Mindy Fetterman of Stateline has written an article, Face to Face Family Visits Return to Some Jails, noting:

And as video visitation has increased, face-to-face visitation has declined. The PPI [Prison Policy Initiative] found in a 2015 study that 74 percent of jails dropped in-person visits when they started video visits. Often the private companies that provide video visitation services require governments to drop in-person visits.

Read more here.

Yesterday, a three judge panel of the DC Appeals Court heard the phone companies’ appeal of the FCC’s October 2015 Order capping in-state prison and jail phone rates. There’s a good summary in this article, The FCC has stopped defending its own rules lowering the cost of prisoner phone calls and commentary here: The FCC’s legal battle over prison phones just took a weird turn.

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn wrote a very poignant blog about being in the courtroom: My personal story in search of #PhoneJustice.