> Or is it just that the market for phone providers isn't competitive?

The prison operator has a (joke not intended) captive market and that is exploited by contractors who often share the proceeds with the prison operator.

From my global (US) understanding of it: Prison telco providers also often provide their services at zero or negative cost to the prison (i.e. commissions on calls or services). They also provide additional "value-add" services to the prisoners which are also extortionally priced (music downloads, ebook purchases).

The tablets are also often starting to replace physical mail - inmates are being denied physical mail, instead letters and drawings being filtered, scanned, and uploaded remotely from elsewhere. Or they can write letters outbound - just have to pay for "digital stamps" - even for electronic mail. Double points for making people on the outside buy the "digital stamps" to send them inwards, too!

Every single corner is designed to extort the prisoner while making themselves look like the Good Guys for providing access to all this information and capabilities in such a safe and controlled manner and at "no cost to the taxpayer!"

>Every single corner is designed to extort the prisoner

A packet of Ramen in a prison store will cost several dollars. There's zero acceptable justification for this. Making a prisoner pay more for a snack isn't justice.

Also, it's not a snack, because in most states, prisoners are only required to be given two """Meals""" a day. There are very few nutritional or minimum standard requirements for these """meals""" and in many counties, there is a rule that every dollar of the budget for feeding prisoners that is not spent is given directly to the guy who sets the menu and operates the canteen.

Most prison meals in these systems look like that famous picture of a "sandwhich" from the Fyre festival.

You know, the kind of thing that would be used as an example of "Perverse incentive" in a high school economics textbook.

It's cartoonishly evil what we do to the mind-broken people we label as criminals, in the name of justice and what's Fair & Right!™

The one thing that you may not be aware of that will raise costs above what you may expect is that prisoner communications are generally monitored, and not just "this may be monitored for improved customer service in the future" but you know nobody is actually being paid to listen to all the calls, but actually monitored. Whether you agree with this or not, this does mean the service is going to be more expensive than a straight service normally would be. There's also significant vetting on what apps are allowed, which is also not free.

I'm not making a defense here of any particular price or practice, just giving you a partial answer to your question, in that there are costs in these services above and beyond what you would expect for a "normal" service of this type.

The economics are simply that prisons are rent-seekers.