Although Barnard decries the collect call system and the county's bite of the revenues, his legal fight has been in vain. In addition, the Federal Communications Commission and the state's Public Service Commission do not regulate jail phone rates.

And Salt Lake County isn't the only government getting a cut of inmate collect call fees. Inmates at the Davis County jail, for example, also are required to use collect calls with the county making a 44 percent commission from its provider, EverCom.

Keith Major, business manager for the Davis County Sheriff's Office, said the county made just over $200,000 last year from inmate calls.

The Utah County jail also gets a kickback from its inmate calls, although all of the funds generated from the collect fees go back into the cost of inmate programs like life skills classes and recreation. Davis County commissions are also pumped back into a variety of jail programs, Major said.

Funneling those revenues back into the jail system is at least "a little more palatable," Barnard said.

But under Salt Lake County's method, the money is put into a telecommunications fund to offset the costs of countywide telephone infrastructure, telecommunications manager Bruce Miller said.

Miller said he disagrees with the idea that the county is receiving a kickback from the phone company. Rather, he said, the commission simply covers the county's costs.

"It's very common. The state does it and others do it," he said. "It helps lower the overall operating costs to all of the telecommunications networks in the county."

That same method is used at the Utah State Prison, where commissions from a $2.40 collect call rate are pumped into the state's telephone and computer services.

"There is a substantial amount of money that goes back to the state of Utah," spokesman Jack Ford said. "It does not come back to the Department of Corrections. We do not get a nickel of it."

Ford added that state officials have mulled over the idea of putting the money back into inmate education programs or even switching to a calling-card system. Many families try to send inmates calling cards to stop the collect calls, but Ford said prisoners are not allowed to carry anything of value.

"It could generate some fights within the system," he said. "But we keep looking at a way to make it more economical."

Chief Deputy Rollin Cook, who oversees the county's corrections division, said the county system isn't just a scheme to make money off prisoners and their families. The collect call rates charged on the roughly 160 phones in the jail are reasonable, he said.

The inmate collect call fee is cheaper than a collect call from a regular residential line, which runs about $3.40 a call. The rate is higher, however, than a local collect call from a pay phone at about $2.31 per call.