The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) is extending a pilot program that provides incarcerated people with 775 minutes of free phone calls per month. 

Naomi Puzzello, public information officer for the IDOC, confirmed in an email to the Chicago Reader that the department decided to extend the program after seeing “a significant increase in minute usage as individuals gained greater access to phones.”

The IDOC launched the Voices of Connection program in November. During the pilot, incarcerated people could make 20-minute phone calls from their tablets or the wall phones in their facilities. The department will continue the program and offer the same number of free minutes per month, Puzzello wrote. 

“Since the Voices of Connection program launched in November 2025, the free minutes have made the increased phone access calls more affordable and sustainable for individuals and their families,” Puzzello wrote. “Based on these results, the Department determined that extending the program would continue to support meaningful connection between individuals in custody and their loved ones.”

While offering free minutes to incarcerated people eases the financial burden of keeping in touch with their loved ones, advocates urge the agency to not only keep the program but improve the quality of the free phone calls. 

Other states, including Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington, Hawaiʻi, Oregon, and Maryland, have considered adopting similar policies, said Bianca Tylek, founder and executive director of Worth Rises, a New York–based advocacy nonprofit that aims to dismantle the prison industry. 

While Illinois prisons have among the lowest phone call rates in the country, free phone call programs have reduced infractions and violence that plagued the once-scarce resource, Tylek said, citing the findings from Worth Rises’s national analysis of free prison phone calls. “What we’ve heard time and time again, not just from people who are incarcerated and their families, but also from correctional administrators and staff, is that having access to free communications, particularly over tablets, has remarkably reduced tensions within facilities,” Tylek said. “That . . . just makes the environment safer for everybody.”

Though the transition to free phone calls via tablets and wall phones may pay dividends for incarcerated people and prison staff, prisoner advocacy groups told the Reader that the poor quality of phone calls often negates the savings offered by the program. 

With the rapidly rising cost of living, some people—especially older adults on a fixed income—are forced make difficult choices about whether to pay their bills in full or fund communications with their incarcerated loved ones, said Regina Russell, member and leader of the Mothers of the Kidnapped Group, a Chicago-based group for loved ones caring for police torture survivors, a part of Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity (MAMAS). While free phone calls can ease that financial burden, ICSolutions, which provides the phone call services to Illinois prisoners, needs to get the phone call quality under control and increase the number of free minutes per person, Russell said. 

These days, the phone calls she receives from her son, Tamon Russell, sound as if he’s in a bubble or underwater, Russell said. One of them will often hang up on the other because it’s so hard to hear. Then, they have to wait ten minutes before calling back again, she said. 

According to a September 2025 memo from IDOC director Latoya Hughes, both tablet and wall phone calls have a ten-minute lockout period between calls, but Puzzello didn’t respond to the Reader’s questions about whether that lockout was a company or IDOC policy. 

“We’re grateful because that takes a little bit of money off our pockets, but it doesn’t help when you can’t hear them,” Russell said. “The misconception that they give the public is that they’re spending taxpayers’ money on people that are incarcerated and they’re getting all of these glorious perks—and those perks are not glorious the way they are saying it.” 

Neither Puzzello nor ICSolutions responded to the Reader’s follow-up questions regarding how the free phone call program has affected revenue for the company. Though the free prison phone call program has trimmed the cost of phone calls, other expenses, such as messaging and additional phone calls beyond the free 775 minutes, remain, Russell noted. Furthermore, the poor phone call quality can complicate matters for incarcerated people who, for example, are trying to talk with or schedule appointments with their lawyers, said Erica Bentley, codirector of MAMAS. 

Bentley attributes the poor phone call quality, in part, to the WiFi being inconsistent in people’s cells. Prisons generally are concrete structures that make transmitting WiFi a challenge, though prison phone calls are never on par with the quality we would accept outside of prison, Tylek said. “It’s not an insurmountable challenge, but it’s a challenge,” Tylek said. “I think that the companies that are responsible for all of this are not necessarily looking to invest a ton of money.”

In a statement to the Reader, Puzzello said the department “is not aware of any continued systemic call quality complaints stemming from ICSolutions’ services. ICSolutions continues to monitor the system and make ongoing improvements to call quality. The Department remains in regular communication with ICSolutions to ensure these issues are resolved.”

While the call system remains imperfect, being able to talk to incarcerated loved ones benefits both the imprisoned and their families, particularly children of incarcerated parents. Timika Williams Gregory has seen that impact firsthand. 

In her twenties, Williams Gregory took in her niece and nephew, Lashawn and Mariah, after their mother went to prison. Shortly after they lost their mother, they experienced bullying in school and depression, recalled Williams Gregory, now 42.

Today, the two talk to their mom on the phone to update her on milestones in their lives or ask her for advice, Williams Gregory said. “Even though they still have their moments . . . I can still see the change,” Williams Gregory said. “They might see the prison phone number come across their screen [and say], ‘Let me talk to my mom. Let me see how she doing.’”

Conversations between children and their incarcerated parents can impact their mental health by helping them to feel less isolated and maintain their bonds with their children, Williams Gregory said. Sustained communication can also help incarcerated people remain connected with their community and find housing and employment once they’re released, she added.

Williams Gregory and her incarcerated fiancé, Bobby Wright Jr., have started a nonprofit called Children of Incarcerated Parents, which aims to provide mentorship and educational resources to children with incarcerated parents. Williams Gregory is searching for a building to house the charity in the Austin or Garfield Park neighborhoods, because she and Wright Jr. grew up on the west side of Chicago and they want to provide a safe haven for children in the community.

Lately, Williams Gregory hasn’t added additional money for phone calls, but she used to spend more than $100 per month on phone calls alone before the pilot. Still, in a given month, messages run her about $75 to $100, she said.

Like Russell, Williams Gregory raised concerns about the poor phone call quality issues, including dropped calls and echoing. Whether the IDOC or ICSolutions is to blame, ultimately, these problems affect incarcerated people and their loved ones on the outside, she said. 

Still, she thinks it’s important for incarcerated people to continue receiving free phone calls to ease the financial burden and help incarcerated people maintain bonds with their children. She even hears from Wright Jr. that having calls with loved ones regularly can relieve stress and give incarcerated people a much-needed reprieve from isolation.

In response to the Reader’s question regarding whether the IDOC plans to reduce the cost of messaging or other services, Puzzello said, “The rates for ICSolutions’ messaging services and other communications-related fees are established through a NASPO (National Association of State Procurement Officials) cooperative purchasing contract. Because these rates are set through that cooperative contract, the department does not independently set or adjust these rates.”

Reflecting on the importance of the program, Russell said,“They need to keep it going, because a lot of people in there don’t have family members, and that’s a good way for them to stay in contact. But the quality is piss-poor, and I have to pay for it.”

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