Communications & Technology
Key Findings
Critical data points synthesized across multiple research collections.
The Monopoly Architecture: How Two Companies Control 80% of Prison Communications
The prison communications industry generates $1.4 billion in annual revenue, and two companies — Securus Technologies and ViaPath Technologies (formerly GTL) — have captured approximately 80% of that market, together serving roughly 3,450 correctional facilities and 1.1 million incarcerated individuals (*Prison Communications & Financial Exploitation*). Securus alone reports approximately $700 million in annual revenue with a 51% gross profit margin (*Follow the Money*). These are not competitive markets where pricing reflects costs — they are monopoly concessions awarded by corrections departments, often in exchange for the very commission payments that incentivize the highest possible call rates.
In Georgia, Securus holds the state prison phone contract and pays GDC more than $8 million per year at a 59.6% commission rate on gross phone revenue (*Follow the Money*). In fiscal year 2018–2019, Georgia collected $8,062,200.60 in commission kickbacks — the third-highest total of any state in the nation (*Prison Communications & Financial Exploitation*). The perverse logic is direct: the higher Securus charges per minute, the larger GDC's cut. Georgia families currently pay $0.06 per minute for calls from GDC state prisons, a rate brought into compliance with earlier FCC caps, but the commission structure that produced predatory pricing remains intact (*Prison Communications & Financial Exploitation*). The commission is, by any honest accounting, a tax on phone calls that flows not to rehabilitation or programming but into the corrections department's general operating budget.
This duopoly structure is backed by private equity. Securus was owned by ABRY Partners and later American Securities — financial sponsors whose investment thesis depends on sustained extraction from captive customer bases (*Follow the Money*). The market dynamic rewards vendors who maximize per-minute rates and sign-on bonuses to correctional agencies, not those who provide the most rehabilitative or cost-effective service. The result is a communications system structurally designed to be expensive and to stay that way.
Families as the Funding Source: The Hidden Tax Behind Every Phone Call
The financial burden of prison communications does not fall on the incarcerated — it falls on their families, who are overwhelmingly low-income and disproportionately Black. Nationally, families spend $5.6 billion annually on commissary, phone calls, and other basic necessities at markups reaching 600% above retail cost (*Families as the Hidden Tax Base*). Direct out-of-pocket spending averages $4,200 per year for people with an immediate family member in prison — more than 27% of income for a household at the federal poverty line (*Families as the Hidden Tax Base*). In aggregate, the total annual cost to families of incarcerated people reaches nearly $350 billion, almost four times the $89 billion taxpayers spend on jails and prisons (*Families as the Hidden Tax Base*).
Phone calls are only one component of this extraction. Families spend $1.8 billion annually on travel for prison visits, averaging $1,703 per year among the 51% of families who visit — with Black family members averaging $2,256 per year on visit travel alone (*Families as the Hidden Tax Base*). They spend $2.3 billion annually on childcare for children of incarcerated parents, and lose $6.7 billion annually in household income when a loved one is incarcerated (*Families as the Hidden Tax Base*). The communications extraction is layered on top of all of this.
In Georgia, the commissary system compounds the telephone extraction. Georgia charges $0.90 for a packet of ramen that costs $0.15 at Walmart and $4.00 for a package of generic ibuprofen that costs $0.40–$0.48 at retail (*Georgia's Prison Commissary Extraction Machine*). Commissary markups range from 83% to 1,150% above retail prices system-wide (*Prison Labor & Wage Exploitation in Georgia*), and the commissary system extracts an estimated $3–5 million annually on just 20 tracked items — funded almost entirely by families who have no alternative supplier (*Georgia's Prison Commissary Extraction Machine*). Ramen alone moves 2.3 million units of a single flavor annually through Georgia's commissary (*Georgia's Prison Commissary Extraction Machine*). When phone, commissary, and money transfer fees are considered together, the financial architecture of Georgia's prison system is built on the backs of families who are never named in any budget document.
