They speak roughly once a week in a 15-minute phone call, and speak for another 25 minutes on a video chat. Jones says she’d travel to Texas to visit her son in person, but Hays County Jail, where he is locked up, banned visitations in November 2013.

Since then, all family communication with inmates at Hays County goes through Securus, which charges Jones about $10 for a phone call and about $8 for a video visit.

The cost to keep in touch, Jones says, "makes me ill."

$10 a phone call isn't punishing criminals, it's punishing their loved ones just for trying to maintain contact.

No competition = they can do what they want.

I actually started reading about this industry. I guess it's an industry, telecomms for prisons. I was reading about it because of the podcast Serial. I was pretty surprised at how much money it generates vs. what it actually does. These guys are cleaning out prisoners families for basic communications.

This is just like what happens with the commissaries in prison. The fees to add money just wipes out any money that people can put in. We really need to reform our prisons. My view is if we a society decide we need to take away their freedom, we need to pay for it, not the families or the prisoners. I think that making the government pay to put them away will really cause us to look at what crimes we are really willing to punish with long prison sentences. We would also need to eliminate the kickbacks from companies that provide services, so the government is really looking to make the best choice via cost and benefits.