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Jails Are Replacing Visits With Video Calls (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In recent years, more and more jails have introduced video-calling services. Theoretically, these products could make it easier for inmates to maintain their relationships with family and friends outside. But many jails have moved in the opposite direction, using the advent of these "video visitation" services as an excuse to restrict or eliminate traditional in-person visits.
There are a number of reasons jail administrators have gone this route. But critics say that money plays a big role. In-person visitation requires more staff supervision -- both to escort inmates to and from visitation rooms and to make sure no contraband changes hands during a visit. So switching to video visitation can save cash-strapped jails money.
But jails also profit more directly from limiting in-person visits. While on-site video visits are usually free, the companies providing the system generally offer a paid off-site video-calling service, too. And jails get a hefty percentage of that money.
There are a number of reasons jail administrators have gone this route. But critics say that money plays a big role. In-person visitation requires more staff supervision -- both to escort inmates to and from visitation rooms and to make sure no contraband changes hands during a visit. So switching to video visitation can save cash-strapped jails money.
But jails also profit more directly from limiting in-person visits. While on-site video visits are usually free, the companies providing the system generally offer a paid off-site video-calling service, too. And jails get a hefty percentage of that money.
Never really understood why these were even allowed in the first place.
Studies have consistently found that prisoners who maintain close contact with their family members while incarcerated have better post-release outcomes and lower recidivism rates. These findings represent a body of research stretching back over 40 years. For example, according to “Explorations in Inmate-Family Relationships,” a 1972 study: “The central finding of this research is the strong and consistent positive relationship that exists between parole success and maintaining strong family ties while in prison. Only 50 percent of the ‘no contact’ inmates completed their first year on parole without being arrested, while 70 percent of those with three visitors were ‘arrest free’ during this period. In addition, the ‘loners’ were six times more likely to wind up back in prison during the first year (12 percent returned compared to 2 percent for those with three or more visitors). For all Base Expectancy levels, we found that those who maintained closer ties performed more satisfactorily on parole.” https://www.prisonlegalnews.or...
Healthcare, prisons, and education, should never be run for profit, as this amounts to an automatic restriction of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Prisoners can fight back. Refuse to participate in any work release program. Refuse to participate in any prison line work program (laundry, kitchen, etc...) Making private prisons a losing financial proposition will force the state to implement prison reforms.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Video calling allows for much more frequent contact, so according to your study prisoners would be better off using the video system.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You still have the right to an unmonitored attorney vist.
Isn't that an oximoron?
In before the "they deserve hell on Earth because they were caught with a small amount of drugs or stole something worth $100" authoritarian crowd chimes in. Anyway, in-person human contact in a prison -- from jailers (not "correction officers") and other inmates is likely to be violent and abusive. Giving inmates the opportunity at loving contact with family, friends, and spouses (yes, conjugal should be allowed) makes them more likely to be sane upon being released. Removing all normal human contact makes psychological damage and violence more likely after release.
I understand the need to save money. But money is best saved by non locking up non-violent drug offenders -- what adults put into their own bodies should be their own choice. Same with diverting petty thieves, the homeless, non-functional addicts, and the mentally ill to community service, shelters, and mental health therapy as appropriate.
But hey. It's America. We'd rather punish than treat. Because Puritanism.
Prisons shouldn't be an excuse to obtain ridiculous profits from charging for basic things like phone calls. It's just more evidence that prisons in the United States aren't working. There are reasons to isolate some people from society, but prisons are not effective deterrents. Let's teach inmates useful skills and employ them while in prison. Let the prisons sell the products and keep some of the money, while also letting the inmates keep some money. They can either spend it in the prison or save it for when they're released. If the prison can turn a hefty profit from the work done by inmates, that's great. It would be better than the ridiculous profits from charging excessively for things like phone calls. Beyond that, why would it ever be a good idea to privatize prisons to begin with? Video calls may well be safer than in-person visits, but it shouldn't just be an excuse for prisons to turn even bigger profits.
No. It doesn't.
If anything it may cause less contact due to the fact the video calling system is run a something like an 8000% profit.
Can you afford something like 3 to 10 dollars a minute. Most prisoners can't. Most families if prisoners can't.
It won't do what you think...so stop sounding like a shill.
While the article seems to only focus on the negative -- heck, even the /. summary only states "There are a number of reasons jail administrators have gone this route," without explaining why, then goes on to state: "But critics say that money plays a big role. In-person visitation requires more staff supervision..."
There are some huge reasons to limit outside visitation, not the least of which is contraband, such as cell phones, drugs and even weapons that are most often brought in by visitors.
