Massachusetts becomes fifth state to make prison calls free

When I first went to jail (for being poor) it was costing me $1.50/min to call my family.

Six years later, when I was still locked up, my mother was dying of cancer and I could only afford to call her for five minutes a day.

Illinois at least dropped the prices of its prison calls to 1¢/min.

Amazing that this bill includes the county jails. Often jail and prison regulations are totally separate and jails usually get the short end of the stick.

And remember, it is never the prisoners that pay for the calls. It is always the friends and family having to put money onto the phone or commissary accounts. Often a male prisoner has left behind a woman and children and they have lost their primary income, but now they are being burdened with paying for phone calls, hygiene products, clothing and food for their loved one too.

qingcharles I keep running into you in HN threads, I'm just gonna leave this here:

preston@unlockedlabs.org

hit me up sometime

Do you have a need for volunteers for non-training software development work?

We get a lot of interest from universities with students that want to intern/volunteer but most of it seems to be UI/UX stuff which I recently found out, doesn't usually include front-end work.

I can talk to my boss, there may be an upcoming need for front-end so feel free to either email me or https://www.unlockedlabs.org/#contact

All of the support we have received is so appreciated <3

Any need for backend work? At a glance it wasn't clear what your software solution facilitated or if it was an existing platform.