Hi, it's Bryce Dallas Howard here, guest hosting today on TED Talks Daily.

Here's a talk from TED fellow and criminal justice advocate, Bianca Tylek, about strategies to fight

exploitation and incarceration.

Not too long ago, a mother told me, I can talk to my son in the dark.

The prepaid collect call from an inmate.

Her son was in prison, and paying for phone calls often meant she couldn't afford her

light bill.

See, families can pay as much as a dollar a minute to speak to a

loved one in prisoner jail. These egregious rates have created a $1.2 billion prison telecom industry.

And with visit costs, forced one in three families with an incarcerated loved one into debt.

87% of those carrying this financial burden are women, and as a result

decades of racist policies and policing, they are disproportionately black and brown. Prison

telecom corporations claim that these high rates are necessary to pay site commissions to prisons

in jails and provide security and surveillance.

While the government's hands are far from clean, these corporate claims are simply not supported by

reality. Consider this. In Connecticut, where families are charged as much as 32.5 cents per minute,

and the state takes a 68% commission. The telecom provider takes home

10 cents per minute. Now in Illinois, where the state takes no commissioned, families pay the same

corporation nine-tenths of a cent per minute. In other words, even after the government takes

its cut, the corporation makes 10 times more

in Connecticut than it does in Illinois for providing the same service. And prisons in Illinois are no

less secure than those in Connecticut. These are simply corporate arguments used to justify

...