As a movement has taken hold to get California’s jails and prisons to operate more efficiently while releasing inmates who are better able to successfully reenter society, there have been occasional steps in the opposite direction. One of the most destructive has been a trend to ban in-person visits by family and friends.
Some county jails have gone as far as eliminating visitation rooms, where higher-security inmates speak on phones to their visitors while seeing them, face-to-face, through glass barriers. Some have ended visits in which lower-security inmates can hug their children, parents and spouses. Plans have moved forward for new jails that don’t even include space for such visits, except by the inmates’ attorneys.
Offered in place of inmate visits is video conferencing. Sheriffs argue that video provides fewer security risks and fewer opportunities for contraband, like drugs, weapons and cellphones, to be passed to inmates. And besides, some argue, video is cheaper.
Mountains of evidence and decades of experience demonstrate that inmate contact with family and friends — direct, face-to-face contact — helps to repair and retain the ties that are crucial to the inmates’ successful return to normal life once their terms are completed. Visits help curb inmate discipline problems and jail violence. They are correlated with lower recidivism and better odds of post-incarceration employment. Eliminating that contact is foolish. Charging for “visits” that can take place only by video is unconscionable.
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