Managed Access Systems: $50 Million Spent, Phones Still Everywhere
Georgia has spent approximately $50 million through FY2026 deploying Managed Access Systems (MAS) — technology designed to detect and block unauthorized cellphones — expanding from 23 to 27 prison facilities (*MAS Technology, Vendors & Deployment in Georgia*; *Follow the Money*). The MAS program is divided among three vendors: Trace-Tek/ShawnTech, CellBlox/Securus, and Hawks Ear (*Follow the Money*). Critically, Securus — the same company collecting 59.6% commissions on authorized prison phone calls — is also a MAS vendor, creating a structural conflict of interest: Securus profits both from families paying for legitimate calls and from the state's attempts to suppress the contraband phones that compete with those calls.
Despite this $50 million investment, the contraband phone problem has not been resolved. Between November 2021 and August 2023 alone, GDC recovered 12,483 cellphones from its prisons — and over 37,000 phones have been confiscated since 2022, averaging approximately 1,300 per month (*DOJ Investigation*; *MAS Technology*). Contraband phones enter through 346 documented fence-line throw-overs and 262 documented drone sightings in that same period, as well as through staff (*DOJ Investigation*). The technology is being outpaced by the smuggling networks it is meant to suppress. Meanwhile, 2,016 illegal drug items were also recovered in the same window — suggesting the same smuggling infrastructure that moves phones also moves narcotics (*DOJ Investigation*).
The OWL (Overwatch & Logistics) Unit, GDC's centralized technology command center, accounts for approximately $17.8 million over three fiscal years in direct appropriations, while the total technology systems it commands — managed access, drone detection, cameras, body cameras, tablets, mail screening, and a Data Intelligence platform — represent well over $150 million in combined technology spending across multiple fiscal years (*GDC OWL Unit*). The state is spending at scale on surveillance technology while the conditions that make contraband phones necessary — inadequate staffing, restricted legal communication, expensive authorized calls — go unaddressed. Total deaths in Georgia prisons hit a record 333 in 2024, even as the surveillance budget grew (*MAS Technology*).
The Monitor-Not-Block Alternative: What International Evidence Shows
The dominant U.S. policy approach — detect and block unauthorized devices — rests on the assumption that eliminating contraband phones is both achievable and the correct goal. International evidence challenges both premises. The United Kingdom invested £10 million in installing in-cell landline phones across its prison estate, providing legal, affordable communication to every incarcerated person rather than attempting to suppress all unauthorized devices (*Prison Communication: Violence, International Evidence & Human Impact*). The premise is straightforward: when people have reasonable access to family contact through legitimate channels, the demand that drives contraband phone smuggling — and the corruption networks that supply it — diminishes.
The monitor-not-block policy framework, supported by the ACLU and other advocacy organizations, proposes that prison systems deploy technology to monitor communications for genuine security threats rather than blanket interdiction. Evidence from multiple jurisdictions indicates that family contact reduces institutional violence, lowers recidivism, and improves mental health outcomes for incarcerated people and their children (*Policy & Advocacy: Monitor-Not-Block*; *Prison Communication: Violence*). Assaults on inmates in Georgia rose 54% between 2019 and 2024, and assaults on staff rose 77% in the same period — trends that unfolded while MAS spending increased (*Staffing Crisis & CO Turnover*). The correlation does not establish that MAS caused violence, but it thoroughly dismantles any claim that the current approach is working.
The cost model is also relevant. Georgia's $50 million MAS expenditure over five years, combined with $8+ million annually in phone commission revenue that creates the pricing pressure driving contraband demand, represents a policy feedback loop: expensive legal calls incentivize contraband phones, contraband phones justify surveillance spending, surveillance spending enriches vendors who also hold phone contracts. A monitor-not-block model with affordable universal access would interrupt that loop — but it would also eliminate the $8 million annual commission revenue GDC currently receives, creating a direct institutional disincentive for reform (*Follow the Money*; *Policy & Advocacy*).
