FAMILIES OVER PROFITS Private companies and jails are working to replace all prison visits with expensive video chats.
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Sections: Reports; Contracts; Major victories; News and editorials; Research; FCC briefings

Incarceration separates families — and not only by putting people behind bars. All too often, prisons, jails, and private companies impose policies that make it needlessly difficult to maintain family ties.

Our research has revealed that when families must travel great distances to visit loved ones in prison, visitation declines. We’ve also uncovered how sheriffs and private companies use video calling to eliminate human contact and have worked to protect in-person jail visits nationwide. Meanwhile, prisons continue to find other ways of making visitation difficult and degrading, such as strip-searching visitors and curtailing visiting hours.

Reports

Screening Out Family Time:
The for-profit video visitation industry in prisons and jails
by Bernadette Rabuy and Peter Wagner
January 2015

Report (Print/PDF version)

Executive Summary
Exhibits
Press Release
Our collaboration with NYC comedians to challenge the industry's offensive claim that video calling is "just like Skype" with 4 short videos:
Separation by Bars and Miles:
Visitation in state prisons
by Bernadette Rabuy and Dan Kopf
October 2015

Report
Press Release
Leer en español

Correctional video calling contracts

We've made our collection of correctional video calling contract documents public. Search them to see what companies are profting in your area.

Major victories

In April 2018, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed S.2371 into law, which requires Massachusetts jails to provide people in jails with at least two in-person visits per week and prohibits jails from replacing in-person visits with video calls.
In June 2017, California Governor Jerry Brown signed the 2017-2018 California budget, including AB 103, which statutorily requires jails to provide in-person visits rather than video calls. AB 103 permits jails that had already replaced in-person visits with video calls as of January 1, 2017 to continue to ban in-person visits. But these jails must provide all facility-based video calls and the first hour of remote video calls to visitors at no cost. The Board of State and Community Corrections’ regulations, approved shortly after AB 103, also exempt jails that, as of January 1, 2017, had submitted initial architectural planning to the Board of State and Community Corrections that did not include in-person visitation space. Governor Brown previously vetoed SB 1157, which would have prohibited jails from using video calls to replace in-person visits, stating that SB 1157 didn’t provide enough flexibility.
In August 2016, the Illinois legislature approved HB2738: Protect Prison Visits Bill, which prohibits Illinois prisons from replacing in-person visits with video calls and charging high rates for video calls.
In August 2016, the American Correctional Association unanimously ratified a policy declaring that emerging technologies like video calls should only be used to supplement existing in-person visitation.
In May 2015, Securus announced it would no longer explicitly require county jails and state prisons to replace in-person visits with video calls in its contracts with correctional facilities.
Travis County, TX legislators voted to bring back in-person visits in September 2015. In-person visits became available again in April 2016. According to this document, it likely cost around $1.2 million to bring back in-person visits.
TX legislation that clarifies that the Texas Commission on Jail Standard’s requirement of at least two visits per week refers to in-person visits, not video calls, went into effect in September 2015, but included a grandfathering clause for counties that incurred significant expense replacing in-person visits with video calls.
Starting June 22, 2015, Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser restored in-person visits for those who have (1) been incarcerated for at least 60 days and (2) not incurred a sustained disciplinary violation for at least 30 days.
In January 2015, prompted by Street Roots' reporting, the Multnomah County, Oregon Sheriff reversed his ban on in-person visits in Portland jails.
In November 2014, Dallas County rejected a Securus video call contract that would have required the County to ban on in-person visits. One county commissioner even mentioned that the issue received more attention than any other issue ever had.

