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The prices charged by Securus and other 3rd party services provided to jails are ridiculous and predatory. Competition would be great but I’m not sure they will allow it to happen without a fight.

They make so much money and portions of that money are shared with the jails the pessimist in me doesn’t see there ever being a free option for instant communication. I appreciate the effort and I think this space has a lot of room for improvement. Godspeed!

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What do you think are the best strategies to win that fight?

Lobbying Congress to use federal statue to prevent predatory behavior. What that looks like would be up to a domain expert. Price controls on communication services, prohibiting kickbacks to prisons, requiring comms be free and subsidized by government, or some combination of the above.

If you can show how inexpensive it is to provide the service, it becomes straightforward to punch holes in the story predatory for profits are using to profiteer from the situation.

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