How Two Companies Drain $1.4 Billion a Year from Families with Loved Ones in Prison

TL;DR

Two big companies control 80% of all prison phone and tablet services in the U.S. They charge high prices because families have no other choice. Georgia got over $8 million in kickbacks from prison phone fees in one year — the third most of any state. A family in Georgia can spend $115–$135 a month just to stay in touch with a loved one behind bars. Six states have made prison calls free. Georgia has done nothing.

Why This Matters

If someone you love is in a Georgia prison, you know the cost of staying in touch. Every phone call, every email, every dollar you send — there’s a fee.

These fees don’t come from nowhere. They come from a system set up to make money off your pain. The state picks one company to handle all calls. That company has no rivals. You can’t shop around. You pay what they charge, or you lose contact.

One in three families goes into debt just to keep talking to a loved one in prison. Women carry 87% of the cost — most of them women of color. And 2.7 million kids in this country have a parent in prison.

This report shows where the money goes. It names who profits. And it explains what other states are doing to fix it.

Key Takeaway: Families — mostly women of color — are forced to pay high prices with no other option, and Georgia profits from their pain.

Two Companies Run the Whole System

Two companies — Securus and ViaPath — control about 80% of the prison phone market in the U.S. Together, they serve about 3,450 prisons and 1.1 million people behind bars.

This is not a fair market. Each prison picks one company. That company gets all the business. No one else can compete. People in prison and their families can’t switch to a cheaper option.

A third company, ICSolutions, is owned by the same group (H.I.G. Capital) that runs a big prison store chain called Keefe. So the same investors make money from both phone calls and overpriced food and soap.

Both Securus and ViaPath are owned by Wall Street firms called private equity (PE) groups. PE firms buy companies with borrowed money. Then the company has to charge high prices to pay back the debt.

Key Takeaway: Two companies have a lock on the market, and families have zero power to choose a cheaper option.

How Georgia Profits from Your Phone Calls

Here’s how it works. The phone company pays the prison a share of what families spend. This is called a “kickback” or “commission.” The more families pay, the more the prison gets.

In fiscal year 2018–2019, Georgia got $8,062,200.60 from prison phone fees. That was the third-highest total in the country.

This system flips things upside down. Normally, the state looks for the cheapest option. But with prison phones, the state wants the company that charges the most — because the state gets a cut.

Georgia’s county jails are even worse:

• Glynn County jail: 69% kickback rate. The jail took in over $300,000 a year from phone and tablet fees — from just 411 people.
• Chatham County jail: 52% kickback rate. Families pay $8 for a 20-minute video call.
• Liberty County jail: 50% kickback rate. Text messages cost close to $1 each for tiny, tweet-length notes.

Before the FCC banned the practice in 2024, kickbacks across the country added up to about $460 million a year.

Key Takeaway: Georgia made over $8 million in one year from prison phone kickbacks — giving the state a reason to keep prices high.

What Georgia Families Pay Right Now

In Georgia state prisons, the current phone rate is $0.06 per minute. A 25-minute call costs $1.50. That sounds low. But it adds up fast.

If a family makes one call a day, that’s $45 a month — just for phone calls.

But calls are just the start. Here’s what a full month looks like:

• Daily phone calls (25 min each): $45.00
• Emails (3 per day): $18.00
• Sending money (twice a month, $100 each): $10.00
• Video calls (twice a week): $32.00
• Music or other content: $10–$30
• Total: $115–$135 per month

County jail families pay much more. Rates there can be 3 to 4 times higher than state prison rates.

And the money transfer fees hit the poorest families hardest. If you send just $20, the fee is $3.50 — that’s a 17.5% charge. If you can afford to send $200, the fee is $6.50 — just 3.25%. The less you have, the more they take.

Key Takeaway: A Georgia family can spend over $115 a month to stay in touch — and the poorest families pay the highest rates.

The FCC Tried to Help — Then Took It Back

In July 2024, the FCC (the agency that controls phone rules) voted to set the lowest prison phone rates ever. The vote was unanimous (meaning both parties agreed).

Those rules would have:

• Cut the cost of a 15-minute jail call from $11.35 to $0.90
• Saved families about $500 million a year across the country
• Led to nearly 2 billion more call minutes per year
• Banned all kickbacks to prisons

The rules went into effect in January 2025. Thousands of prisons followed them with no problems.

