Bianca Tylek

Bianca Tylek is exposing the invisible ecosystem of actors that financially benefit from incarceration. Starting with prison telecoms, she is dismantling the financial incentives for each sector of the prison industry to pave a road toward transformational change in the U.S. carceral system.

The United States incarcerates more of its people than any other nation in the world. Despite the devastating financial and societal costs of the prison system, which fall disproportionately on Black, brown, indigenous, and low-income communities, incarceration rates remain at extreme levels. It is often said that expert design is invisible – for decades the powerful financial interests that shape every aspect of the carceral system as we know it, from the brick and mortar of buildings to the food people eat to the laws that incentivize sheriffs to fill prison beds, have existed under the radar. This ecosystem of financial actors is reliant on criminalization and has been a tenacious barrier to criminal justice reform because tens of billions of dollars are at stake.

Bianca Tylek knows that as long as these strong, invisible incentives to keep people incarcerated exist, we will figure out a way to keep doing so. She is using her expertise in financial markets and law to champion an expert strategy to expose these incentives and dismantle the $80 billion-dollar prison industry – starting with prison telecoms.

Staying socially connected while incarcerated is crucial for emotional wellbeing and for coordinating work and housing upon reentry. But prison calls are prohibitively expensive – one-third of American families with a loved one in prison will go into debt over the cost of keeping in touch. Because most people behind bars are low-income, these costs fall disproportionately on already impoverished families – and line the pockets of a powerful few.

In 2017, Bianca founded Worth Rises -- the only organization in the U.S. focused on addressing the deep, perverse financial incentives to both maintain high rates of incarceration and exploit those behind bars for profit. After a period of deep research and analysis that involves mapping key players and dissecting their operations, Bianca and her team zero in on strategic narrative, legislative, and corporate pressure points to undermine predatory public-private partnerships and unwind extractive policies and practices.

Bianca has tested and proven her model with prison telecoms. Since its founding, Worth Rises has passed legislation in five cities, five states, and at the federal level to make communication free for incarcerated people. Her work has diverted hundreds of millions of dollars in investments from the prison industry, put millions of dollars back into the pockets of communities with incarcerated loved ones, and reconnected hundreds of thousands of families and children. In the next 10 years, Bianca expects prison calls to be free in every state. In the meantime, she has already begun applying her three-pronged strategy to other prison industry sectors, like labor, construction, and healthcare.

The United States has some of the highest rates of incarceration per capita in the world. We spend more than $80 billion annually to incarcerate two million people in facilities whose deplorable conditions, subpar treatment services, and ineffective programs engender recidivism. Communities spend yet another $3 billion to support their incarcerated loved ones with calls and visits, commissary funds, healthcare fees, and more. The societal costs of incarceration are even higher – lost earnings, adverse health outcomes, and torn families. The burden of these costs is carried largely by those already marginalized by society: Black, brown, Indigenous, and low-income people.

One of the reasons that the U.S. has struggled to make meaningful progress in reducing incarceration is because the current system is shaped by public and private actors whose financial incentives conflict with the criminal justice goals of reducing crime and incarceration. Historically, private actors have flown under the radar while purchasing influence through lobbying and campaign financing and wielding it to protect the structures that support their enrichment.

Communication services are among the most important that incarcerated people need. They are used to arrange housing and work before people reenter society and, more importantly, they provide a connection to life outside. Research has shown that those who maintain contact with friends and family through calls and visits are more likely to reenter society successfully upon release and less likely to reoffend. The cost varies state by state. In 2017, the year Worth Rises was founded, the cost of a simple 15-minute phone call from a prison or jail could be as high as $25. A pre-pandemic report estimated that one-third of American families with a loved one in prison go into debt to pay for communication, and 87% of the costs are borne by women. Astronomically high call costs mean that families are forced to choose between paying their bills and staying connected with their loved one.

Phone calls in prisons and jails are so much more expensive because only a handful of corporations dominate the market and have little incentive to compete on quality and cost. Around 80 percent of prisons and jails contract with just two corporations, which pay kickbacks to the government in exchange for monopoly contracts. Prison and jail calls are a revenue stream for both states and private companies. In 2020, Securus, the largest prison telecom provider, serving 3,500 correctional facilities, reported nearly $800 million in revenue.

The privatization of public services is part of a larger trend that has quietly transformed almost every facet of the carceral system over the past four decades, from prison construction to the beds incarcerated people sleep on to the health care they receive. Over time, each segment of the punishment continuum has been commercialized (from bail to communication to health care), resulting in a massive economy that is reliant on criminalization and prevents justice. Whether it’s private healthcare executives cutting quality of care to pad their profit margins or local sheriffs collecting commissions on costly communication services, corporate exploitation facilitated by government harms people on the inside, communities on the outside, taxpayers, and public safety at large.

Corporate interests have long thrived in the shadows and been largely left out of public debates about incarceration -- few people know anything about the prison industry, how it works, who is involved, or how to challenge them. Despite their outsized influence and earnings, the key players aren’t recognizable providers with prison-focused programs, but niche contractors that solely serve and benefit from the prison market.

