| Sarah Stillman, who recently received a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on a legal doctrine called felony murder, shares what drew her to cover the rise of the commercial prison-communication industry. In 2019, I was driving with a family friend through Skagit County, Washington, when she told me something surprising. She had tried to visit her son at the county jail, and was informed that it was no longer an option. Instead, she would have to pay a private company called Securus Technologies for a grainy, glitchy video call. “Do you want to see it?” she asked me, as we drove by the jail, referring to the commercial kiosks where the calls can take place. “Sure,” I said, and we pulled over and walked inside. When I saw the machines on which families were being asked to “Send money here,” instead of having the chance to share a meal or a hug with a loved one awaiting trial, I knew I wanted to investigate. This industry, I learned, had been expanding nationwide, as counties eliminated visits and sought a cut of the profits from commercial calls. A few years later, I found out about a group of families in Michigan—including two remarkable teen-age girls named Le’Essa and Addy Hill—who were preparing to fight for their right to hug. They were suing the sheriffs who’d replaced visits with video calls at two county jails, as well as a separate lawsuit, two companies that dominate the commercial prison-communication industry—Securus and Global Tel*Link (now ViaPath), both of which are controlled by private-equity firms. I flew to Flint to learn about the lawsuits. There, I discovered that these companies weren’t just profiting off families’ desperation to speak with their incarcerated loved ones. They were also recording the video calls between children and their parents, and using software to analyze the content of the calls, with little transparency or public accountability. Karla Darling, Le’Essa and Addy’s mother, told me that, because of their fears about surveillance, the girls’ calls with their father were like “a medicine and a poison at the same time.” Le’Essa and Addy hope that the lawsuits in Michigan will mean other kids won’t have to experience that feeling. Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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