peter wagner is the xekt active director of prison policy initiative. he blames a sweetheart relationship between service providers and jails and prisons for the high prices. telephone companies pay jails and prisons hundreds of millions of dollars in commissions in return for exclusive contracts. >> commissions? that's a polite word for a kickback. these commissions can be 50%, 70%, 90% of the cost of the call goes back to the facility that gave the contract. >> sheriff's like virginia's dana lawhorn are speaking out defending the commissions they receive. >> all that money goes to jail operations. >> reporter: he says his facility receiving $150,000 in commissions each year, that pays for basic inmate services like tvs and microwaves, but also the high cost of monitoring inmate phone calls. >> people are known to run, you kn know, murder-for-hire cases out of jail. it's not just somebody sitting around making a telephone call back home to mom. there are people making many, many different calls to many, many different people not always for the right re