The Federal Bureau of Prisons is making calling and video visitation free for inmates after the coronavirus forced a halt to in-person visits, the agency said in a letter to Congress obtained by POLITICO.

“Effective April 9, 2020, telephone calls were made free for the inmate population,” bureau Director Michael Carvajal wrote in the letter dated Friday to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who had led a dozen senators in raising the issue of the exorbitantly high costs that phone carriers charge to prison inmates.


The bureau oversees 122 prisons throughout the U.S.