The Issue

How the Commission Model Works

When a county jail signs a contract for phone and video services, it typically works with a single company that holds exclusive rights to provide those services to everyone inside. In exchange for that exclusivity, the company often agrees to pay the facility a portion of the revenue it earns from calls. This arrangement is called a site commission.

Because families have only one option for staying in contact, there is no market pressure to keep prices affordable. The rate that families pay ends up being closely tied to how the contract between the county and the vendor is structured, particularly how large a commission the county receives. When the commission is high, rates tend to be high. When the commission is removed, rates tend to come down significantly.

The Michigan Department of Corrections renegotiated its contract with the same vendor that serves Kalamazoo County Jail and brought the per-minute rate down to $0.0735, from a prior rate of $0.14 per minute. Under the 2020 contract, Kalamazoo families paid $0.18 per minute for the same service. The difference is not the cost of the technology or the vendor. It is the structure of the contract.

The FCC's updated regulations, which took effect April 6, 2026, now prohibit site commissions on new inmate communications contracts. This means that while the commission structure in Kalamazoo's 2020 agreement was permissible when it was signed, that same structure is not permitted in new contracts. The new contract the Board approved on October 20 is the first one subject to these updated federal requirements, and it includes no commission on calls.

The 2020 Contract

Kalamazoo County Jail has not had in-person visitation since 2013, several years before the 2020 contract was signed. According to reporting by NowKalamazoo, the visiting room was converted into a space with wall-mounted video tablets during that period. That history is part of the context for why phone and video communication costs matter so much to the families of people who are incarcerated here.

In November 2020, Kalamazoo County signed a five-year telecommunications agreement granting one company exclusive control of all jail phones and video calls. The contract was extended by one year and expires November 9, 2026. The county ran a new Request for Proposal process to replace it, and the Board of Commissioners unanimously approved the new contract on October 20, 2026. It begins January 1, 2027. Read the new contract.

As part of the original agreement, the county received a one-time payment of $325,000 upfront. Since signing, the county has collected more than $158,000 in ongoing commissions on top of that. Together, the county has received nearly $500,000 since 2020, all of which has gone into the General Fund. Sheriff Fuller confirmed both of these figures on the record.

What Families Paid Under the 2020 Contract

The rates below come directly from the 2020 contract document that NowKalamazoo obtained through a public records request in September 2025.

It is worth paying attention to the fees at the bottom of that table. The deposit fees, transaction fees, and live operator charges were kept entirely by the vendor. They were not part of the revenue-sharing arrangement with the county, and removing the commission structure would not automatically remove them. The new contract's pricing lists none of these fees, and federal rules now ban them.

Federal regulators have also confirmed that these fees have not always been disclosed clearly to families, meaning people have often been charged amounts they did not know about until after the transaction was already complete. That is a separate problem from the rate itself, and it is why we asked for the new contract to address ancillary fees as a distinct issue. The FCC's April 6, 2026 rules prohibit these fees on new contracts, but federal enforcement is complaint-driven rather than automatic. Explicit contractual prohibition at the local level provides a separate, enforceable layer of protection for families.

The Same Vendor. Different Rates.

One of the clearest ways to understand the rate question is to look at how other jurisdictions have approached the same vendor. The table below shows what families pay in a few different places. The technology is not what is different between these places. What is different is how the contracts are structured.

† Michigan county jail phone rates are not proactively published by facilities. The jail comparison figures above are drawn from FOIA requests conducted in 2022 by Prison Policy Initiative researcher Phil Lombard. More current data is not publicly available, which is itself illustrative of the transparency gap this campaign asked the county to address.

The FCC's 2025 IPCS Order, which took effect April 6, 2026, establishes interim rate caps tiered by a facility's average daily population. Kalamazoo County Jail, with an average daily population of approximately 500, falls under the Medium Jails tier (350-999 ADP). Under these rules, the effective rate cap for audio calls at a facility of this size is $0.12 per minute, and the effective cap for video calls is $0.19 per minute. Both include the $0.02 per minute facility charge the FCC allows. The 2020 contract rates of $0.18 per minute for phone and $0.25 per minute for video would not meet these caps. The new contract approved on October 20 (RFP #2026009) comes in well under both: 7¢ a minute for phone calls and 12¢ a minute for video. Source: FCC, Incarcerated People's Communications Services (2025 IPCS Order).

How the New Contract Compares

The 2020 contract was signed under rules that permitted its structure at the time. The FCC's updated regulations, effective April 6, 2026, changed what is permissible going forward. The commission arrangement that generated nearly $500,000 for Kalamazoo County since 2020 is now prohibited on new inmate communications contracts. Ancillary fees, including deposit fees, transaction fees, and live operator charges, are also prohibited. The new contract beats both the federal limits and CCJT's ask.

RFP #2026009, issued May 13, 2026, was the first procurement Kalamazoo County conducted since the updated federal regulations took effect. CCJT asked the county to go further than the federal floor, with a written phone rate ceiling of $0.10 per minute. The approved contract went further still, at 7¢ a minute. The Sheriff's Office also declined the optional 2¢ a minute cost recovery the contract allowed, which would have made calls 9¢.

Source: FCC, Incarcerated People's Communications Services: 2025 IPCS Order, effective April 6, 2026.

Why Local Contract Language Matters

Federal rules that took effect on April 6, 2026, already prohibit commissions and ancillary fees in new contracts. With those practices now off the table, a rate ceiling of $0.10 or below is both reasonable and achievable. At the same time, federal regulations governing this industry have been repeatedly challenged, delayed, and subject to changing interpretations. Simply stating that a vendor will comply with applicable federal law does not provide families with the certainty they deserve.

That is why we asked for these protections to be written explicitly into Kalamazoo County's contract itself, creating clear, local standards that are transparent and enforceable regardless of future changes at the federal level. We were not asking for anything extraordinary. We asked for a contract that reflects what families in Kalamazoo County can realistically afford while preserving the relationships that help people successfully return to the community.