Why It Matters
For families of incarcerated people in Nevada, staying connected carries a significant financial burden. Phone calls, video visits, and even emails through the state’s contracted communication provider come with per-minute fees, unexpected taxes, and steep deposit charges — costs that advocates say undermine rehabilitation and reentry outcomes.
The financial strain falls disproportionately on lower-income families, and research links regular contact between incarcerated individuals and their families to better outcomes after release. Nevada has not yet moved to provide free inmate communication, even as several other states have done so.
What Happened
Alisha Anderson accumulated a $600 bill over three months for phone calls and video visits with her incarcerated husband, Numa. The charges flow through Viapath, the company that holds the communication contract with the Nevada Department of Corrections and local facilities.
Under that contract, phone calls cost $0.10 per minute, making a 15-minute call $1.50. Video visits run $0.25 per minute, and individual emails are charged at $0.20 each. Anderson also discovered she was being charged 5 cents in taxes per 15-minute call — without advance notice — amounting to nearly $20 in total taxes.
The fees don’t stop at the per-call level. When Anderson deposited $10 into a communication account, she was charged a $5 fee — a 50% surcharge just to load funds. The Nevada Department of Corrections also applies a 35% markup to all commissary items, compounding the overall financial pressure on families.
Technical reliability adds another layer of frustration. Video calls drop, buffer, or cut out roughly 40% of the time, according to Anderson’s experience, making paid connection time unreliable. Nevada families with loved ones seeking relief from high everyday costs face these prison communication charges on top of broader economic pressures.
By the Numbers
- $600 — Anderson’s three-month communication bill for calls and video visits
- $0.14 per minute — cost of traditional collect calls, compared to $0.10 per minute for prepaid accounts
- 50% — fee charged on a $10 deposit ($5 fee)
- 35% — markup the Department of Corrections applies to commissary items
- 40% — approximate rate at which video visits experience technical problems
Zoom Out
Connecticut became the first state to eliminate inmate communication costs in 2021. Since then, incarcerated people and their families in that state have collectively saved an estimated $622.5 million. Nearly 600 million phone calls have been made through systems that now offer free communication nationally, covering roughly 330,000 incarcerated people across California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, the federal prison system, and more than a dozen counties.
Advocates point to strong evidence for the policy shift. Formerly incarcerated people face an unemployment rate above 27% and are roughly ten times more likely to experience homelessness than the general population — outcomes that consistent family contact during incarceration has been shown to help mitigate.
Nick Shepack, Nevada state director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center, framed the case in practical terms: “When you make communication free for people who are incarcerated, you improve their participation in programs, their success in rehabilitation, you help them plan for reentry, you improve their chances of success when they are released.”
Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises, was more blunt: “It’s silly for us not to do it.”
The issue intersects with broader housing and economic pressures facing Nevada residents. The state has also grappled with persistent homelessness challenges, a population that includes a disproportionate share of formerly incarcerated individuals.
What’s Next
Nevada has not announced any legislative action or administrative review of its inmate communication fee structure. Advocacy organizations including the Fines and Fees Justice Center and Worth Rises are pressing for change, pointing to the growing list of states that have moved to free communication as a model. Whether the Nevada Legislature or the Department of Corrections takes up the issue in a future session remains to be seen.