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More Jails Replace In-Person Visits With Awful Video Chat Products
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After April 15, inmates at the Adult Detention Center in Lowndes County, Mississippi will no longer be allowed to visit with family members face to face. Newton County, Missouri, implemented an in-person visitor ban last month. The Allen County Jail in Indiana phased out in-person visits earlier this year. All three changes are part of a nationwide trend toward "video visitation" services. Instead of seeing their loved ones face to face, inmates are increasingly limited to talking to them through video terminals. Most jails give family members a choice between using video terminals at the jail -- which are free -- or paying fees to make calls from home using a PC or mobile device.
Even some advocates of the change admit that it has downsides for inmates and their families. Ryan Rickert, jail administrator at the Lowndes County Adult Detention Center, acknowledged to The Commercial Dispatch that inmates were disappointed they wouldn't get to see family members anymore. Advocates of this approach point to an upside for families: they can now make video calls to loved ones from home instead of having to physically travel to the jail. These services are ludicrously expensive. Video calls cost 40 cents per minute in Newton County, 50 cents per minute in Lowndes County, and $10 per call in Allen County. Outside of prison, of course, video calls on Skype or FaceTime are free. These "visitation" services are often "grainy and jerky, periodically freezing up altogether," reports Ars. As for why so many jails are adopting them, it has a lot to do with money. "In-person visits are labor intensive. Prison guards need to escort inmates to and from visitation rooms, supervise the visits, and in some cases pat down visitors for contraband. In contrast, video terminals can be installed inside each cell block, minimizing the need to move inmates around the jail." The video-visitation systems also directly generate revenue for jails.
Even some advocates of the change admit that it has downsides for inmates and their families. Ryan Rickert, jail administrator at the Lowndes County Adult Detention Center, acknowledged to The Commercial Dispatch that inmates were disappointed they wouldn't get to see family members anymore. Advocates of this approach point to an upside for families: they can now make video calls to loved ones from home instead of having to physically travel to the jail. These services are ludicrously expensive. Video calls cost 40 cents per minute in Newton County, 50 cents per minute in Lowndes County, and $10 per call in Allen County. Outside of prison, of course, video calls on Skype or FaceTime are free. These "visitation" services are often "grainy and jerky, periodically freezing up altogether," reports Ars. As for why so many jails are adopting them, it has a lot to do with money. "In-person visits are labor intensive. Prison guards need to escort inmates to and from visitation rooms, supervise the visits, and in some cases pat down visitors for contraband. In contrast, video terminals can be installed inside each cell block, minimizing the need to move inmates around the jail." The video-visitation systems also directly generate revenue for jails.
attorneys still get real vists
They're all private labour camps at this point. Not that they never were either (chaingangs etc. building roads and railways), they just got more corporate.
Complain until they replace Awful Video Chats with Better Quality Video Chats.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Know what would save money? Not locking up almost 1% of your adult population, often for victimless crimes or for being unable to pay excessive fines. Start treating addiction as a disease. If it doesn't pose a danger to yourself or others, it shouldn't be the government's business what you put into your body. If it endangers yourself or others, then you should be committed for treatment, same as any other psych illness. Same goes for criminalization of sex workers (instead of going after pimps or customers). End excessive fines and policing for profit. Require fines to be proportional to income. For someone who's a poor working Joe or Jane, a $500 speeding ticket can be a week's income. For a rich person, it's pocket change, and they can probably take a few hours off of work to fight it as well.
Like Skype except run by a rapacious firm that charges more per minute than international calls cost in the 90s. Progress, baby! The worst part about it? We're talking about jails, where people are held before trial. i.e. many people in jails are legally innocent of a crime.
The video-visitation systems also directly generate revenue for jails.
And that, right there, summarizes one of the greatest problems with our penal system. The pursuit of profit. That is not their role. Well, I mean, we've allowed that to become a part of their role, but it's utterly reprehensible.
I hate that about this country.
Cruel and unusual punishment is carried out in American jails on a daily basis. I wish prison reform was a bigger point of focus for people.
I read the article but it didn't talk about my biggest concern - are these video calls monitored/recorded? I expect that they are...
Even if they were not, there's no way I'd want to tay things over this service that I might want to say in person.
I think it's a great idea to offer this as an additional service, maybe curtailing personal visits or making that a charge - but it seems really wrong to do away with in-person visits altogether.
I also wonder if it would have a dehumanizing aspect on inmates not to see friends and families in person on a regular basis....
