‘Free’ jail phone calls have $800k budget impact, enable criminal activity

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The Alachua County Commission’s decision to make jail phone calls free for inmates is costing taxpayers roughly $819,000 per year, and thousands of these free phone calls have been used to commit additional crimes.

Commissioners decided in 2023 to make jail phone calls free to inmates

The Alachua County Commission began the process of making jail phone calls free in 2023, and phone calls became completely free to inmates in March 2024. A presentation from March 2023 stated that the County received about $375,000 in revenue each year from the inmate phone system; at that time, inmates paid $0.21 per minute, and a 15-minute phone call cost $3.15. 

Starting in March 2024, instead of collecting revenue from inmate phone calls, the County began paying Securus an average of about $37,000 for nearly 1.2 million minutes (20,000 hours) of phone calls each month. The lowest bill was $31,847 in June 2024, and the highest was $40,103 in December 2024, but the bills are very consistent month-to-month, with no statistically significant trend line.

The swing from $375,000 in revenue in 2023 to the current $444,000 in costs per year for jail phone calls adds up to an effective impact of $819,000 on Alachua County’s annual budget. ($444,000 is 12 times the $37,000 monthly average cost to date. The first 12 months of the free phone calls, March 2024 to Feb 2025, cost $441,000. The last 12 months for which we have data, November 2024 to October 2025, cost $450,000.) 

Inmates make thousands of illegal calls, subsidized by taxpayers

Since calls became free, at least six inmates have been charged with illegally calling their victims or otherwise violating their pre-trial release conditions. (Defendants are typically prohibited from contacting their victims until the case is resolved, whether they are in jail or out on bail; regardless of where the inmate is located, these prohibitions are referred to as “pre-trial release conditions.”)

• Kenneth Woodridge Jr. allegedly called his victim 1,464 times.
• Joel Foster allegedly called his victim 429 times, was convicted in that case, and then called the same victim 532 more times.
• Ellis Ezeb Jr. allegedly called his victim 245 times.
• Cedric Owens allegedly called his victim 54 times.
• Jimmy Spears allegedly called his victim 187 times.
• Charnavis Queen allegedly called his victim 15 times.

According to the arrest reports, these calls are made directly to the victim or to a third party, with the intention of persuading or threatening the victim to drop the charges or change their story. Inmates sometimes use their own PIN for these calls, but they also use other inmates’ PINs in an attempt to disguise the source of the call.

Free phone calls have also been used to coordinate the activities of alleged drug dealers, resulting in at least two arrests.

It is impossible to know whether additional illegal activity is going undetected due to the loss of Securus’s voice biometrics software, which was discontinued in March 2024 at the request of the County Commission. Due to the loss of this tool, it is now more difficult for investigators to detect these calls and identify the inmates making the calls; removing this software also made it more difficult to block calls to victims and witnesses.

Free calls enable inmates to harass victims

If the first defendant above had had to pay for his calls and each one was only 3 minutes long, it would have cost him over $900 at the 2023 rate of $0.21/minute; instead, there was no cost to him for his use of the phone for the illegal calls, and taxpayers paid the bill at the current rate of about $0.03/minute (about $131.00).

Former Sheriff predicted problems with free phone calls

Former Alachua County Sheriff Emery Gainey told Alachua Chronicle, “These trends and the resulting increase in monthly costs to County taxpayers were anticipated and documented during my time in office, following the Commission’s decision to implement unlimited free inmate phone calls. Under the previous system, inmates always had free phone access to their attorneys to ensure proper and effective communication. In addition, each inmate was allowed a limited number of paid calls with family members at no cost to taxpayers within each 24-hour period. This approach also helped ensure fair access for all inmates to the limited number of phones available in the housing units.”

Gainey told the County Commission in December 2023 that the change had led to an increase in fights at the jail and said that gangs were controlling access to the phones.

Financial cost was also predicted

When Commissioners first asked for free jail phone calls, former Sheriff Clovis Watson Jr. gave them four options:

• Option #1: Seven free 15-minute calls per week for each inmate (total cost to the County: $580,000 per year)
• Option #2: Five free 15-minute calls per week per inmate (total cost to the County: $375,000 per year)
• Option #3: Two free 15-minute calls per week per inmate (total cost to the County: $75,000 per year)
• Option #4: Unlimited phone calls per week per inmate (total cost to the County: approximately $1.3 million per year)

The County Commission chose the most expensive option of unlimited phone calls. While the budget impact ended up being less than anticipated ($819k vs. $1.3 million), the Commissioners’ focus on the well-being of inmates did not take into account the toll on the victims who received hundreds of illegal phone calls.