Phone Calls at Five Points Correctional Facility

The Year New York Stopped Charging

Until 2025, a call from a New York state prison worked the way it does in most of the country. A family opened an account with the phone provider, put money in it, watched the balance fall and topped it up again.

New York ended that on August 1, 2025. Every call from every state prison is now free to the person receiving it. There is no account for you to open and no balance to maintain.

The state still pays the provider, at 1.5 cents a minute under the current contract, down from 2.4. That is a cost to New York, not a rate you pay. Anyone quoting it at you as a price has misread the source.

Three Calls, Credited Saturdays

	Rule
Guaranteed weekly allowance	Three calls of up to fifteen minutes
When it is credited	Saturdays
Calls after the allowance	Still free, capped at thirty minutes
Calling window	7:00 AM to 11:00 PM, daily
Approved numbers	Up to fifteen

The three calls are a floor rather than a ceiling. Calls beyond them are still free, they just run to a thirty minute cap instead of fifteen.

Fifteen Numbers, and They Add Them

Up to fifteen approved numbers, and the person inside adds and manages the list themselves.

There is nothing for you to do. No form, no registration, no call to the prison, no account with the provider. If your number is not working, that conversation is with your person rather than with anyone at Five Points.

It is worth agreeing between you which fifteen numbers matter, because changing the list is their job and not an instant one.

The DOCCS Page Still Quoting Old Rates

The department runs two pages about telephones and they contradict each other.

doccs.ny.gov/telephone-calls is the current one. Use it.

doccs.ny.gov/doccs-phone-system is not. It still quotes 4.8 cents and 4.3 cents a minute and tells families to open and fund a provider account, describing a system New York retired over a year ago. It is still live, which is why families keep arriving expecting to pay.

The statewide Family Handbook has the same fault in its phone section. Everything else in that handbook is current and worth reading.

Money Still Sitting on an Old Account

If you were funding calls before August 2025, there may be money left on that account.

It is not refunded automatically. DOCCS states that an unused balance can be requested back from the provider. Families who set an account up years ago and stopped thinking about it may be holding money they can still claim.

Recorded, and the One Exception

Calls may be monitored and recorded, and using the phone is treated as consenting to that.

Calls with an attorney are privileged and handled separately. The arrangement for that is made through the lawyer’s office rather than by a relative, and there is no family-facing form for it.

SHU Custody and the Phone

Someone held in the Special Housing Unit at Five Points is under a different visiting rule, one non-legal visit in any seven day period, and the phone is the main way a family stays in contact during it.

The weekly allowance described above is written for general confinement. How access works day to day in SHU is a question for the person’s Offender Rehabilitation Coordinator, who is the staff member a family can reach through the prison’s main line on (607) 869-5111.

When a Call Is Not Enough

Three calls a week, on their schedule, in a fifteen minute window. That is a lot of week left over, and Romulus is a long way from most of New York.

Pigeonly fills the gap between calls with letters and photos posted to the right caller box at Five Points, so the time between Saturdays is not empty.