Ruling on video jail visits scrutinized
Panel re-evaluates an exemption granted to Travis County from a law that requires in-person visits.
The Texas Commission on Jail Standards is re-evaluating its decision to grant the Travis County sheriff ’s office an exemption from a new state law requiring jails to allow in-person visitation for inmates’ friends and family.
Many jails, including Travis’, have moved in recent years to offering only video-based visitation, in which guests communicate with their incarcerated loved ones through a Skype-like monitor. The new law requires counties to maintain in-person visitation as an option but exempted counties that had already spent a signifificant amount implementing a video-only system. Travis County, which in 2012 approved a contract with Securus Technologies to add video capabilities to its downtown jail and the correctional complex in Del Valle, was exempted this month.
But the Austin-based nonprofifit Grassroots Leadership, which opposes the privatization of prison services, is questioning whether the county should have been granted the exemption bec ause the Securus contract said that the company, not the taxpayers, was on the hook for the program.
Brandon Wood, executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, confirmed the agency is investigating whether it needs to rethink the exemption. Travis is the only county where the decision is being re-evaluated, he said, although two other counties — Hays and Wood — were rejected for the exemption in the agency’s initial review.
“We are going to meet with Travis County,” he said. “We are trying to determine exactly how much they spent.”
The system would have cost the county $750,000 to install, according to a 2012 staff memo to the commissioners, but Securus picked up the tab because it makes money on the system by charging visitors. It’s possible the county has incurred additional expenses related to the video system since the Securus contract was approved.
Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton, whose office filed for the exemption, said the costs he cited to the Commission on Jail Standards were related to a smaller video system that was installed before the county tapped Securus to expand the program to the entire jail. That earlier program was limited to the Del Valle complex’s recently constructed Building 12 and the county’s maximum-security lockups.
A reversal on the exemption would be a win for County Judge Sarah Eckhardt, who has been pushing for the county to re-establish in-person visitation. She was on the losing end of a recent 4-1 vote of the Travis County commissioners on whether they should set aside reserve money for the project.
Eckhardt, who was a commissioner when the Securus contract was approved, said the sheriff ’s office at the time indicated that video would be an option for visitors, not the only choice.
Hamilton said Monday that it was never his intention to dupe the commissioners and that he always intended to make it the only option. But given the recent backlash against video visitation, he said he is open to re-establishing in-person meetings.
“I don’t have a problem with it,” he said. “It’s a good thing to allow those individuals to have the face-to-face visits.”
Opponents of the video-only approach say it decreases the intimacy of visits, which help inmates stay connected to their previous lives and give them reason to resist the criminal culture of incarceration. A 2011 study by the Minnesota Department of Corrections found that felons who were visited in jail were 13 percent less likely to commit a crime once they were released. The recid- ivism rate was 25 percent lower for inmates convicted of misdemeanors.
While the literature is thinner on the benefits of in-person visitation versus video, Kymberlie Quong Charles, the director of criminal justice programs for Grassroots Leadership, noted that some of the video systems make it impossible for users to look at each other eye to eye because the display monitor and camera don’t line up — a problem familiar to anyone who uses webcam-based video meeting apps like Skype or Google Hangouts.
“Video is a perfectly reasonable option,” Quong Charles said. “The fact that at Travis County it is the only type of visitation available to anybody — and on top of that, the fact that the county and a for-profit corporation are making money on its usage — we don’t think that that’s kosher. We don’t think that that’s a smart way or a just way.”
Proponents say video visitation can save taxpayers money and expand visitation access by allowing for meetings over the Internet. In Travis County, friends and family can pay to have a video visit with inmates from their own homes, making it easier for those who live far away from the jail. The cost to use the Web portal is $20 for 20 minutes. Visitors who show up at the jail and defense attorneys are not charged for using the video system.
Lauren Johnson, a criminal justice fellow with Grassroots Leadership, said the group is not contesting whether in-person visitation should be allowed in two of Travis County’s correctional facilities: the Del Valle complex’s recently constructed Building 12, which was designed with a video-only approach in mind; and the county’s maximum-security lockups, which are covered by a separate exemption from the new law for inmates being disciplined.
The new law was authored by state Rep. Eric Johnson, D-Dallas. The exemption for counties that already have video systems was added through an amendment by state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston. Thirty-one sheriff ’s offices applied for the exemptions. Only Hays and Wood, which were found to have not spent a significant amount on their systems, were rejected.