Like many Americans with aging parents, Dominque Jones-Johnson started checking in more regularly with her father when the coronavirus pandemic broke out – but unlike most families, the cost of the calls strained her budget to the breaking point. Her father, Charles Brown Jr., is incarcerated for aggravated rape, burglary and “crimes against nature” – she said he was falsely accused of all charges – in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where a 15-minute phone call costs $3.15.
By May, these local calls – which would have been free for most people living in the state – had cost the family nearly $400. “They’re making me pay to incarcerate myself,” Charles Brown Jr. told the Thomson Reuters Foundation earlier this month. A week later, he contracted Covid-19 and was put in isolation, no longer able to speak with his daughter. Jones-Johnson, who founded the charity…