Are drugs also sold to inmates by guards? Yes, but that's an internal problem all prisons must deal with, but I can certainly see a legitimate reason for limiting outside visitors when so many of the problems within prisons come from the outside.
It also amazes me that gang leaders can continue to run their organizations from prison.
... opens the door for casing the joint before grabbing all the shit.
Think Equifax is porous?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I suspect the major objection they'll have is that they can no longer smuggle drugs or other contraband via a video feed.
you realize they jail innocent people right? google it.. inmates aren't just there because they broke the law, there are plenty that are there just to feet the for-profit monster that we've created.
Also don't be near an officer having a bad day, don't look like someone they're after and especially don't have any valuable property that'd be nice to take via throw down drugs and forfeiture, etc.
ThreeADay means you too, citizen.
Having the right [any of the traits unrelated to "breaking the law"] might improve your odds, but selective enforcement does what it wants. Be sure not to piss off Our Betters.
Or was that what your warning really meant? It's corrupt and immoral, but I admit it's sage advice.
We all don't live in your prison cuntry gais... it's a big world.
Throughout history, the unjust jail and jail until the masses get tired of it and kill the jailers. It's not something you are going to hear in the media, it's just a fact. If you doubt me, look into the history of the Bastille and the Tower of London. Both have been the impetus of revolution. That's just a taste, too, since history is rife with such stories.
The profit center piece of this should not be understated. Prisons extort significant amounts of money from prisoners' families for communications.
In Tennessee, a 15 minute inmate phone call costs $2.40 for in-state long distance and $3.15 for out-of-state long distance. "Maybe these just haven't been updated in a long time?" No, these are the updated rates from 2017. Before that it was almost /double/ this.
With that as prologue, why should we expect any less from video calls?
Just 30 years ago, the medium security prison in my town not only had family days but most inmates could go out and work in the community. Programs where inmates earned a Journeyman's Electrician license involved doing charitable work fixing electric problems in churches or for the poor. Programs in cabinetry made cabinets for those who couldn't afford them. Go back 40 years and the prison baseball and basketball teams played in the adult community league.
Most advanced countries understand that you can easily punish all humanity out of a person. Incarcerations over two years without regular contact with normal people that satisfies the human senses radically increases recidivism.
You can't just teach a person what is bad. Most of these people need to be taught what is good. They've never experienced it. It isn't something that you just naturally know. If you just tell them that everything they know is bad without exposing them to the other side, you're asking them to spend their life in total isolation and emptiness. It doesn't work.
Stupid moves like this just perpetuate the problem. I guess that is what they want. After all, those making the decision have careers based on incarceration. Even in public systems, much money is made with kickbacks and just having a job. Companies like Aramark and Canteen routinely make 30 and 40 percent profits on $1.10 per meal food programs (ask yourself how you do that), and a phone call often costs the family (not the inmate) $15 for $15 minutes. Making that kind of money off misery is just wrong.
According to who? Sure it sounds like it should, but everything prison related tends to be expensive.
Expensive is relative. Making a trip out to see someone is prison is also expensive; for many it may involve a hotel stay and hours of driving.
It's pretty obvious that allowing for video calls allows for more contacts even if you factor in some other issues like expense. People can do daily or weekly visits where they might have only been able to go once a month.
You say I need to back up this blindingly obvious observation but then go and throw out your OPINION that everything prison related tends to be expensive with zero backing as to the video calling being particularity expensive compared to normal visitation costs. How about you back up your own accusations with facts first?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
for the for profit prison industry. Stopping crime isn't their goal. Locking people up is. This is also why Marijuana will never be legalized so long as we have private prisons.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You realize you sound like a privileged white asshole who has never even had to speak to a police officier before, let alone be arrested for anything, right? If you've ever even gotten a traffic ticket before, you probably acted like you were being put-upon and 'inconvenienced' by the cop for stopping you, maybe even thought about complaining to his superior about it? Mouth off to a Traffic Commissioner in traffic court, maybe? You have no basis to be commenting on this subject, that's clear enough, and furthermore I wouldn't at all be surprised if people who know you in real life think you're kind of a prick.
The legal industry is mobbed with bottom feeders looking to capitalize on a literally "captive" audience with no choice. Everything related to it, everything that touches it gushes with corruption.
In my work we received multiple pitches over the years related to prison telephony and monitoring where those selling were openly bragging about collusion with judges, price fixing and being all around asshats.
I really don't care for having a perfectly safe, obedient society at the expense of our souls.
