Georgia and Minnesota, which resulted in "unreasonably high" phone bills for inmates' families. In retaliation for the change, service providers raised the rates on local calls. In 2015, the FCC imposed new caps of 11¢ to 22¢ on all inmate calls. The decision was criticized by the industry, which felt that the capped prices would be insufficient to cover the commissions they must pay. By March, the new caps had been stayed pending the result of a lawsuit against the FCC filed by providers, but the FCC stated that it would enforce the existing caps on intrastate calls as well. In September 2015, Human Rights Watch requested that Michael Fisch, CEO of American Securities, the private equity group that owned GTL, step down from their board of directors as "GTL's exploitation of the ability of prisoners to communicate with their families and children is the antithesis of upholding human dignity and advancing human rights, and is in direct conflict with Human Rights Watch's mission."

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Inmate telephone system

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Inmate telephone system claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Inmate telephone system before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Inmate telephone system ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Inmate telephone system

In research: Inmate telephone system appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Inmate telephone system in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Inmate telephone system is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Prison-related organizations, Telephone services, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Inmate telephone system outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Inmate telephone system in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Inmate telephone system means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Inmate telephone system out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Inmate telephone system in simple terms?

Why does Inmate telephone system matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Inmate telephone system?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Inmate telephone system.