Credit: Mike Centeno for Chicago ReaderThe Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) is extending a pilot program that provides incarcerated people with 775 minutes of free phone calls per month. While Illinois prisons have among the lowest phone call rates in the country, free phone call programs have reduced infractions and violence that plagued the once-scarce resource, Tylek said, citing the findings from Worth Rises’s national analysis of free prison phone calls. While free phone calls can ease that financial burden, ICSolutions, which provides the phone call services to Illinois prisoners, needs to get the phone call quality under control and increase the number of free minutes per person, Russell said. Though the free prison phone call program has trimmed the cost of phone calls, other expenses, such as messaging and additional phone calls beyond the free 775 minutes, remain, Russell noted. Lately, Williams Gregory hasn’t added additional money for phone calls, but she used to spend more than $100 per month on phone calls alone before the pilot.