When Prisoners Are a 'Revenue Opportunity'
A new 384-bed jail opened in Lancaster, Ohio, earlier this summer. The building, which serves Fairfield County, replaces three smaller, antiquated facilities with a single modern one. The jail has high-tech security gadgetry, up-to-date living areas, and a controversial innovation that in recent years has spread across the country: video visitation.
Video visitation is a system in which visitors use a telephone-like handset, a camera, and a screen to communicate with an inmate using a similar setup elsewhere in the jail or prison. The two parties never see each other in person even when a visitor is physically inside the jail complex. And there’s typically no fee to use the service as long as a visitor comes to the jail.
Though video-visitation technology was first used in jails and prisons about 20 years ago, it was slow to catch on because the operations were clunky and the upkeep a hassle. Over the past decade, however, instead of purchasing and having a contractor install a system the jail or prison would own, facilities have outsourced the systems to corporations, often as part of a package that includes phone services. As of 2014, according to a report by the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative, over 500 jails and prisons in 43 states had adopted video visitation.
An unknown number of those 500-plus facilities have also adopted “remote” video visitation, something akin to Skype, in which a “visitor” families of inmates.
