Inside The Fight To Protect Face-To-Face Visitation For Prisoners

When you’re behind bars, “there’s something psychologically uplifting about knowing someone is coming to visit you,” Jorge Renaud explained.

Renaud is an organizer with Grassroots Leadership and Texas Advocates for Justice who spoke with me by phone from Austin, Texas. He told me that unless you’ve been incarcerated, you can’t understand the emotional impact of a visit from a friend or loved one. His voice vibrated with emotion as he recalled those desperately needed visits, his tone expressing more than words could say.

This crucial connection with the outside world is endangered around the country, as more and more prisons and jails install video visitation systems. While the technology theoretically offers a new way to connect with prisoners — for those who can afford it — jails across the nation are also doing away with in-person visitation entirely, in favor of relying exclusively on these video visitations.

Correctional institutions began installing the technology about a decade ago, but alarmed prison reform activists only recently succeeded in getting the attention of lawmakers and the media.

Renaud spent time in a Texas prison and, more recently, served a few months in jail for a DUI conviction, so he experienced both forms of visitation firsthand…