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And remember to degrade and humiliate them in jail, before trial, because all people merely accused of a crime are guilty as sin.
A most important consideration for a sponging house.
I agree that a lot of police activity these days has become about revenue collusion from those who can least afford the losses.
Fines proportional to income may be a good idea, the only concern I have there is someone with no job at all should not be able to live consequence free... I just think there are a lot of things that are illegal now, that we need to make not illegal any longer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've got to wonder, if visitation is so expensive, why allow visits at all, unless required by law? And if they are required by law, how the f*ck are they getting away with replacing them with video-phone calls?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
No shit. Private prisons are only about one thing. Actual rehabilitation is a looong way down the list of priorities.
I'm guessing no, but it'd be nice if it did. Bernie Sanders just came out in favor of universal suffrage. Meaning even prisoners get to vote. I like that. Folks say "We can't have rapists and murders swinging elections" but if you ask me if you've got so many rapists and murders they're swinging elections maybe fix that.
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They are prisoners. They lost the privilege of having contact with the outside world when they committed their crimes. Why should they have access to visitors, letters, or anything else while they serve their sentences?
These people are not the man in the iron mask. There is an existing body of case law that says they *are* allowed communication with the outside world. Although rare, there are people falsely imprisoned, and occasionally they can correspond their way to the truth. Any decent society should support and encourage this. If you are a tech gal, think of it as an error correction mechanism for edge cases.
USPS postal mail is required to be sent and received, and it is not supposed to be delayed or tampered with (although it can be checked for contraband)
I assure you that being in prison is a hardship, even in our relatively soft USAn prisons. Phone calls don't change this. People have a right to seek legal consul and maintain some contact with the world beyond the Big Yard. Trying to maintain a marriage or fatherhood long distance is sometimes possible, and is useful to us as well as them.
As a practical matter, most inmates will someday be released and we are less likely to see them come back if they have some kind of contacts who can help them find a toehold in society after they get out. It may help to remember that it costs as much to keep a man in prison as it does to keep one in an ivy league college, except that you are paying for the prison.
Sure, sure. Cut prisoners off from normal, well-adjusted people as much as possible. Ensure they are only exposed to other prisoners, and guards. Great way to dehumanize them even more, drive them ever farther away from what is mentally and emotionally considered 'normal'. Then be sure to never, ever do anything positive to rehabilitate them, and you ensure that when they're done serving their current sentence, they'll be back in prison soonest. Rinse, repeat. Guaranteed slave labor force. I'd sooner shoot all convicts in the head straightaway rather than subject them to an environment that is guaranteed to make them into worse monsters, or make them into monsters if they weren't already.
Pre-emptive strike: Racist assholes who say "blacks are all criminals and deserve what they get", and small-minded, short-sighted myopians who will say "criminals don't deserve to be treated like human beings" can go fuck themselves. Likewise greedy corporate assholes who profit off privately-owned prisons, or who think we should have such a thing as 'for profit' prisons. Also likewise so-called 'conservatives' who will insult me for being a 'bleeding heart liberal' or whatever the hell you people say this week. If you're not going to even TRY to rehabilitate criminals into decent citizens and human beings then you may as well just kill everyone immediately who commits any felony and be done with it, rather than demonstrate that you're as much a violent animal as THEY are. Plain and simple.
For FUCK'S SAKE, it's the 21st century and we still do shit like this? Really, humans? Seriously!?
and give them healthcare, they get to vote. Some rights are so absolutely fundamental that they should never be taken away.
And that's ignoring the fact that we know that Nixon started the drug war specifically to attack and disenfranchise voters he disagreed. This isn't up for debate, it's well documented
Finally, the concept of "paying debt to society" is nonsensical. You're either a continued danger or you're not. Prison must exist either for rehabilitation or containment.
Punishment doesn't work on adults unless they can't reason, and punishment against someone who can't reason is patently immoral. We're not punishing, we're torturing with the hope that the threat of torture will force compliance. That's no way for a just society to behave. If we're going to go that route we can use this and just stop pretending.
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that even if you're OK with torture as a means to force compliance with the law you should very much not be. In such a time and place it's only a matter of time before a law's passed you can't or don't want to follow, and you and your family will be on the receiving end of that torture. It's not a question of if, it's when.
A fundamentally unjust society will, all things being equal, deteriorate further. At a certain point only a massive external event (plague, world war, etc) will snap it out of the cycle of deterioration.