Then came the reversal. After the Trump White House took over the FCC, the new leaders raised the caps by 83%. The rate for large prisons went from $0.06 to $0.11 per minute.

They also added a $0.02 per minute “facility cost” fee. This is basically a new version of the kickbacks that were just banned.

This reversal will cost families an extra $215 million a year. Only 3 states even had rates above the new caps. Most prisons were already following the lower 2024 rules just fine.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez called the new order “indefensible.” She said the FCC was “shielding a broken system that inflates costs and rewards kickbacks.”

Key Takeaway: The FCC set record-low rates in 2024, then raised them 83% in 2025 — costing families $215 million more per year.

Securus Nearly Went Bankrupt — Because of Its Own Debt

Securus’s parent company, Aventiv, was bought by Platinum Equity in 2017. To pay for the deal, Platinum loaded Aventiv with $1.3 billion in debt.

To pay back that debt, the company needed to keep charging sky-high prices. When the FCC lowered rates, the math stopped working.

Here’s what happened:

• March 2024: Aventiv’s bonds crashed to 47 cents on the dollar.
• April 2024: The company couldn’t pay its debts. Rating agencies gave it deep junk status.
• January 2025: Aventiv missed its deadline to find a buyer.
• April 2025: The company barely avoided going broke. Lenders took over and a $360 million loan was issued to keep it running.

So the company that runs Georgia’s prison phones almost collapsed — not because it didn’t make enough money, but because Wall Street piled on too much debt. Families paid the price for years to prop up that debt.

Key Takeaway: Wall Street debt nearly killed Securus — and families were forced to pay inflated prices to keep it alive.

Tablets: The Next Way to Drain Families

Georgia prisons use JPay tablets. The tablets are “free.” But every service on them costs money.

The email system is the biggest money-maker. Each email costs a “stamp” — $0.35 each, or $0.20 if you buy in bulk. Adding a photo costs an extra stamp. A short video message costs 3 extra stamps.

Here’s the key problem: The FCC cannot set rules for email prices. The law that gave the FCC power over phone and video calls left email out on purpose. So there is no limit on what companies can charge for messages.

As phone prices get capped, companies are pushing more charges to email, music, and games — the services no one regulates.

Music on JPay costs $0.99 to $9.99 per song. Albums can cost up to $46. Compare that to Spotify, which charges $10 a month for all the music you want.

The game company GTL charged $24.99 a month just for a games package.

The tablets are “free” because the company makes its money on every tap, every message, every song.

Key Takeaway: “Free” tablets are really money machines — and email fees have no legal limit.

County Jails Are Even Worse

While state prison rates are now $0.06 per minute, county jails tell a very different story.

• Glynn County: $0.18 per minute for local calls — 3 times the state prison rate.
• Chatham County: $8 for a 20-minute video call. That’s $0.40 per minute.
• Liberty County: Text messages cost close to $1 each for a few words.

This is even more unjust (unfair) when you know who is in these jails. Three out of four people in local jails have not been found guilty. They are legally innocent. They’re waiting for trial, often because they can’t afford bail.

The state punishes them — and their families — with high fees before they’ve been convicted of anything.

Key Takeaway: Most people in county jails are legally innocent, yet their families face the highest fees.

Six States Made Calls Free — Georgia Has Done Nothing

Six states have proven that free prison calls can work:

1. Connecticut — First state to make calls free
2. California — Free calls in state prisons
3. Colorado — Full rollout in 2026
4. Massachusetts — Free since December 2023. Call volume more than doubled.
5. Minnesota — Free calls (still collects $274,000 from other fees like music)
6. New York — Free since August 2025. Phone minutes jumped 45% in the first month. Cost: about $9 million a year.

New York City made jail calls free in 2019. It saved families about $10 million a year.

Georgia has passed no laws to make calls free. No bills have moved forward. This despite Georgia ranking third in the nation for kickback money.

When other states made calls free, families flooded the phone lines. That tells us something clear: high prices were cutting people off from their loved ones.

Key Takeaway: Six states proved free calls work and boost family contact — Georgia hasn’t even tried.

The Contraband Phone Crackdown Protects the Monopoly

In 2024, Georgia seized more than 15,500 smuggled cell phones from prisons.

People in prison risk harsh punishment to get those phones. Why? Because the approved phone system is costly, limited to 25-minute calls, and run by one company with no rivals.