Historically, this problem has been addressed in a piecemeal fashion at best and on a micro scale. Aligned efforts, such as groups working to reduce fines and fees for incarcerated people, tend to focus on government policies and regulation – not corporate reform. Groups focusing on corporate incentives have done so at a local level for discrete projects, such as trying to prevent a particular prison from being built. In general, a lack of expertise regarding the complex financial landscape of the prison system has resulted in only incremental wins. As long as there are strong, invisible incentives to keep people incarcerated, this country will figure out a way to keep doing so. Private prisons often have contracts with cities requiring a certain percentage of beds to be filled, which disincentivizes reducing incarceration rates, for example. We need a strategy that deliberately removes profiteering from the existing system, creating spaces where change is possible and allowing for a more humane way of imagining and implementing justice.

Worth Rises is the only organization in the country whose sole charge is to dismantle the multi-billion-dollar industry that props up mass incarceration. Bianca Tylek brought an industry analysis at the macro level that addresses the problem and solution from many vantage points. Worth Rises’ three-tiered strategy involves running coordinated narrative, policy, and corporate campaigns. First, the team pairs research with storytelling to expose the harm caused by the prison industry and to build an informed base. They then leverage this knowledge to organize and advocate for policy changes and corporate accountability. For each prison industry sector, the team tests strategies and secures early wins to reach an inflection point that triggers cascading change. Finally, they equip local advocates with the tools to win and then transition to providing technical assistance and national support.

Bianca has identified 12 sectors that make up the prison industry. What started as a series of periodic reports about players across these sectors is now an interactive digital tool available on their website that exposes over 4,000 corporations and investors that profit off mass incarceration and mass surveillance. Corporations are assigned harm scores, marked for divestment, flagged for supporting prison labor, and more.

While each sector requires unique strategies for dismantling, Bianca and her team have tested and proved her model by applying it first to prison telecoms. Telecoms was a strategic target because it is easy to understand and illustrates the problems created by the commercialization of prisons and jails: predatory public-private partnerships that exploit low-income people. Bianca and her team began by researching and mapping the prison and jail telecoms industry and gaining a deep understanding of how it works, including who the major corporate players were, who financed and invested in them, and how they operated in partnership with government. Her financial expertise enabled her to identify weaknesses and organizational patterns that others might miss – she understands how wealth is built and how it gets destroyed.

For example, Bianca began monitoring Securus when private equity firm Platinum Equity acquired it in November 2017 for $1.6 billion. The following June, Securus sought approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to buy a rival company. Such deals seldom generate much notice outside of obscure analyst reports, but Bianca challenged it in front of the FCC, arguing that the consolidation would further erode competition and lead to higher prices for incarcerated people and their families. The FCC agreed, rejecting the deal after determining that it was not in the public interest.

Her win brought Platinum Equity to the table. While the firm was unwilling to change much about Securus’ predatory practices, Bianca was able to secure a commitment that Securus would refrain from lobbying against her team’s legislative efforts to make prison calls free for families. When they violated their commitment (lobbying against such legislation in Connecticut), Bianca exposed them, not just to legislators but also to Platinum Equity’s investors, namely pensions. In 2019, Platinum Equity was raising its next flagship fund, and they were on a roadshow seeking investments. Bianca, her team, and their partners went on a roadshow of their own, focusing on three key investor relationships held by the firm. They met with pension board members and testified in front of the pension investment committees, warning of moral, fiscal, and reputational concerns and urging them to make no new commitments with the firm. She put Platinum Equity on their heels in front of longstanding investors, one of which would deny the firm a $150 million investment.

Due to Bianca's advocacy, the Securus debt fell to distressed levels. Attempting to get out from under the headline crisis her team had spent years creating, in early 2020, Platinum Equity rebranded Securus with a name change to Aventiv. Eventually Platinum Equity also agreed to make no further investments in the prison sector, but its ownership and management of the prison and jail telecom had not changed. So, later that year, Bianca and her team targeted the chief executive of Platinum Equity, Tom Gores. In a campaign that lasted just 29 days, they forced Gores’ resignation from the prestigious board of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with the help of hundreds of renown artists.

While this was going on, Bianca and her team were simultaneously working on popular education and the policy landscape. Historically, when under pressure to make transformative changes to the prison system, public officials have blamed corporations, claiming to be at their mercy, and vice versa. Bianca avoids this distracting diversion by tackling public and private interests at the same time.

Bianca's team put together comprehensive, yet accessible content to educate the public on the issue of financial exploitation of people in prison and jail via communication services. Resources include something for everyone, from a free, self-paced curriculum for engaged advocates and experts, to wide-reaching traditional media on popular shows like Last Week Tonight and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, to articles in high-traffic publications from The Wall Street Journal to NPR to Teen Vogue. Feature pieces share the common but often untold stories of families impacted by the exploitative prison industry – like mothers going without heat for months just so they can keep in touch with their child in prison. These popular education efforts unveil the hidden interests shaping the prison system. To track their impact on narrative change, Worth Rises gathers data on media coverage and public sentiment.