That's not any place you want to live. And if you don't want to the time to stop it is now. Let go of the hate and anger that "Tough on Crime" and "Broken Windows Policing" bring. It'll come back to bite us all if you don't.
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The vast majority of contraband is already brought in by staff. The number of facilities that even have contact visits (as opposed to through glass) isn't as high as you probably think, and the number of people and volume of contraband they can bring in by swallowing something passed while kissing and then later digging it out of their vomit or feces is fairly limited (any contact to the outside means a strip search coming back in, so that's the only way, since the guard would certainly see you if you tried suitcasing it).
Inmates do have a right to privacy, it is just greatly 'diminished'. That's the term used by the SCOTUS, 'diminished'.
Correctional facilities are generally prohibited from releasing any details from your medical record, cannot place cameras in cells and bathrooms, and should not monitor communications between inmates and counsel. I suspect there are also special requirements for body cavity searches, but I don't know it.
In the feds, at least, there is an explicit policy that ALL INMATE TELEPHONE CALLS will be monitored (only exception is calls to your lawyers).
One of the tasks guards in the residence units are tasked with is to sit and listen to hours of inmate calls. Some are monitored in real time, some are monitored after the fact as recordings.
The guards are lazy, so they fast-forward through the dull parts, but every call gets listened to. This is one reason they limit the amount of telephone minutes in the feds. They don't have the manpower to sit and listen to all of that.
Some guards are abusive with that power, but most of them don't want to do it.
Criminal lawyer here. This isn't surprising, it's mission creep.
The vast majority of county jails already use sponsored VOIP calling systems. And they too are AWFUL. A 10 - 15 minute phone call will cost $20. The audio quality sucks. It sounds far away, it has popping sounds. It randomly disconnects.
And it was only a matter of time before the vultures came up with ways to further infiltrate the jails.
There is no technical reason why it should cost as much as it does. The reason is because the vendors give revenue kickbacks to the counties. Additionally they give subsidies to the jails in the form of free equipment. What they don't do is upgrade the ISP. Jails are still technologically low tech places and many (especially in rural areas) have bare minimum internet connections that are quickly saturated by even a few video sessions.
This is exploitation and revenue generation from a desperate and generally poor population.
In past decades it was more easy at a city and state level during a "visit".
Now staff look down at a pile of cash left in the open and think about supplementing wage.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
if you can't control something as powerful as a government then you're not going to survive long. We already have tons of laws on the books written by and for private prisons to incarcerate minor offenders for longer and to make sure their lives are and stay hell so they're forced back into a revolving door. Minor offenders being the most profitable to confine.
And I didn't leave off deterrent. You're suggesting pain of one kind or another can and should be used for a deterrent. That is patently wrong. As I wrote, you're using orture to compel obedience. That the torture is endurable doesn't make it anything but torture. As adults and as a just society we have outgrown punishment. We did that as soon as we could produce enough food and shelter to house and feed a prison population that consists of those in the process of being reformed and those too far gone to be reformed. Anything else isn't justice, it's vengeance. And vengeance has no place in a civil society. It's anger for anger's sake without any constructive goal. It's lashing out. If you allow that kind of lashing out it will come back around to you. Violence and torture are always met with more of the same.
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A Strawman is a weak, unrelated and easily refuted argument brought up in a debate so that the debater can distract from a point he cannot address. Nixon's phony war on drugs is anything but.
It's not weak, because the fact that Nixon used the criminal justice system to attack his political opponents and disenfranchise them is very, very well documented. Nixon is only a single example of this trend in Republicans. Florida is famous for not giving back voting rights under GOP governorship. So much so their people passed a law overriding the governor (who by all account stole the last election using voter suppression tactics). Nixon is an example. He is specifically brought up because he is a strong example.
Next, His actions are related to the topic of granting voting rights to inmates and indeed to _all_ citizens. Nixon is an example of why we should NEVER take away voting rights. He specifically and intentionally misused drug policy to take away voting rights from left wing opposition. You might disagree with the left wing, and might even be willing to give Nixon a pass on what he did. I'm bluntly saying that is bad for you. That eventually they will come for you and your rights. This is what always happens throughout history. There is no amount of money and power that is ever enough. And folks like Nixon will look to take it away from you and your family. So yes, Nixon is definitely related to the disenfranchisement of criminals in that he did so for political means, and he is therefore not unrelated to the main point, and furthermore the fact that Nixon can disenfranchise one political group means he can do so to _any_ political group, which provides ample incentive for you to oppose _any_ disenfranchisement of _any_ citizen.