The state’s crackdown does two things at once. It deals with real safety issues. But it also guards the money stream. If people could make free calls on smuggled phones, Securus would lose business — and Georgia would lose its $8 million in kickbacks.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has led groups of 23 to 31 state attorneys general pushing for the right to jam cell signals in prisons. Jamming would block all outside phones — locking in the monopoly even tighter.

Think about what this means: The state spends money to make sure people can only call through the one company that pays the state kickbacks.

Key Takeaway: Georgia’s phone crackdown is partly about safety — but it also protects $8 million in yearly kickbacks.

A Better Way Exists: The Nonprofit Model

A nonprofit group called Ameelio shows there’s another way. Founded in 2020 by two Yale students, Ameelio provides free calls, video calls, emails, and letters.

The key difference: Ameelio charges the prison, not the family. Iowa uses Ameelio’s system across all nine of its state prisons. Maine is testing it too.

This model works because it lines up everyone’s goals. The prison pays a fair price. Families stay connected for free. No one profits from keeping people apart.

Even the head of Platinum Equity — the firm that owns Securus — said the quiet part out loud: “I think this industry really should be led probably not by private folks… but the nonprofit business, honestly.”

Ameelio does not work in Georgia yet. But it proves the current system is a choice, not a must.

Key Takeaway: A nonprofit already provides free prison calls in other states — proving Georgia’s system is a choice, not a need.

The Bigger Picture: One System, Many Ways to Extract

Phone fees are just one piece. The same families also pay:

• Prison store markups of 50–300% on basic items like food and soap (documented by GPS)
• Communication markups of 1,000%+ over normal consumer rates
• Medical co-pays for health care from for-profit companies
• Money transfer fees on every dollar they send
• Ankle monitor fees and program costs after release

The same Wall Street firms own companies across all these areas:

• Platinum Equity → Securus/JPay (phones and tablets)
• H.I.G. Capital → Keefe (prison stores) AND ICSolutions (phones)
• American Securities → ViaPath/GTL (phones)

These aren’t separate businesses. They’re one system with different names. Each piece drains money from the same families — families that are mostly poor and mostly Black and brown.

All together, the cost of staying connected to and supporting a loved one in prison can consume a huge share of a family’s income. It drives families deeper into poverty. And it makes coming home harder.

Key Takeaway: The same Wall Street firms profit from phone fees, overpriced stores, and more — all targeting the same poor families.

Glossary

• Kickback / Commission: A cut of the phone money that the phone company pays to the prison. The higher the rates, the bigger the cut.
• Monopoly: When one company is the only choice. In prison, one phone company gets all the business. Families can’t pick another.
• Private equity (PE): Wall Street firms that buy companies using mostly borrowed money. They need high profits to pay back the loans.
• FCC: The Federal Communications Commission — the U.S. agency that sets rules for phone and video call prices.
• JPay: A company owned by Securus that runs the tablet, email, and money transfer systems in Georgia prisons.
• Securus: The company that handles phone calls in Georgia state prisons. Owned by Aventiv, which is owned by Platinum Equity.
• ViaPath (formerly GTL): The second-biggest prison phone company. Together with Securus, they control 80% of the market.
• Aventiv: The parent company of Securus and JPay. It nearly went bankrupt in 2024–2025.
• Martha Wright-Reed Act: A 2022 federal law that gave the FCC power to cap prison phone and video call prices. Named for a grandmother who fought high prison phone fees for 20 years.
• Email stamp: JPay’s way of charging for emails. Each message needs a “stamp” that costs $0.20–$0.35.
• Rate cap: A legal limit on how much a company can charge per minute.
• Leveraged buyout (LBO): When a PE firm buys a company using borrowed money, then puts the debt on the company it just bought.
• Ameelio: A nonprofit that provides free prison calls by charging the prison instead of the family.
• NASPO: A group that helps states buy services through one shared contract. It takes a 1% cut of all sales — giving it a reason to keep prices high too.

Read the Source Document

Download the full GPS research brief: Prison Communications & Financial Exploitation: The Extraction Economy Behind Bars (February 2026) — PDF

Other Versions of This Report

We wrote this report for different audiences:

• For Lawmakers — Policy details, cost figures, and reform options
• For Media — Key findings, data points, and story angles
• For Advocates — Action items, talking points, and campaign tools