By Chris Conley
The Memphis Commercial Appeal
SHELBY COUNTY, Tenn. — Nobody likes to go to jail, even visitors.
But whether the video visitation system installed by Shelby County Sheriff’s Department makes the jail experience easier is still up in the air.
In recent weeks, workers have been installing a system through which visitors meet with the inmate remotely, via cameras and monitors - instead of face-to-face through a glass window.
And when the bugs are worked out, the new system should be more convenient for visitors and make the jail more secure, jail officials say.
Some recent users of the new system interviewed in the visitor waiting room this week were more than skeptical:
“I don’t like it,” said Patricia Priest, who was at the jail this week to visit her husband.
“You see them on a television, and it’s not like seeing them in person,” she said. “It’s like a movie.”
“It takes too long,” said Tosha Campbell. “You have to wait to be called.”
“They tell you to look in the camera, and all you can see is the top of his head,” she said.
“That’s the complaint against it. It’s not face-to-face,” Sheriff Mark Luttrell conceded.
“Once we get the procedures refined, we’re hoping it will be more convenient for visitors,” he said.
One thing is for sure, though, the new system is much more secure, both for jail staff and for the inmates, Luttrell said.
The inmates no longer have to be escorted from their floor to the visiting room on the second floor. They have monitors on their floor, and speak to their visitors through them.
The old procedure often resulted in long waits, because the movement of inmates is a careful, sometimes slow, event.
“There’s not as much movement of prisoners in the jail,” Luttrell said. That way, the risks of something going wrong are reduced.
“It’s efficient, as far as manpower,” Luttrell said.
And it won’t cost the taxpayers. Video visitation is paid for with money inmates pay to use the jail telephones.
When a visitor comes in to see an inmate, he gets a number after passing through the metal detectors in the jail annex and registers with the schedule desk. Employees there hook them up with the right inmate on the right floor at the right monitor and block off a 30-minute meeting.
Eventually, there will be 61 monitors to serve several hundred who pass through on a busy day.
And when the visitor picks up the phone on their end, the inmate’s camera, monitor and phone kick in, he picks up his phone, and the 30-minute visit starts.
“It’s a more controlled process,” said Moore.
With the new system, visitors are guaranteed 30 minutes with the inmate.
Before, delays in getting the inmate to the visiting room could cut the visit short.
“This way, it’s on us to give them 30 minutes, even if something goes wrong,” Moore said.
“It’s the same process,” he said, “but the inmate doesn’t come down. He’s there, just not on the other side of the wall.”
Attorneys will still be allowed to meet in the same room with defendants, if necessary.
Copyright 2007 The Memphis Commercial Appeal