I have a different perspective on this issue than that of many other people: as a Military Policeman in Vietnam, I saw with my own eyes the disdain most criminals have for the rules of society, and for those who obey them.
Unlike many of their victims, none of the inmates in prisons have a gun held at their head when they choose to spend money for phone calls. If they feel that the rates are unreasonable, they need only stop paying them: when enough inmates refrain from doing so, the rates will fall. It's not as if the U.S. Postal Service isn't in operation, or as if the liberal media doesn't have hundreds of other tempests to churn up in dozens of other toilet bowls.
The reporters who parade criminals in front of the public for no better reason than to sell soap, and the rulemakers who chose to pretend that prison phone rates aren't in line with the extraordinary costs of doing business in secure facilities, and the vicious opportunists who play the "blame and shame" game to advance hidden political agendas have *ALL* commited a crime: they have wasted the voters' time with trivia instead of proposing solutions to the immense, complicated, and difficult problems confronting our country.
I propose a simple answer to those who feel convicted fellons need discount phone service: let's all remind the FCC of the rule that every convicted fellon knows - "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time" - and *EVERYTHING* that goes with it.
Bill