We sold our souls in 1980 when we elected Reagan and betrayed every ideal this country ever stood for. We doubled down on this during various midterm elections, in 2000 when we allowed the Republicans to steal an election result from the democrats (leading directly to the invasion of Iraq, and probably more), and tripled down on it when we elected an openly racist, sexist, philandering and probably raping pervert as president because, Jesus.
I agree with the point you made, but the argument that we still have souls to sell is a little weak.
The Space Merchants: Better a Thousand Innocent men suffer than One Guilty man go free.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Ideally in-person is better, but it's not practical on a frequent basis. What if the permitted video visits are more frequent in exchange for less in-person visits? Does the frequency offset the downsides of non-directness?
For example, is 25 hours of yearly video conferencing with family worse than 5 hours of in-person communication? Further, the in-person visits don't have to be cut to zero.
Table-ized A.I.
Schools, hospitals, prisons everything related public was cash strapped.
Interesting.
Good luck with that. I feel half the country is sliding further into the 1800's (and earlier) as political polarization intensifies. "The good ol' days are better" seems to be a constant theme of rural America. Trump used it successfully to imply he can bring factories and coal mining back, and reduce the number of outsiders who are allegedly polluting white evangelical culture.
The truth is the evangelicals are becoming ever more like the Taliban, who keep their jails small by executing those prosecuted for major crimes. I got modded to oblivion for making this claim before, but you are welcome to argue I'm wrong instead.
Table-ized A.I.
We can ship them off to a secure site and still allow some 'face time' with family members. Best of both worlds.
Have gnu, will travel.
They charge like $2/minute for video conferencing, whereas in-person visits are free. Yep, the for-profit incarceration industry just transformed family visits into a profit center!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The American prison system. The best tool that politicians have to manage job statistics is to increase prison population and to hire more guards.
As we automate more jobs, it will become more and more important to decrease the unemployed through more creative methods. For nearly the past century, America has produced large numbers of jobs through fear, uncertainty and doubt. So long as the people of America are convince there is a necessity to do so, politicians have a more less carte blanc to produce jobs through FUD. Prisons are some of the best.
To manage the job statistics, it is necessary to accomplish two primary things.
1) Decrease the number of people eligible to be counted as unemployed.
2) Increase the number of jobs for the remaining number of people.
Here are some methods of decreasing the number of people counted as unemployed.
1) Get the killed
2) Imprison them.
The military has been traditionally very lucrative in the sense that we can send massive numbers of children to their deaths before they have the opportunity to reproduce in a means that produces American citizens eligible to be counted as part of the employment statistics. Not only that, but if we can't get them killed, maybe we can get them boom boom in Europe or somewhere else where they can settle down and procreate on some other country's dime.
Navy is far better than army, marines or air force since we can in a single stroke kill off hundreds or thousands of children, lose a ship and massive amounts of equipment and create tons of jobs in the name of national security to create more ships, planes, equipment, etc... as a replacement. The army and marines are a nightmare since you don't have any great direct profit from getting your children killed one by one unless they get blown up in a ground vehicle like a bus or tank which will need to be replaced.
Prisons are a fantastic means of removing people from the employment statistics. If you send a person to prison, they are no longer counted as unemployed and the massive number of jobs created by sending them to prison is well worth it. All that matters is that you have to convince the American people they are safer paying to lock this person up and place them on extremely expensive welfare than to let them run lose and be in far less expensive welfare. This means however that we need to selectively choose people who we believe will be more profitable to the system as progressively hardening criminals as opposed to tax payers.
For example, if you're a wealthy male in his prime, locking that person up for more than a year or two, even if they commit a mass murder is not profitable. It shouldn't be done.
On the other hand, taking a kid from a family in the ghettos with two parents collecting welfare and generally low grades, unless you can get them to join the military as canon fodder, it's far more profitable to sentence him/her for 10 years for possession of a joint than to risk them simply collecting welfare or working a minimum wage job.
A beautiful thing is that if you convince some sucker that he could be a hero by being canon fodder and they don't die, they can come back with PTSD and knock over a 7-Eleven, kill off some minimum wage worker leaving a job open for someone else and then go to super-max which is nothing but bank for the job statistics.
See prisons are absolutely amazing because as long as the American people are scared of criminals and especially as long as we focus A LOT of effort on penalizing them as opposed to correcting them, we can increase the general temper of the American people allowing us to spend even more money on prisons and then even stress other areas of the economy causing more people to commit crimes, leave jobs open for others, be removed from the employment statistics and create jobs for others.
Consider that prisoners require prisons.
Prisons require guards.
Prisons built in or near former coal towns tak
ThreeADay means you too, citizen.
