The Effect of Prison Phone Call Pricing on Recidivism Rates

High phone call pricing makes the prison phone industry one of the most lucrative businesses in the U.S. today, as prison phone companies have state-sanctioned monopolistic control of the prison market within that state.  Consequently, high phone call pricing creates a barrier for incarcerated individuals trying to maintain their connection with the outside world, including access to family contact, legal aid, and other forms of social connection that ease their reentry. In this thesis, I hypothesize that a decrease in prison phone call pricing over time will result in a decrease in the recidivism rate. I evaluate the effects of call pricing on recidivism over time using recidivism and call pricing data from each state, controlling for changes in unemployment rate and GDP per capita. Ultimately, my regression analysis finds a weak positive correlation between call pricing and recidivism, although these results prove to be statistically insignificant, and thus inconclusive.