Soap or a phone call? Colorado lawmakers want to make prison phone calls free so families don’t have to choose.

Norman Vasquez often has to choose between buying soap or calling his family while serving time at Colorado’s Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility. Vasquez was one of 15 people who urged Colorado lawmakers to pass a bill that would make phone calls free to people incarcerated in state prisons and their families. The approximately 17,000 people incarcerated in the Colorado Department of Corrections pay 8 cents a minute for phone calls—or $4.80 for an hour, according to data collected by the state. In 2022, people in the Department of Corrections and their families paid $7.7 million to talk on the phone. Requiring incarcerated people to pay for phone calls breaks their connection with their families—the exact connection that studies say helps people succeed after they leave prison, proponents of the bill said. The lack of free calls places a financial burden on imprisoned peoples’ families—many of which are living in poverty—and keeps incarcerated people from connecting to resources outside of the prison walls that can help them re-enter society. The bill, HB23-1133, is part of a wave of legislation across the country to provide free phone calls to incarcerated people and regulate the private companies that dominate the prison communications industry.