Can prison phone calls be both secure and affordable?
A public evidence project examining prison telephone pricing, legislation, technology and family communication across Australia — beginning with Queensland.
A technical problem. An economic solution.
From 1 November 2025, Queensland Corrective Services moved mobile, local landline and national STD prisoner calls to a tariff described by Crown Law as a 15-cent flagfall plus 20 cents per minute. Crown Law also said calls to “remote areas” remain 30 cents per call.
A local Queensland call that previously cost 30 cents can now cost up to $1.75 for an eight-minute call. The new structure also makes mobile calls cheaper than they were previously. QCS says the change was partly designed to remove the financial incentive to use prohibited redirection services.
“Remove financial incentives for prisoners to use redirection services…”Crown Law for the Commissioner, 17 December 2025.
View the original paragraph
• address ongoing prisoner and stakeholder concern that call tariff rates were too high;
• ensure QCS remains compliant with recommendations from the Hear Her Voice reports concerning prisoner call rates;
• remove financial incentives for prisoners to use redirection services contrary to the new offences in s 52A of the CS Act;
• highlight to intelligence teams prisoners who continue to use redirection services; and
• minimise the operational impact of blocking redirection services, as prisoners’ use of the services decreases.
What Queensland says
The tariff change was intended to respond to concerns about high call prices, support recommendations arising from the Hear Her Voice process, make mobile calls cheaper, remove incentives to use prohibited redirection services and assist intelligence teams to identify continued misuse.
Higher call prices do not stop call forwarding. Technology does.
The security problem is technical. The solution chosen was economic.
Queensland had already acknowledged that prison calls needed to be cheaper.
The Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce recorded that the cost of phone calls can impede contact with family and community, and recommended urgent replacement of the Prisoner Telephone System to reduce costs and other accessibility barriers.
Cost as a barrier to family contact
The Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce recorded that contact with family and community is impeded by barriers including “the cost of phone calls and travel distances to prisons”.
View the relevant report extract
Independent inspection benchmark
Queensland’s prison inspection standards say the costs of phone calls, virtual personal visits, emails and mail should be kept to a minimum. It is not itself a tariff rule, but it is an important benchmark for humane prison administration.
Could both objectives have been achieved?
Queensland has identified a legitimate security concern. Prisoners should not be able to use call forwarding or conference calling to reach people who have not been approved. The question is whether higher prices were the only available response.
Calling an approved mobile does not automatically stop the person receiving the call from forwarding it somewhere else or adding another person to the call. A managed telecommunications service can be built so those functions simply are not available.
Ordinary approved mobile number
Purpose-built managed service
Technology is already available
Our telecommunications platform is already capable of applying these controls. The answering destination can be fixed at activation, the customer cannot subsequently change it after approval, forwarding can be disabled and conference calling can be blocked at platform level. Ordinary mobile telephone services do not provide those same safeguards merely because the prison dials the mobile directly.
If so, what technical alternatives were considered?
For example, fixed answering points, forwarding restrictions and conference blocking.
Call volumes, affordability, family contact and security outcomes before and after the change.
What the legislation says — and what remains unresolved.
The legislation contains both communication rights and security restrictions. The project does not argue against either. It asks how the two should operate together in practice.
Section 51(6)
The terms and conditions must not limit a prisoner to fewer than seven personal calls in any seven-day period.
Section 52A
Creates offences for knowingly making, or intentionally continuing, certain diverted calls and for asking the person called to establish an unauthorised conference call. Maximum penalty: six months imprisonment.
Queensland law says prisoners must not be limited to fewer than seven personal calls in seven days. It also prohibits certain diverted calls and unauthorised conference calls. Those are legitimate security objectives. The unresolved question is whether Queensland could have enforced them through technology that blocks diversion and conferencing, without making ordinary family calls substantially more expensive.
Human-rights assessment
Crown Law says a human-rights assessment was undertaken under s 58 of the Human Rights Act and concluded that any limitation was reasonable and justifiable. A copy of that assessment has not been provided in the material presently held by this project.
What judicial review would ask
Judicial review would not ask a court to choose its preferred telephone price. It would ask whether the relevant government decision was made lawfully — by the right decision-maker, under the right power, after considering the matters the law required.
From “cheaper calls” to a new tariff.
Hear Her Voice recommends reducing phone costs
The Taskforce records prohibitive costs and recommends urgent replacement of the PTS to reduce costs and accessibility barriers.
Promoting Safety amendments receive assent
New prisoner communication provisions are enacted, including the diversion offence framework and the seven-call safeguard.
New digital system publicly promoted
Queensland Law Society’s Proctor reports that promised benefits include clearer calls and cheaper call rates while redirection services are to be blocked.
Section 52A offences commence
Knowingly making or continuing certain diverted calls and requesting an unauthorised conference call becomes an offence.
New flat tariff begins
Crown Law later describes 15¢ flagfall + 20¢/minute for mobile, local landline and national STD calls; remote-area calls are described separately as 30¢ per call.
Reasons and documents requested
Lawyers seek the decision-maker, legal authority, human-rights analysis, pricing approvals, contract material and business case.
Crown Law gives QCS’s substantive position
A formal statement of reasons is declined on standing grounds, but Crown Law sets out the policy rationale and confirms a human-rights assessment was undertaken.
Technical engagement resumes
Further questions are being put about independent telecommunications advice, modelling, the human-rights assessment and the 30¢ remote-area category.
State-by-state evidence, not guesswork.