See more of our victories

Research

A best practices guide for counties writing video calling RFPs, February 4, 2020
When jails replace in-person visits with video, what happens when the technology fails?, by Sarah Watson, June 18, 2019
Who's really bringing contraband into jails? Our 2018 survey confirms it's staff, not visitors, by Jorge Renaud, December 6, 2018
Every Second: The Impact of the Incarceration Crisis on America's Families, FWD.us, December 2018
Comment letter: Florida's Department of Corrections should not reduce visitation, by Lucius Couloute, May 31, 2018
To What End?: Assessing the Impact of the Knox County Jail’s Ban on In-Person Visits, Face to Face Knox, January 2018
- Our blog post highlighting the report's key findings
A few thoughts on legislative compromises, by Bernadette Rabuy, November 20, 2017
Durham County Detention Facility Video Visitation Survey Results, Durham County Sheriff’s Office, November 2017
Comment letter: Maine’s Department of Corrections should not allow correctional facilities to eliminate in-person visitation., by Lucius Couloute, September 7, 2017
Closing the Distance: The Impact of Video Visits in Washington State Prisons, Vera Institute of Justice, August 2017
For families of incarcerated dads, Father’s day comes at a premium, by Lucius Couloute, June 13, 2017
Phone Tag to Computer Hack: Securus puts privacy at risk, by Stephen Raher, April 24, 2017
Travis County, Texas: A Case Study on Video Visitation, by Emily Widra, April 18, 2016
Seeing eye to eye: understanding the limits of video visitation, by Emily Widra, April 11, 2016
A New Role for Technology? Implementing Video Visitation in Prison, Vera Institute of Justice, March 2016
Video Visiting in Corrections: Benefits, Limitations, and Implementation Considerations, by The Osborne Association, National Institute of Corrections, December 2014
Video Visitation: How Private Companies Push for Visits by Video and Families Pay the Price, by Jorge Renaud, Grassroots Leadership and Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, October 2014
Breaches in the Wall: Imprisonment, Social Support, and Recidivism, by Joshua C. Cochran, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, March 2014
Prison Visitation Policies: A Fifty State Survey, by Chesa Boudin, Trevor Stutz, and Aaron Littman, Yale Law & Policy Review, 2013
The Double Edged Sword of Prison Video Visitation: Claiming to Keep Families Together While Furthering the Aims of the Prison Industrial Complex, by Patrice A. Fulcher, Florida A&M University Law Review, Fall 2013
Video Visits for Children Whose Parents Are Incarcerated: In Whose Best Interest?, by Susan D. Phillips, Ph.D., The Sentencing Project, October 2012
The ties that bind or the ties that break: Examining the relationship between visitation and prisoner misconduct, by Joshua C. Cochran, Journal of Criminal Justice, September 2012
An Overview of Research Findings in the Visitation, Offender Behavior Connection, by Gary C. Mohr, Director, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, 2012
The Effects of Prison Visitation on Offender Recidivism, Minnesota Department of Corrections, 2011
Connecting Children with Incarcerated Parents, Child Protection Best Practices Bulletin, 2011
Prison Visitation and Recidivism, by Daniel P. Mears, Joshua C. Cochran, Sonja E. Siennick, and William D. Bales, Justice Quarterly, June 2011
Prison Video Conferencing, by Patrick Doyle, Camille Fordy, and Aaron Haight, The University of Vermont James M. Jeffords Center’s Vermont Legislative Research Service, May 2011

Federal Communications Commission briefings

For years, we have been encouraging the Federal Communications Commission to bring fairness to the predatory video call industry and answering the FCC's questions about the technology and industry:

February 8, 2016 comment letter, emphasizing the features that make some video call systems better than others, such as charging per minute. Moreover, we shared the failure of the video call system in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania with the FCC to highlight the issues with the technology.
- Exhibits
  - Lemhi County, Idaho TurnKey Contract
  - News articles about video calls in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania
  - News article about video calls in Clark County, Nevada
  - Editorials criticizing video calls
January 19, 2016 comment letter, highlighting the major trends in the video calling industry in the year after our report and recommending specific FCC regulatory reforms.
- Exhibits
  - Screening Out Family Time: The for-profit video visitation industry in prisons and jails
  - New York Times October 2015 editorial
  - Solano County, California iWebVisit.com Contract
  - Arkansas DOC to implement Securus video calls
  - Securus ends its ban on in-person visits, shifts responsibility to sheriffs
  - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article about Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania
  - Racine County, Wisconsin Securus Contract and Screenshot of Current Price
July 2, 2015 comment letter, updating the FCC on the video calling industry in the six months since our report. For example, we learned that like Securus, another private company, iWebVisit.com, was requiring jails to ban in-person visits. We also provided the FCC with the demographics of computer ownership and high-speed internet access in the U.S. as one explanation for the unpopularity of video calls.
- Exhibits
  - Solano County, California iWebVisit.com Video Calls Contract
  - The demographics of computer ownership and high-speed internet access
  - Video calls editorials and news articles
  - Securus ends its ban on in-person visits, shifts responsibility to sheriffs
December 20, 2013 comment letter, alerting the FCC to the need to regulate new technologies like video calls and electronic messaging and the alarming trends in the video calling industry.
- Exhibits
  - Selected news stories about video calls
  - Maricopa County, Arizona video calls contract
  - Shawnee County, Kansas video calls contract