Ugh. I had the same. I was held in pretrial detention for 10 years because I couldn't afford the small amount of bond money. My mother was dying while I was in there and I am in the USA, she was in the UK. The rates at one point were $1.50/min. I would try to call her for 5 minutes per day, that was the absolute most I could afford. It is heartbreaking to have someone dying at the other end of the phone line and you have to hang up on them.

I scheduled a bond hearing with the hope the judge would lower my bond so I could be released and be able to call her, but sadly she died two days before the bond hearing. The State found out, so as soon as we went into the hearing the prosecutor said "Judge, I don't even know why we are here, his mother is dead already. This issue is moot."

We even tried to get the jail to let me make a video call to my mother (that was her dying wish), and the British government intervened to try and persuade them, but they refused, even though they had all the equipment and let you make video calls to your kids if you played chess with them.

Incarceration, for the most part, is just fucking stupidity. As Piper Kerman's lawyer tells her, "Jail is chickenshit rules enforced by chickenshit people."