By the Jail Communications Coalition

We fought hard, we fought smart, and we won! The Abolitionist Working Group and our community coalition for free jail communications campaigned against a 3-5 year, exploitative contract between the Dane County Sheriff and Smart Communications, which the Dane County Board of Supervisors voted to reject on September 18, 2025. 

The contract would have meant continued financial exploitation of jail residents and their families, keeping human connection for those awaiting trial behind a paywall and denying jail residents physical mai through the dehumanizing and inefficient practice of mail scanning. We are celebrating and learning from this win, and continuing to fight for the rights of jail residents and their families to stay connected. 

Getting Started 

We began thinking about the jail communications contract process in July of 2024, when a comrade remembered that the current jail communications contract was going to expire soon. In response, we began a long period of intensive research on the request for proposal (RFP) process, the County’s current jail communications system, alternatives to for-profit jail communications corporations, successes in other communities, and probable positions of current Board members. 

As we expected, the sheriff’s office fumbled the opportunity to present a more just communications system. The County Board was informed of the end of the current contract too late, forcing an extension of the contract to allow time for the RFP process, committee discussions, and votes on the contract. The RFP process resulted in only two proposals, and the chosen proposal by Smart Communications was sent to Board committees this June. AWG was ready to oppose the contract and sprung into action. 

Our Coalition

This victory would not have been possible without a coalition of community members working together or the extensive preparation that the Abolitionist Working Group did leading up to this summer. When the contract was sent to the Public Protection & Judiciary Committee (PP&J), there was very little notice to the board or community, and an immediate response was required. Thankfully, we were ready. Members of MADSA’s Abolition Working Group turned out to a PP&J committee meeting to testify, where we met like-minded community members opposing the jail communications contract also ready to advocate. A Signal chat was formed among these community members, and advocates across the left joined in to form a loose coalition, including community organizers from MADSA, LGBTQ Books to Prisoners, the Politicized Healers Network, and many other local advocates. Working as a coalition, we benefited from a diverse array of experience, skills, and contact with County Board Supervisors, and together, we fought against this contract every step of the way. 

The coalition included people with lived experience and loved ones impacted by the justice system. It included social workers with expertise about addiction, nonprofit workers with expertise about navigating the carceral system, and business leaders with expertise designing and administering RFP processes. It included people with established relationships with board members, and others who had never spoken at a board meeting. We didn’t have a name, or a charter, or a long list of logos from sponsoring organizations. What we did have as a coalition was energy and focus towards a specific goal, one that motivated us to work across political differences to create a unified front against exploitation. 

This loose coalition started building working relationships and together synthesized an ask: that the board deny the Smart Communications contract and instead adopt a system of jail communications that would be free to residents and their families and that would be accountable to tax payers. We identified possible barriers – the upcoming county budget process, the sheriff’s unfounded claims about drug trafficking, and bias against justice-impacted community members. From our long-time fight against the building of a new jail, we also knew that connecting with county board supervisors from outside of Madison would be essential. 

We would need to rely on all of our diverse areas of expertise, because in a budget year, fighting against a contract that would have paid the county for a monopoly on jail residents communication and data was going to be an uphill battle. This work required us, as a coalition, to trust one another, be open to new ideas, respect each other’s expertise, and celebrate each other’s efforts. We had to be agile as conditions and timelines changed, engage fully in the work when we were able, and recognize that we didn’t need to agree on every word or idea to share the same vision and goal. Being in a coalition required more work, but we accomplished so much more than we could have alone. The sum was greater than the parts. 

Our Tactics

Our subsequent efforts were strategic and unfolded as we went: 

• We intentionally recruited community members through social media and activist networks from a variety of districts in the county to register and speak at committee meetings
• We documented which supervisors were for and against us, making note of the particular issues and concerns folks had and what arguments might sway those who were uncertain
• We developed relationships with board members who were on our side to equip them with arguments against the Smart Communications Contract
• We published in Tone and the Cap Times to appeal to the broader community 
• We developed a list of plain-language talking points, each with specific details and citations, and organized to ensure that a variety of talking points were presented at every opportunity for public comment
• We didn’t wait for the all-board meeting, but instead showed up at every committee meeting leading up to the board vote. Close to 20 community members spoke against the contract at each committee meeting, 50+ community members registered opposition and even more folks contacted their supervisors directly, saying “vote no”. 
• We conducted extensive research about
  1. The harm caused by charging for communications
  2. Alternatives to charging for communications, and
  3. How other activists have fought and won the right to communication for incarcerated people elsewhere. 

