NPR.

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darien Woods and I'm Adrian Ma.

Before Diane Lewis's son went to jail she had one instruction for him.

Call me every day.

When he went in, I started to think about everything I saw on TV, like, oh my God, they're gonna

kill him, he's gonna be fighting all the time,'s going to be assaulted. He was 17, so I was afraid.

I was really, really afraid.

His son, Javan Lumpkin, had been convicted of conspiracy to commit first-degree assault and had been sentenced to

sentenced to up to 12 years in adult prison.

Prison is a strange environment

and you have to adapt in order to survive and having people that love you and

reminding you that you are a normal person and you are loved it makes it manageable.

Now these calls were costing his mom hundreds of dollars a month and what he didn't know at

the time was for Diane to afford these calls she would often skip meals or not pay the electric bill.

In fact, she says sometimes she would be talking to Javon on the phone while she was at home sitting in the dark.

I can't imagine the phone being cut off with my son in prison.

Like that would be, I don't know if I would have survived that.

For most of us, the cost of making a phone call has never been cheaper.

And yet for incarcerated individuals and their families, the cost of staying connected can be a huge financial burden.

So today in the show, we explain how prison phone calls got so expensive, and the growing movement to try and make them free.

Support for this podcast and the following message come from WISE, the app that makes

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