Follow the Money: Vendor Relationships, Commission Structures, and Conflicts of Interest
The financial relationships between GDC and its communications vendors are not incidental to policy outcomes — they are determinative of them. GDC's 59.6% commission rate with Securus is among the highest in the nation and produces more than $8 million per year in revenue for the department (*Follow the Money*). Commission structures of this magnitude do not coexist with genuinely low phone rates; the math is definitional. When GDC received $8,062,200.60 in FY2019 commissions at a 59.6% rate, the gross phone revenue on which that commission was calculated exceeded $13.5 million — meaning Georgia families paid more than $13.5 million in a single year to call their incarcerated relatives from state prisons (*Prison Communications & Financial Exploitation*).
The vendor landscape compounds these concerns. Securus operates as both the authorized phone provider collecting commissions and a MAS vendor attempting to suppress the contraband phones that compete with its authorized service — a dual role that creates a financial interest in both the problem and the solution (*Follow the Money*; *MAS Technology*). Trace-Tek/ShawnTech and Hawks Ear round out the MAS vendor constellation, with Georgia's approximately $50 million contraband technology budget distributed across these three companies (*Follow the Money*). The contracts and procurement records underlying these relationships have been a subject of ongoing GPS investigation; the full scope of financial conflicts, including any political contributions or revolving-door relationships involving GDC officials, remains an area of active documentation.
The GDC budget itself reflects these priorities in concrete terms. The GDC FY2026 original budget totaled $1.712 billion, rising to an amended $1.799 billion, with FY2025 actual expenditures reaching $1.914 billion — a significant spike from FY2024's $1.527 billion (*GDC Budget & Spending*). Within that budget, technology spending commanded by the OWL unit and MAS vendors represents well over $150 million in cumulative commitments, even as the system faces a 52.5% correctional officer vacancy rate and eight facilities exceeding 70% CO vacancy (*Staffing Crisis*; *DOJ Investigation*). The state's revealed preference — surveillance technology over staff, vendor contracts over family access — is visible in the budget line by line.
Safety, Violence, and the Failure of the Interdiction Model
GDC operates 38 prisons holding almost 50,000 people — the fourth-largest state prison population in the country, in the eighth most populous state (*DOJ Investigation*). With a system-wide CO vacancy rate of approximately 50%, and ten of the largest facilities exceeding 70% vacancy, the prisons are profoundly understaffed (*DOJ Investigation*; *GDC Staffing Crisis*). In that environment, contraband phones are not merely a security threat — they are, for many incarcerated people, the primary means of maintaining family contact, accessing legal assistance, and documenting dangerous conditions. Between November 2021 and August 2023, GDC recovered 27,425 weapons from its prisons alongside those 12,483 cellphones (*DOJ Investigation*). The weapons and the phones are not equivalent security risks, but MAS policy treats suppression of both as co-equal priorities.
The DOJ investigation of Georgia prisons documented the conditions in which this communications policy operates: systemic violence, severe understaffing, 31% of the total inmate population validated as Security Threat Group (gang) members, and approximately 14,000 inmates with identified mental health needs (*2024 Senate Study Committee*). Assaults on inmates rose 54% and assaults on staff rose 77% between 2019 and 2024, while the prison death rate surged 47% — from 2.8 to 4.1 per 100,000 — over the same period (*Staffing Crisis & CO Turnover*). The record 333 total deaths in 2024 occurred in the same year that MAS deployment was at its broadest (*MAS Technology*). These are not statistics that support the effectiveness of an interdiction-first communications strategy.
Research on family contact and incarceration outcomes is consistent across jurisdictions: maintaining family ties reduces violence, improves mental health, and lowers recidivism (*Prison Communication: Violence*). Georgia's official three-year felony reconviction rate is 25–27%, but when technical violations and extended measurement windows are incorporated, the actual return-to-incarceration rate is closer to 50% (*Recidivism & Reentry*). Georgia releases 14,000–16,000 people per year with minimal reentry support (*Recidivism & Reentry*). A communications policy that financially punishes family contact and suppresses unauthorized phones without providing adequate authorized alternatives is not a safety policy — it is an extraction policy that also happens to degrade reentry outcomes.
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