A prison research organization is working to forestall a growing national trend that it believes may exploit inmate families for profit by reducing or eliminating in-person visits and replacing them with costly video visits.
Prison Policy Initiative (PPI), together with the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), recently sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission urging it to “address non-voice forms of communication…”
“Left unregulated, the video communication market is very likely to end up like the mostly unregulated prison and jail telephone industry…expensive and counterproductive,” said Peter Wagner, executive director of PPI, in an opinion piece in the New York Times. According to Wagner, video visiting in jails and prisons are already a reality in some facilities across the country. He said the profit motive involved is driving families apart instead of keeping them in touch.
Wagner argued on PPI’s website that “Charging unconscionable sums and banning free in-person visits is a step in entirely the wrong direction.”
In September, a Dallas County (Texas) Commissioner Court rejected part of a contract proposal by Securus, one of the largest providers of jail telephone service in the country, to provide video visiting using computers.
According to a PPI update, the contract called for jails to stop regular in-person visiting and require family and friends of inmates to pay for what it calls “expensive video visits.”
“The court soundly rejected the two most critical parts of the proposed contract: the ban on in- person visitation and the collection of commissions for video visiting,” PPI reported.
It was reported by Metro Pulse that in Knox County (Tennessee), the sheriff’s office stopped face-to-face visiting, deciding instead to replace it with video visitation. The system is free for visitors who come to the facility but cost 40 cents per minute to use from a personal computer.
Mark Stephens, Knox County’s public defender, said families drive out to jail facilities for free visits. He questioned why they cannot see inmates in person. “I think it is a cruel thing to do.” According to research done by Wagner, some customers pay up to $1 a minute for video visits. “This is such a uniformly bad idea,” said Wagner. “I’m kind of speechless.”
In a letter to the FCC last year, PPI expressed how “the video visitation market is rife with usability failures and poor service.” It said, “Usability barriers are particularly troubling in facilities where in-person visits are no longer permitted.”
PPI’s letter to the FCC concluded by saying a failure to regulate jail video visiting prices will open the door for this industry to “instantly subvert the FCC’s price caps on long-distance calls.”
Two years ago, the Washington Post reported the District of Columbia was replacing person-to-person visiting in its jails with video visiting.
“As our submission demonstrates, video visitation is here to stay. Increasing the number of ways that families can stay in touch is a good thing. But allowing companies to exploit families and undercut the FCC’s efforts to bring fairness to this industry is not,” said Leah Sakala, research analyst with PPI.
