I choose to have phone service I can afford. The jail has chosen to contract with a vendor for the priciest solution to inmate communication. There's no need to "tie up phones" if you let folks walk in the door & talk over an intercom handset or use a payphone. 

Jail is not a pleasant place nor should it be. However, making it costly for families to communicate & making it difficult to maintain family ties is going overboard on punishment. It's unnecessary & vindictive. And again, bear in mind that this is also being done to people who haven't been convicted of anything but lack resources to post bail. So let's make it so they can't talk to their families by setting up a $1.50/minute fee. Yeah that'll teach 'em.

Come on, you brag about being a Christian on other threads, then gleefully support penalizing those who would visit someone in prison by not allowing them to come at all, and charge family and friends to communicate with the prisoner so someone profits from an inmate.