In 2019, a lawyer walked up to Diane Lewis at a community event in Hartford, Connecticut, and asked whether she knew anyone affected by the high cost of prison phone calls.
Lewis was sporting a t-shirt that read “People Over Prisons,” and she knew intimately the financial and emotional toll these phone call rates took on incarcerated people and their loved ones.
Lewis’ 17-year-old son had gone to prison in 2004. At the time, she didn’t know anything about how the prison phone call system worked, but she knew she needed to talk to her son every day.
Each 15-minute call cost her between $3 and $5. She usually called her son four times a day, spending more than 20 percent of her $2,000 monthly paycheck on the calls. Sometimes, Lewis was late on her bills, and her utilities were cut off. She would often work all day and skip eating lunch to save money.
The lawyer who approached Lewis that day was Bianca Tylek, founder of Worth Rises, a nonprofit that had successfully campaigned for free jail calls in New York City and San Francisco. Worth Rises organizers then set their sights on Connecticut. Lewis told The 19th that she initially assumed Tylek was a well-intentioned person, but she questioned whether Tylek could follow through on changing the law.
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But Tylek called Lewis less than a week later. Lewis soon joined the legislative effort, speaking with lawmakers and residents throughout Connecticut about how the privatized prison phone industry took advantage of Black, Brown and low-income families.
Their first attempt to change the state law failed, but the bill ultimately passed in 2021 and went into effect the following year. Connecticut became the first state in the country to make prison and jail phone calls free. Since then, five other states have passed similar measures.
“I don't think I was expecting this big outpouring of gratitude, but our whole community was just like, ‘Oh my God, thank you,’” Lewis said. “It really showed me how much people needed that relief. I remember being in that situation and how much of a struggle it was just to talk to my son every single day. Nobody else will have to go through that again.”
This profile is apart of The 19th’s Revolutionary series. Subscribe to The Amendment, our biweekly newsletter, to receive project updates and political analysis focused on gender, race and power.
our past coverage of Diane Lewis
· May 31, 2024
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