Bianca used the most effective advocacy and organizing tools at her disposal (including research, storytelling, media outreach, community organizing, legislative advocacy, and corporate accountability) and as the only organization laser-focused on the money that drives the prison system, they got people’s attention – from policymakers to seasoned advocates to academics to impacted families. It was clear that Bianca was pioneering a different approach.

Her approach proved remarkably effective in persuading New York City to pass legislation making phone calls free in its jails in 2018. Partnering with local advocates, she would later do the same in Miami, San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles. By the time the pandemic hit and prison visits were cancelled, Bianca had many irons in the fire, inspiring Congressmembers to make prison calls free in federal prisons through the CARES Act – and they have remained free ever since. Then, in 2021, Connecticut became the first state to pass the free prison communication legislation Bianca had drafted, after her team organized over 100 incarcerated people, impacted family members, and advocates to testify in a 12-hour marathon hearing on the bill. When the bill went into effect, call time increased 120%.

With Bianca’s support, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, and Minnesota followed suit in the next two years. In early 2023, President Biden signed a bipartisan bill granting the FCC new authority to impose price caps on all prison and jail calls, a bill that Worth Rises spent years advocating for. Since 2018, Bianca and her team have saved impacted families nearly $400 million in call rates and created an additional 2.1 billion call minutes. In 2024, they are organizing or supporting campaigns to make prison and jail communication free in over a dozen states.

In the earliest days of experimenting with the strategy, Bianca worked on the entire life cycle of legislation -- from drafting, to advocacy, to passage, through to implementation. She has tested, adjusted, and created a successful model. Now the ball is rolling, and others can run with it. In the next 10 years, Bianca expects all prison and jail calls to be free for incarcerated people and their loved ones. Bianca and her team began providing three tiers of support to others wanting to make prison calls free in their city or state. Support ranges from consulting and technical assistance to full campaign design and implementation. The open-source model and tiered system grants Bianca and her small but mighty team the capacity to shift their focus to the next key industries they are working to dismantle, including labor, healthcare, and electronic monitoring.

For example, Bianca and her team already run the federal #EndTheException campaign alongside over 90 other organizations to end prison slavery by amending the U.S. Constitution, which currently allows for slavery as punishment for a crime. Her team is deploying their strategy for narrative shift, policy change, and corporate accountability while also adding in litigation strategy to ensure that the rights established by a new constitutional amendment are realized by those inside our prisons.

Bianca was born in Greenpoint, Brooklyn as the first child of two immigrants – a Polish father and an Ecuadorian mother. Bianca grew up as a social translator and navigator for her family – shifting between disparate worlds and helping them acclimate to life in America. Bianca has always been motivated by injustice. Her mother reflects that, from a young age, Bianca was always at her best when seeking to right a wrong.

As a youth, Bianca faced a myriad of traumatic experiences that started with a sexual assault at just 11 years old. These would lead to years of confusion and anger that led to delinquency, followed by interventions. By high school, Bianca was leading a double life. At school, she was class president, a brilliant student – particularly in math and science – and a star athlete. Outside of school, Bianca and her friends had circumstances that were a world apart from her new private school classmates. Arrest was increasingly common in her community, and Bianca saw firsthand the inefficacies and injustices of a system that was supposed to keep communities safe.

Things peaked when she was 15 years old. Bianca was hospitalized after flatlining from alcohol poisoning and then arrested and given a suspended sentence with probation. Just weeks later her partner was shot and killed, which she withheld from her friends at school and parents. Despite these struggles and her inner emotional turmoil, Bianca was able to keep up good appearances with top grades. She applied to one school for college – Columbia – and was accepted. Bianca’s passion for criminal justice was already alive – her college essay was about the cultural misunderstanding of delinquency among low-income youth.

To pay off her student debt and learn more about the financial industry, Bianca went to work on Wall Street after college. In 2008, she started as an investment management analyst at Morgan Stanley just weeks before the financial collapse. She moved to Citibank as an investment banking analyst in 2010, where she learned the core financial skills necessary to build corporations that she would later use to dismantle them. Meanwhile, she continued to mentor low-income youth. Upon leaving Wall Street, Bianca was an Education Pioneer fellow at Teach for America and co-founded a nonprofit that provided pre-collegiate support to students on Rikers Island.

In 2013, Bianca went to law school, largely designing her own program focused on corrections. During her time, she interned at the ACLU Campaign to End Mass Incarceration and three different state correctional departments. After graduating and getting barred in 2016, Bianca joined the Brennan Center for Justice as an Equal Justice Works fellow. Soon after, Bianca got support from Equal Justice Works and the Urban Justice Center to incubate what would soon become the non-profit, Worth Rises, which she founded in 2017.