New York stopped charging families for prison calls on August 1, 2025, so there is no longer an account to open or a balance to watch. Set up the rest of your contact in minutes.
Create your phone account in minutes
This is the shortest page on this guide, and the reason is good news. New York made every call from every state prison free on August 1, 2025. There is no account to open, no balance to keep topped up, no per-minute rate to work out and no card to put on file. What remains is a set of limits on when and how long, and one piece of housekeeping for families who were paying before the change.
Before August 1, 2025, a family in New York opened an account with the phone provider, funded it, watched it drain and topped it up. The state ended that.
Every call from every New York state prison is now free to families. DOCCS states it plainly: because calls are free from that date, an account with the provider is no longer needed.
The state still pays the provider, at 1.5 cents a minute under the current arrangement, down from 2.4. That is a state cost, not yours. If you see that figure quoted anywhere as what a family pays, it is being misread.
Free does not mean unlimited, and the structure is worth understanding.
| What | The rule |
|---|---|
| Free weekly allowance | Three calls of up to fifteen minutes |
| When it is credited | Saturdays |
| Calls after the allowance | Capped at thirty minutes |
| Calling window | 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM daily |
| Approved numbers | Up to fifteen on the list |
The three-calls-a-week figure is the guaranteed allowance credited each Saturday. Calls beyond it are still free but run under the thirty-minute cap.
The list belongs to the person inside, not to you. They add numbers to it, up to fifteen, and they manage it.
There is nothing for a family to file, no form and no registration. If your number is not getting through, the conversation to have is with the person, not with the prison or the provider.
DOCCS runs two pages about phones and they do not agree.
Use doccs.ny.gov/telephone-calls. That is the current one.
Do not use doccs.ny.gov/doccs-phone-system. It still advertises rates of 4.8 cents and 4.3 cents a minute and tells families to open and fund an account with the provider. It describes a system the state stopped running over a year ago.
The statewide Family Handbook has the same problem in its phone section, and it is otherwise a useful document. Treat its phone pages as out of date and everything else in it as current.
Money left on a prepaid account from before August 2025 does not vanish, and it is not automatically returned.
You have to ask for it. DOCCS states that a refund of an unused balance can be requested from the provider. Families who set up an account years ago and forgot about it may be carrying a balance they can claim back.
Calls may be monitored and recorded. Using the phone is treated as consent to that.
Calls to an attorney are privileged and handled differently. DOCCS does not publish a family-facing process for requesting that a number be excluded from recording, so a lawyer’s office arranges that itself rather than the family arranging it.
Free calls make the phone the obvious first route at Fishkill, but there are limits it cannot solve.
Someone in the Regional Medical Unit or on a crisis or observation unit may not have the same access to a housing unit phone, and this is where letters and photographs matter more than the schedule suggests. Fishkill’s units differ from one another far more than a single visiting page can capture, and the phone allowance is written for general confinement.
If calls are not coming, ask the person’s Offender Rehabilitation Coordinator through them rather than assuming the allowance has been withdrawn.
6 of 7 questions
Nothing. New York made all calls from state prisons free to families on August 1, 2025. There is no per-minute rate, no account to open and no balance to fund. Any page still quoting 4.8 or 4.3 cents a minute is out of date.
Phone CallsThere is a structure rather than a hard limit. Three calls of up to fifteen minutes are credited each Saturday as a guaranteed allowance. Calls beyond that are still free but capped at thirty minutes. The calling window runs 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM every day.
Phone CallsYou do not, the person inside does. They keep a list of up to fifteen approved numbers and manage it themselves. There is no family form, no registration and nothing to file with the prison or the provider.
Phone CallsYes, but only if you ask. DOCCS states that unused balances can be refunded on request to the provider. Nothing is returned automatically, so a family that funded an account before August 2025 and stopped thinking about it may still be holding a balance.
Phone CallsCalls may be monitored and recorded, and using the phone is treated as consent. Attorney calls are privileged and handled separately. New York does not publish a family-facing way to request that a number be excluded, so a lawyer's office arranges that rather than the family.
Phone CallsNo. New York's video visitation program, which Fishkill takes part in, runs through approved community-based sites that a family travels to, not from a phone or a computer at home. There is no consumer video calling product in the New York state system.
Phone CallsFree calling has not been withdrawn, so look at the person's own situation first. Unit placement, disciplinary status or a change in the approved number list are all more likely explanations than a policy change. Ask them directly, or ask through their Offender Rehabilitation Coordinator.
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All information on this page comes directly from official government and facility sources. How we verify information › Last verified September 15, 2026.