And as for easily refuted, it took several paragraphs to make my point and for you to read and comprehend it. Laying out the case for Nixon's actions being a direct subversion of democracy and following that logic to it's inevitable conclusion where disenfranchising undesirables fundamentally undermines democracy is a fair amount of work. The decades of "Tough on Crime" propaganda that you yourself are fighting against (as evidenced by the fact that you're still engaging me) show how hard it is. My hope is that by engaging with me and these ideas ("these ideas" because they're not mine, I'm not clever enough to figure this stuff out on my own, hence I seek wise console such as Bernie Sanders) that you'll overcome the propaganda and realize that Bernie's right, and that the right to vote is among the most vital and sacred we have.
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Can you demand a refund if you are found not guilty?
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One of the main points of modern states is that they claim a monopoly on the use of force.
Military and Police are state institutions, not private.
Incarceration is another form of state use of force and should never have been private in any sort of way to start with.
Allowing private interests into the system leads to loss of sovereignty, as demonstrated.
Most innocent people accused (arrested and incarcerated) of crime confess to a crime they didn't do. In part, because often it will result in a release from the inhumane conditions of jail/prison. Proving your innocence can take years. Falsely confessing takes 5 minutes.
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A costconscious prison outsources part of its tasks to gangs. They get to live a fairly good life while keeping the order.
Even worse than that...
Once released, they will have a criminal record making it more difficult for them to find legitimate work...
Plus having been in prison, they will have gained many new criminal contacts.
As they are unable to find legitimate work, the only offers they have available will be those from their newly acquired criminal contacts.
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"Most jails give family members a choice between using video terminals at the jail -- which are free -- or paying fees to make calls from home using a PC or mobile device."
even if you're there in person, you still need to use the video system, that's just plain mean.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Jesus Christ, I appreciate that Americans take crime seriously, but stopping prisoners from seeing their family in real life? They're still humans, no matter how much a-robbin' and a-killin' they've done. If you're going to treat them like shit, why not just execute them all instead for a nice big one-off fee? If you can get the chemicals, of course (it's nice to know that some companies have moral concerns for the welfare of prisoners).
I get that over there a private company can run a prison, but surely there are laws and government guidelines that stipulate the minimum rights that a prisoner has?
This is precisely what has lead to the rise of plea deals. When you get arrested nowadays, they dont charge you with the crime they know will stick. They charge you with every possible crime that *might* stick and then offer to drop them all and let you out of jail now if you plea to one of them. Then they make sure the probation system is heavily rigged to continue fining you and locking you back up to stretch that income stream on as long as possible. The rules of most probation departments are completely arbitrary, draconian, and not proscribed by law anywhere. That is why you have to sign a bunch of waivers to your rights in order to go on probation. If you refuse to, thats a violation of your probation and back to jail you go.
This stops what once was an easy smuggling ability. A person who is trusted and in constant contact could transport contraband during an in person visit
If that's the REAL reason for doing this, let people visit, but have glass screens between them with a microphone and speaker each side. No physical contact nor chance of passing contraband over. Prisoners don't have to be searched, nor do the visitors; they could be in completely different security areas.
I'm all for punishment (although I believe prison should be about more than just punishment) but not allowing prisoners to see someone IRL is just... nasty. Hateful. Torturous. Sickening.
point to an upside for families: they can now make video calls to loved ones from home instead of having to physically travel to the jail.
Why not both?
(because...)
it has a lot to do with money.
Well, if the criminals and their criminal visitors would not commit crimes by trying to criminally smuggle in banned and illegal items then this would be happening. Stop blaming the jail and start blaming the criminals for the consequences of their own actions.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
"Slavery should be profitable. If slavery is not profitable, why would the slaveowner pursue slavery?"
Because it is profitable. Just not for the taxpayer, it is profitable for the prison. If it weren't profitable it would cost more to do it than not do it and they wouldn't have prisoners perform labor. You are conflating the cost of incarcerating prisoners with the cost of having them perform labor. The labor generates more value for the state and the prison (which are largely privately operated) than not performing labor.
Offsetting some portion of the cost subsidizes a larger prison population which generates more profit for the private prison. This subsidizes the private prison system and police state alongside property seizure.
You can demand anything you like. Doesnâ(TM)t mean anybody will listen.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
... is a third-world country. This is one of those ways. As a former natural born US citizen living in Germany I know what I'm talking about. And no amount of US self-hypnosis will change the reality of this cold hard fact.
My 2 eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca