An Open Letter to Governor Tina Kotek
Oregon Must Match or Beat California’s Three-Cent Prison Messaging Rate
Oregon does not need to invent a new standard. California has already demonstrated that secure statewide correctional messaging can be offered for three cents per message while including free monthly messages.
Attn: Constituent Services
900 Court Street NE, Suite 254
Salem, OR 97301-4047
Dear Governor Kotek:
I am writing to urge you to intervene in the Oregon Department of Corrections’ current tablet and electronic-messaging negotiations before another long-term communications agreement is finalized.
This is no longer a request for Oregon to experiment with an untested pricing model. California has already established a clear and directly comparable precedent.
California Established the Benchmark
On February 21, 2025, the California Department of Technology awarded a statewide correctional telecommunications contract to Securus Technologies following a competitive procurement process. Under that contract, California reduced the price of an electronic message from five cents under ViaPath to three cents under Securus.
These figures are published by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in its official ViaPath–Securus contract comparison.
California’s contract gives Oregon an empirical market benchmark: a major state correctional system can obtain secure electronic messaging for three cents per message while also providing free messages, individually assigned tablets, monitoring, educational content and other services.
Oregon should, at an absolute minimum, match California’s terms.
Oregon’s present system is dramatically less favorable. The ODOC-specific ICS Corrections rate schedule charges friends and family 25 cents to send a message or photograph. The incarcerated recipient is then charged four cents for every minute spent using the messaging application.
That includes the time required to open a message, read it, view a family photograph, consider a response and write that response.
This produces an indefensible result: a parent can be charged according to how long it takes to look at a photograph of their own children.
Oregon DOC has stated that it anticipates moving electronic messaging from the per-minute side of the tablet to a pay-per-message model when scanned mail is introduced. Under the contemplated model, incarcerated people would no longer be charged while reading messages or viewing photographs but would pay for messages they send.
That is an important improvement, but Oregon has not published the proposed per-message rate. This is precisely why action is necessary now, while the terms are still being negotiated. The Department’s developing plans can be reviewed on the Oregon DOC tablet-deployment page and its official project news feed .
Capitalism Requires Competition
Capitalism works when businesses must compete for customers by offering better products, better service and lower prices. A customer disciplines the market by refusing an unreasonable offer and purchasing from a competitor.
That mechanism does not exist inside a prison.
An incarcerated person cannot select another internet provider, download a competing messaging application or purchase a different tablet. Families cannot take their business elsewhere if they want to maintain regular contact. The state selects one provider and then places thousands of consumers into a closed system controlled by that provider.
That is not an ordinary free market. It is a government-created exclusive market.
When consumers cannot create competition through individual choice, government must create it through transparent procurement. The state’s responsibility is not to protect a vendor from competition or guarantee that company a particular level of revenue. Its responsibility is to solicit competing offers, publish the material financial terms, establish enforceable price limits and obtain the best value for the people of Oregon.
California’s experience proves that competition matters. Its current contract reduced electronic messages from five cents to three cents and reduced video calls from 16 cents to 10 cents per minute.
When California discovered that some users had been charged more than the agreed messaging rate, the problem was corrected and affected users received credits. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation publicly documented that correction through its Securus message-charge and refund notice .
That is what an enforceable public contract should accomplish.
Communication Is Part of Restoration
Oregon’s correctional system must impose lawful sentences and maintain institutional security. But incarceration should also prepare people to return to their families and communities more responsible, stable and capable than when they entered.
ORS 423.020 directs the Department of Corrections to provide motivated, capable and cooperative adults in custody with opportunities for self-improvement.
The Oregon Accountability Model similarly identifies reducing recidivism and helping incarcerated people become productive citizens as essential public-safety objectives.
Family communication supports those objectives.
Oregon DOC states that continued contact with supportive family and friends is essential to an incarcerated person’s success during incarceration and after release.
Research cataloged by the National Institute of Justice also recognizes the important role that contact with loved ones can play in health, family stability and successful reintegration.
A child should be able to tell a parent about school. A husband or wife should be able to maintain a marriage. A person approaching release should be able to discuss housing, employment, transportation, treatment and family responsibilities.
These are not entertainment luxuries. They are parts of rehabilitation, accountability and successful reintegration.
When communication is priced beyond what incarcerated people and their families can afford, Oregon weakens the relationships it will later depend upon to support successful reentry. That is poor correctional policy and poor fiscal policy.
Requested Action
I respectfully ask you to direct Oregon DOC and the appropriate state procurement officials to incorporate the following requirements into the new tablet and messaging agreement:
- Electronic messages must cost no more than three cents each, matching California’s competitively awarded statewide rate.
- Oregon should require vendors to compete below three cents and award substantial evaluation credit for the lowest sustainable rate.
- Every incarcerated person must receive at least 20 free electronic messages per month.
- Inbound photographs must cost no more than three cents, matching California’s contract.
- Receiving, opening, reading, viewing and retaining a delivered message or photograph must remain free and unlimited.
- No charge may be based upon the amount of time a person spends reading, viewing, drafting or navigating the messaging application.
- No charge may be imposed for a rejected, censored, failed or undelivered message.
- The same published rate protections must apply to incarcerated people and their families so that eliminating the inmate-side charge does not merely shift excessive costs onto relatives.
- Oregon must prohibit commissions, revenue-sharing arrangements or incentives that increase the price of essential family communication.
- Oregon must publish the contract, rate schedules, estimated usage, projected revenue, vendor compensation, service requirements and any subsequent amendments.
- The contract must require automatic refunds or credits whenever the vendor charges more than the approved rate.
California has already established that three-cent secure messaging is commercially obtainable on a statewide correctional platform. Oregon should not accept a higher price without publishing a detailed explanation showing why Oregon residents and incarcerated people are being required to pay more than Californians for a comparable service.
This is an opportunity for your administration to demonstrate that fiscal responsibility, competitive markets, family stability, public safety and humane correctional policy are not competing principles. In this case, they all point toward the same decision.
Allow vendors to make a reasonable return by providing reliable optional services. Do not allow an exclusive contractor to extract excessive revenue from the basic human need to communicate with one’s children, parents, spouse and community.
Governor Kotek, I ask you to act before the new agreement is finalized. Direct Oregon DOC to make free and unlimited viewing permanent, establish California’s three-cent rate as the maximum acceptable price, require free monthly messages and use competitive procurement to obtain an even better agreement if the market will provide one.
Oregon does not need to invent the standard. California has already established it. Oregon only needs the resolve to meet or exceed it.
Respectfully,
Killian Yates
Central Point, Oregon
yatesk4253@gmail.com
458-246-1801
Sources and Further Research
- California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: Tablets and Telephones — Official ViaPath–Securus contract rate comparison.
- California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: Securus Message Charges and Refunds
- Oregon Department of Corrections: Tablet Deployment
- Oregon Department of Corrections: Tablet Project News Feed
- ICS Corrections: Oregon DOC Rates and Services
Comments
Post a Comment