And finally, after an already long fight, when the full county board vote was delayed by two weeks, our coalition made one final push to convince board members that this contract was not in the best interests of our county. Knowing that board members had already heard emotional and ethical appeals, the coalition focused on showing the Board that they had other options. County supervisors needed to know about the abundance of alternatives and how other counties and states are implementing communication at no-cost to incarcerated people and their families. 

A team of four from this coalition, including DSA members Aedan and Brenda, spent a week and a half creating a presentation focused on 11 specific, well-researched examples of communities where jail and prison communications systems are administered without fees to residents and their families. The presentation also included data from government and nonprofit reports, peer-reviewed research, and news articles. Most notably, this presentation highlighted work in La Crosse County, WI, Champaign County, IL, and Elkhart County, IN after Aeden conducted interviews with county board members, detention center personnel, and sheriff departments who testified about the benefits of offering free phone calls in their facilities. 

We invited all Dane County Supervisors to the webinar, and 8 joined the call, along with 2 lieutenants from the sheriff office, the sheriff himself, and a high-ranking staff member for County Executive Melissa Agard. Due to rules about public record and when and how the board convenes meetings, we offered the presentation as a webinar instead of a discussion, and board members were invited to reach out privately with any clarifying questions. The presentation slides and a recording were sent immediately following to all the board supervisors.

The Result

During the summer, and in response to our advocacy, both the Public Protection & Judiciary and Personnel & Finance Committees had voted to send this contract to the full board with recommendations to deny the contract, based on several concerns, including:

• The harm caused by fee-based jail communications systems and the isolation they inflict on both jail residents and their loved ones
• A lack of data privacy and ambiguity in this contract about data ownership
• Ethical and financial concerns about Smart Communications and their leadership in particular
• The risk of lawsuit based on Smart Communications pattern of violating 1st and 4th amendment rights
• The lack of notice and transparency from the sheriff’s department in the RFP process.

Our summer of advocacy efforts, and year of research prior, then culminated in September. On September 4, 2025 the full Dane County Board planned to take up the issue for discussion. Just hours before the meeting, Sheriff Barett, who had previously claimed denying residents physical mail was non-negotiable, introduced a new contract that eliminated mail scanning. This in itself was a win and showed the power of our community’s voice. It also threw off-guard both community members prepared to give comments and the board supervisors prepared to discuss and vote on the former contract.

We spoke up against the contract anyway. Every public comment given was strongly opposed to the contract. Already frustrated by Sheriff Barett’s late submission of this substitute contract, the Board voted to table the item and re-take the issue at the September 18 meeting, not only in light of community members’ concerns, but also to give Supervisors a chance to read the contract before voting. At the Board’s meeting on September 18, 2025, further public comment wasn’t allowed based on procedural rules, and it was during those two weeks between meetings that we presented to the board about alternatives. 

Board members, having been educated by members of the community at large and our coalition in particular, stood to voice their discomfort with for-profit jail communications and the poor data privacy practices that this contract would include. During debate, multiple supervisors asserted that the county needs to improve communication for incarcerated people without causing financial burden, referencing the information and examples our coalition shared. Finally, two issues went to vote. First, whether to adopt the sheriff’s revised contract and second whether to approve the proposed contract. Both versions of the contract were denied by the Dane County Board of Supervisors in a landslide. 

What’s Next

In an ideal world, the jail wouldn’t exist. We would have strong community-directed systems that promote real healing and accountability without the carceral state. Humans in our county would not be kept in a cage, however gilded the new jail will be, simply because they’ve been accused of wrong-doing and don’t have money for bail. This is a world we will continue to fight for. And because of this specific push against one particularly exploitative part of the injustice system, we have a real shot at making sure incarcerated members of our community have the right to connect with their loved ones. 

With the current contract set to expire, and with county board members engaged and committed to adopting a more ethical communications system, we look forward to working together as a coalition to continue resisting exploitative practices and advocating for systems that affirm the dignity of our jail residents and their families.