Diana Claitor, executive director of the Texas Jail Project, an inmate advocacy organization, said McAuliffe, Ibañez and Gravens are absolutely correct: video visitation should not replace in-person non-contact visits.

“There should be both kinds of visitation and they should definitely not eliminate face-to-face visitations for a couple reasons,” Claitor said. “One is that most people, or a lot of people, don’t relate as well to a video image, especially children. It’s very important for children to be able to see their parents and know they’re OK.”

Secondly, technology can be flawed and Claitor said she’s seen instances across the state where images and sound are flawed and visits are cut short when the system fails.

“This is a constant problem with their visitation and it causes an enormous amount of alienation and anger on part of the families,” Claitor said. “And, as the research shows, visitation is an extremely important indicator on whether people recidivate. It’s a very important part of incarceration whether it be jail or prison.”

Finally! Houston Chronicle reporter James Pinkerton brings attention to an often overlooked subject that is so important to prisoners and their families: visitation at the Baker Street jail. Texas Jail Project has long wanted to shine a light on what one older father called 19th century conditions when he came to visit his son week after week, and couldn’t hear anything he said.
This excerpt is from our interview (see Inmate Stories) of an observant woman held 13 months there: “At Harris County Jail, the visitation rooms do not provide telephones; they have plexiglass windows with holes in them through which inmates and visitors have to shout at one another to be heard. It is extremely stressful to receive a visitor because it is so difficult to hear anything over all the shouting that is going on [around you]. I finally worked out a system with my uncles, who came to see me regularly, to bring paper and pen and we communicated by writing messages to one another, instead of trying to yell through the plexiglass…. Thus, even visitation was an unpleasant and stressful event ….” Despite her loneliness and despair during her long pretrial detention, when she saw how hard visitation was on family members, she told them to stop coming.

A medical officer at a Texas county jail wrote us about her job & what inmates need to know. This is exactly the kind of thing we need to hear this from those working inside jails, especially since more people have died in just the past few weeks–inmates in Gregg and Bexar and Ector counties.
“To My Inmates,
Yes, I call you “my” Inmates. Sometimes I even call you my kids. There are 600 of you and one of me, the Medical Sgt. I am a nurse. I care what happens to you. I care what your family is going through while you are here. When I interviewed for my job I was asked what would be the most difficult thing I felt I might have to go through. My answer…… losing one of you. A death in custody. You are my responsibility.”

Hurry, put in your comment about inflated charges for inmates phone services before the March 25th deadline at the FCC site for public input! (Go to the end of this post and click on CONTINUE READING to get the link to the FCC)
After years of people calling, writing and petitioning, the FCC is taking action to stop the practice of prisons and jails using inmate calling services that charge hugely inflated prices to inmate families! Phones in a prison are “a crucial instrument for the incarcerated, and those who care about them, because voice calling is often the only communications option available,” said one commissioner.
Texas Jail Project is proud to be part of the campaign organized by Prison Legal News, which helped forge the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice and the Wright Petition. Sign the petition now by clicking on CONTINUE READING and then click on the link in the first line.