Please log in so that your voice can be heard. Judging by this comment, it is worth hearing. Throwaway email accounts are a dime a dozen, and I'll mail you a dime if necessary.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ok, but good luck getting guards to work there. Your second paragraph comes close to a recitation of some of the Federal Bureau of Prisons' program statement on prison administration. So, that's technically what we have right now! Yay!
The problem in the prisons is not the words, it's the culture.
It is even worse than that, I think.
Let's consider a guy.
He gets caught growing and selling pot. He gets 5 years, does 3, then he's on probation (although some states he gets a slap on the wrist, it depends). Can't get a job, hard to get a girl without money, he's living at risk.
Decides to take a risk and starts a little cocaine business, really just to support himself while he tries to find a sustainable path to legitimate income. Keeps it small, keeps his head down, until one of his customers gets arrested for something else and rats him out. Now it's federal and he gets 10 years, does a little over 8 inside.
Now he's stuck. He's on federal supervised release (probation) and his probation officer calls every company that gives him a job to make sure he's doing OK. This freaks the management out, and he can't keep a job. Maybe he's getting food stamps, maybe rental assistance, maybe he has access to medical care, maybe not.
He's been out of society for almost a decade, it's hard for him to talk to 'normal' people. (On a side note, I got locked up in 2007 a couple of months before the iPhone came out. When I was released in 2016 I had literally never touched a smartphone, or seen one up close. Imagine the readjustment.) He can't relax, he feels like he is in a slow motion car crash, all the time. So, he makes another bad decision. He's probably not really a bad guy. He just can't see the way forward.
He tries to pull a robbery, just to get enough cash to get some breathing room. He just needs some time. So, he goes for it. But then a cop shows up. Does he surrender, or does he shoot it out?
He's a three time loser, now. He'll probably get a career offender charge, he's looking at 15 years minimum. He won't go back to a Low security facility, probably start at a Medium. Way more violent. More gangs.
And he's tired. He's tired of the stress, he's tired of people he can't talk to or relax around, he's tired of being afraid of people finding out that he's a criminal, he's tired of being threatened by his PO. He's tired of being a loser.
What's he got to lose?
I think we would do well to consider how we are incentivizing his behavior.
I would just like to point out that they don't make National Geographic specials about all of the prisons where all that shit never happens. They make them about the warrior academies and the zoos. Please don't mistake that for the norm. Many of the prisoners at my prison would watch those same specials in awe and disgust.
LSCI Allenwood
FMC Butner
FMC Lexington
Basically all of the Federal Minimum Security Facilities
In the Feds, almost everybody has a job. Some of them are regular factory jobs, some are scrubbing showers every day, some are shoveling snow for 12 hours a year.
Most people who do not want to work just try to get into one of the jobs that has extremely low utilization (like the snow job mentioned above). All jobs are compensated, although poorly. Our kitchen workers averaged about $30 / month, except for the actual cooks who made around $75 - $100 / month. In the factory we had guys coming close to $1000 / month during the busy season. I maxed out at about $800, but half of that was taken as restitution, so I kept about $400 / month.
A single guy who refuses to work will get a 'shot' (disciplinary report) for 'Failing to Program" and face an escalating series of punishments. First he loses the ability to buy stuff at the commissary. Then he gets put in a bad cube / cell. Then he starts getting thrown in the SHU (Special Housing Unit - AKA the 'hole'). Then they start taking good time away from him, which actually extends his prison sentence. In the Feds you can earn good time to reduce your sentence by about 13%. In the worst case they could transfer him to some other, shittier, more violent prison.
A group of guys who refuse to work is considered a 'strike'. They will immediately lose all privileges and then good time. Then they will all be transferred to different places, and they'll be lucky not to catch an additional charge for rioting or inciting riot.
The inmates outnumber the guards until something happens. Then a bunch of other guards show up armed with clubs, tasers, and teargas. This why you only hear about riots where guards and staff are taken hostage. This is the only thing that holds back the guys with the clubs.
Too many jailhouse drug dealers are being supplied by their visitors, and that cuts into the profit potential for guards who want that market all to themselves.
dont do the crime.
Stop complaining that prison is a punishment.
Been arrested (for something I very much did and was guilty of).
Every time I've been stopped by the police, whether it's "fair" or not, I've been polite, respectful, and calm. ANY OTHER RESPONSE AND YOU'RE AN IDIOT. Maybe you think you're entitled to mouth off?
What's the most amusing is that your entire post/rage is about shit you're imagining. Do you have any idea how delusional that is?
Then again, AC, maybe you do.
-Styopa