Rates change and some jurisdictions do not publish them clearly. Where we have primary material or reliable published evidence, we show it. Where we do not, we say so.
| Jurisdiction | Rate / change | Illustration | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Queensland | 15¢ flagfall + 20¢/min from 1 Nov 2025; Crown Law says remote areas 30¢/call | $1.75 for 8 minutes | 17 Dec 2025 Crown Law correspondence |
| New South Wales | 25–40¢ per local/national landline call in Engine Numbers’ direct operational experience; published reporting also records nationwide landlines being moved to local-call pricing in 2025 | Typically 25–40¢ flat | Industry data + Guardian Australia |
| Victoria | 25–40¢ per local landline call in Engine Numbers’ direct operational experience; separate public material records reductions in mobile-call pricing during 2025 | Typically 25–40¢ flat for local landline calls | Industry data + Human Rights Law Centre |
| ACT | 18.7¢/min from 5 Dec 2024, no connection fee | $1.87 / 10 min | ACT Ombudsman |
About the NSW and Victorian local-call figures
Engine Numbers handles prison telecommunications traffic every day and has years of direct operational experience with these tariffs. In New South Wales and Victoria, ordinary local landline calls are commonly charged at approximately 25–40 cents per call. We identify those figures as industry data because they come from our own day-to-day carrier and call-routing operations. Where an official published tariff or independent source is available, we link that separately.
Evidence, reporting and analysis are kept separate.
Primary evidence
Legislation, Crown Law correspondence, government reports, official decisions and documents.
Independent reporting
Media coverage, Ombudsman material, academic research and independent organisations.
Our analysis & industry data
Technical observations, carrier experience, operational pricing knowledge and questions we believe remain unanswered.
Media and independent resources.
NSW scraps cheaper providers
The Guardian reported on NSW prison call pricing and quoted Tom Barker in his capacity as a director of Engine Numbers.
“Cheaper to call Vatican City”
A national investigation into prison phone costs and the pressure high charges can place on incarcerated people and their families.
New digital phone system for prisons
Proctor reported that the system’s promised benefits included clearer calls and cheaper call rates while redirection services were to be blocked.
The real cost of staying connected
A first-person account from Queensland describing the effect of the November 2025 pricing change on people inside and their families.
NSW nationwide landline reform
Reporting on changes that treated calls to landlines nationwide at local-call pricing.
A prison-call pricing accountability case study
The Ombudsman examined affordability, justification and the relationship between call costs and family/community contact.
The paper trail.
The strongest version of this project is not “trust us”. It is: here are the letters, the legislation and the independent sources — draw your own conclusion.
Early correspondence to the Commissioner
Concerns raised about local-number services and family contact.
Request for statement of reasons and documents
Decision-maker, statutory power, human-rights assessment, pricing documents, business case and contract material sought.
Crown Law’s first response
Standing queried; further information requested; no allegation of wrongdoing by the business.
Crown Law’s substantive response
Tariff reasons, human-rights assessment and detailed rate structure stated.
Letter to Crown Law — further technical questions
Sent 14 August 2026: independent telecommunications advice, remote-area pricing, the human-rights assessment and financial modelling.
Publication note: the 14 April 2025 email is published with a staff officer’s direct contact details redacted. The 18 November 2025 letter is published as an open extract only — its without-prejudice sections are not published.
A note from Tom Barker.
I live and breathe telecommunications. It is the industry I know back to front, and I believe that expertise can contribute constructively to this discussion.
I strongly believe people in prison should be encouraged to maintain meaningful relationships with their children, partners, parents and the people who will support them when they return to the community. Family contact is not the opposite of public safety. In the right circumstances, it is part of public safety.
I also strongly support measures that prevent prisoners contacting victims, circumventing approved telephone lists or using conference calls to reach people they are prohibited from contacting. Those protections matter.
What I do not accept without scrutiny is the idea that security and affordable calls must be traded against each other. Telecommunications can be engineered so an answering point is fixed, forwarding cannot be changed by the customer and conference calling is unavailable.
I have worked in Australian telecommunications for more than twenty years and have spent years dealing directly with prisoner telephone pricing and call routing across Australian jurisdictions. These prices are not theoretical figures to me; they are part of the day-to-day operation of the business.
My preference is constructive engagement. I intend to ask questions, publish the evidence, listen to government’s response and work toward a system that is both secure and affordable. But if meaningful engagement fails and the legal advice supports it, I am prepared to fund judicial review or other appropriate legal remedies. Litigation is not the objective. A better system is.
Has prison call pricing affected your family?
Share what changed, how often you could call before and after, and what it meant in practical terms. Nothing will be shared with media or published without permission.
Questions people ask.
How much does a prison phone call cost in Queensland?
Since 1 November 2025, a standard call to family costs around two dollars under the flat tariff that replaced Queensland’s long-standing 30-cent local call rate — an increase of up to five-fold on the cheapest calls. The correspondence documenting this change is published on this page.
Why did Queensland prison call prices increase?
Crown Law’s letter of 17 December 2025, published on this page, states the new tariff was introduced in part to “remove financial incentives” for prisoners to use redirection services. A statement of reasons was declined and the underlying pricing documents have not been produced.
Do cheaper prison calls mean less security?
No. Call security can be engineered at the platform level — a fixed answering location, call forwarding blocked and conference calling unavailable — independent of what a call costs. Higher prices do not stop call diversion; technology does.
What is Keeping Families Connected?
An evidence project by the Australian Prison Telephone Project publishing the full paper trail on Queensland’s November 2025 prisoner phone tariff — correspondence, legislation and pricing comparisons — so readers can draw their own conclusions.