In 2000, former inmates and their families filed a class-action lawsuit over the fees. The following year, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the suit and directed the plaintiffs to file their plea with the Federal Communications Commission. In 2003, Martha Wright-Reed filed a petition with the FCC requesting that multiple long-distance carriers be allowed to serve a given prison in the hope that greater competition would bring down rates. She had been paying an average of $1,000 a year to speak with her grandson over the two decades he was in prison. Often, "she could't afford to pick up," he recently told The Washington Post. In 2007 an alternative petition was filed proposing price caps as the main mechanism by which to brings prices down.

Nearly 10 years passed with no answer from the Commission, but on Christmas Eve a hopeful sign was produced: a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking," (pdf) the official declaration of the opening of a period for comment before handing down a decision.

As plain as the injustice of these rates may be, the question of how to address them is not straightforward. How do you decide what constitutes a fair price outside of a market system? How do you then achieve that price? The Commission's Notice lays out nearly 20 separate concerns related to just the rate-cap proposal, and then floats several other potential tools for bringing costs down (such as requiring some amount of free calls, with higher rates going into effect after the free minutes are exhausted), all with their own additional set of questions. The Commission asks for comments and data on each point.

For example, one question is whether there should be two different rates available -- one for calls placed collect and another, cheaper rate for those paid by debiting an account. The Notice explores this proposal:

Petitioners argue that collect calling is more expensive because its costs include billing costs and uncollectibles, while debit calling is less expensive because it reduces staff responsibilities and uncollectibles. Do commenters agree that there should be different per-minute rate caps for collect and debit calling? What are the benefits of debit calling? For example, do commenters believe that debit calling will exert downward pressure on collect calling rates?

They go on and on. Are there safety concerns with debit calling? They want to know. How will PINs be assigned? How will that workload be distributed? How will those costs be covered? What has the experience been of places where debit calling is already in place? In those prisons, how many debit calls are placed relative to collect ones? And the Commission doesn't want just vague hunches; it wants provable facts, based on solid data. At one point, the Commission subtly scolds a proposal submitted by the phone-service providers for including data "for less than 30 correctional facilities, none of which impose site commissions."

This may all seem rather fastidious but that's how change can finally (finally) happen.