The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) receives nearly $75 million of taxpayer money every year to run large immigration detention centers across the United States. These and other private prisons across the country generate collective profits in the billions annually by engaging in price gouging behaviors and forcing inmates and their families to pay predatorily priced phone bills. If any progress in community re-entry programs is to be expected, this practice of prisons profiting from inmate phone calls must be made illegal.

Often labeled as the most profitable industry in America, private detention facilities are given free reign to profit from exploitation of inmate needs. Since the mid-1980s, an increasing percentage of these gains have been a direct result of kickbacks from prison phone contracts. When private prison systems examine phone contract bids, they almost always choose to employ the company with the highest commission benefits and highest prices.

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