Sign the Petition to Keep In-Person Visits in Prisons

Imagine being told that you were no longer allowed to see your loved ones. From now on, your only contact with them would be through video sessions that cost anywhere from $10–12 per 30 minutes.

What if I told you that this isn’t an imaginary scenario, but instead a reality faced by incarcerated individuals and their friends and families across the country.

Video visitation is beginning to replace in-person visits in prisons and county jails throughout the United States. Currently, more than 500 facilities in 43 states and the District of Columbia use some form of video visitation. The system was originally developed as a way to supplement in-person visits for individuals unable to travel due to distance, illness, or lack of transportation. However, leading video communication services such as Securus and Telmate often require in-person visits be banned or restricted as part of their contracts.

The process is both simple and lucrative. The ease with which video visitation can be conducted and the profits prisons and jails stand to make from its implementation are two of the main factors contributing to its widespread use.

Removing traditional in-person visits is detrimental to the wellbeing of incarcerated individuals, their friends and families, and their communities. By denying incarcerated people face-to-face visits, prisons are further isolating these individuals, destroying their ties to the places they call home, and making it harder for them to successfully reintegrate into the community upon release.

How Does Video Visitation Work?

Although the video visitation system varies by institution, the process typically follows similar steps:

1) A visitor makes an appointment and pays visitation charges in advance (typically between $10–12 per 30 minutes at a facility, or up to $1 per minute from a home computer).

2) The incarcerated individual is told to report to the video terminal within the institution at the selected time.

3) The visitor goes to the jail or prison and reports to the video terminal or uses a home computer to connect.

4) Once both parties are present, the video session begins.

What Are the Benefits to Video Visitation?

As previously mentioned, video visitation is an important option for friends and families unable to visit their loved ones due to distance, illness, lack of transportation or other barriers. Many prisons and jails have restricted visitation hours that can prevent working individuals and children enrolled in school from visiting. In these instances, video visitation is necessary for ensuring continued and easy contact.

Prisons and jails have also stated that video visitation eliminates the ability for visitors to transmit contraband, thus eliminating the need for invasive searches.

What Are the Drawbacks to Video Visitation?

Despite the above-mentioned benefits, the drawbacks to video visitation far outweigh the costs when the two are presented as mutually exclusive options.

Video visitation eliminates face-to-face contact and is far less intimate than in-person visits. Furthermore, the video equipment is often poorly implemented and lacks the necessary bandwidth for proper usage. Visitors and incarcerated individuals frequently complain that the technological glitches and constant audio-visual freezes hinder any actual conversation from occurring.

Lastly, video visitation is prohibitively expensive. If friends and families use a home computer, a video session can cost up to $1 per minute.

However, if they don’t have access to a home computer, they must visit the prison or jail in order to partake in video visitation. In this instance, a video session can cost up to $10-$12 per 30 minutes. With the cost of transportation still present, video visitation is merely adding on expenses to what an in-person visit would cost.

The business of video visitation is lucrative for the communication providers as well as the prisons and jails, which often take a cut of the profits. By replacing free in-person visits with charged video visitations, these institutions are extorting money from people who often have a limited income.

What Can You Do?

At the Women’s Prison Association, we believe that in-person visits should not be replaced by video visitation. If you agree, please sign the petition asking Congress to pass Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth’s Video Visitation in Prisons Act, which will require the the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allow both video visitation and in-person visits in prisons and jails across the country.

Becky is the secretary and a member of the Communications Committee for the Women’s Prison Association’s junior board of directors, the Emerging Philanthropists.