At Colo. jail, it’s visits via video/tech connection saves money, bolsters security
By Julie Poppen
Rocky Mountain News
DENVER, Colo. — Since she was 3, Amy Anderson’s mother has been in and out of jail. She has no contact with her father, who also is locked up.
So, at the age of 12, the Broomfield middle schooler knows all about jailhouse visits.
Still, she and her mother were taken aback when they learned that a recent Sunday visit at the Denver County Jail would be conducted through a computer screen.
Amy could not hug her mother or sit on her lap, as she once did at the Boulder County Jail.
Instead, the skinny, talkative tween awaited instructions from a front-desk deputy in the jail’s lobby, plunked down on a stool attached to a black computer terminal, and waited. Her 82-year-old grandmother, caregiver and confidante sat on a plastic chair next to her. Other families did the same.
At the stroke of 3 p.m., the deputy pushed a button and 44- year-old Jane Anderson appeared on the screen. At least part of Jane Anderson. At many points during the 30-minute conversation, Amy could see only her mother’s forehead.
Welcome to the brave new world of jailhouse visitation. Across the country, jails are embracing technology to solve age- old logistical problems such as contraband sneaking into cells and the high cost of security.
In metro Denver, Douglas County is the latest jurisdiction to open a video visitation terminal. Arapahoe and Adams counties already have them. Elsewhere, Weld, El Paso and Mesa counties do, too.
Supporters say automated visits not only curb contraband, they also save money because inmates do not need to be moved to visiting terminals, which requires the accompaniment of deputies. Family members can be kept in non-secure parts of a jail and don’t require screening.
Another benefit, they say, is that all the conversations are recorded. Privacy and confidentiality never have been guaranteed, and investigators are finding the recorded nuggets useful in criminal cases.
In addition, the increased efficiencies allow jails to arrange longer and more frequent visits.
Critics, though, see video visitation as impersonal and inhumane - especially for children, who can’t always relate to an image of a parent on a computer screen.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado opposes the sole use of video visitation, arguing that human contact is critical to reducing recidivism rates.
Young visitors connect
Amy Anderson fidgets on the stool, pulls up her feet and rests them on a piece of metal connecting her to her visitation unit.
She pulls at a faux diamond- studded “A” pendant on her necklace and pushes it in front of the electronic eye that transmits a live picture of the girl to her mother, who is in front of a mobile unit in the women’s section of the Denver County Jail.
Amy tells her mom she got the pendant from her aunt for Valentine’s Day. They chat about stuff. Boys. School. Gymnastics. How each one of them is doing.
In the jail lobby, many of the 24 monitors are in use. A young mother holds a weeks-old newborn up to the screen.
Amy would much rather be able to touch her mother. Even a visit through glass would be better, she says. “You’re closer to her. You know where she is and what she is wearing.”
Denver was among the last metro area jurisdictions to do away with contact visits in favor of a video visitation system two years ago, Denver Sheriff’s Maj. Victoria Connors said.
In the metro area, only the Boulder County Jail still allows some in-person visits.
Other jails switched from in- person visits to non-contact visiting rooms - long halls featuring visiting booths with sheets of thick glass separating family members from inmates, who use phones to communicate.
Denver paid $456,000 for an automated video visitation system rather than installing non-contact booths. Connors said the benefits far outweigh any complaints. The cost of staffing visits was another issue.
“Say you had an hour visit, it took 15 minutes to get (visitors) in and 15 minutes to get them out, and you’d start on the next group,” Connors said. “We had five people 40 hours a week who did nothing but (handle visits).”
One officer can run the current system. A civilian employee handles reservations. Another deputy organizes inmates and walks them to the bank of monitors. Jail officials estimate they’re saving $220,000 in staff costs per year.
No chance for goodbye
Courtney Bickel, of Longmont, recently paid a visit to an incarcerated friend at the Douglas County Jail. The 21-year-old entered a small, windowless room in a low-security part of the Robert A. Christensen Justice Center and picked up a phone attached to a small computer screen.
With the click of a tab on a computer screen by the front desk deputy, the image of her friend appeared. She could see only part of his face. Behind him, she glimpsed an inmate leaving a metal shower stall. He was clothed, but still, the lack of privacy bothered her.
Once her 15 minutes were up, with no warning, the screen went blank. There was no time to say goodbye.
Bickel said she understands the need for for security, but found the system “a little ridiculous.”
Douglas County’s $650,000 system went online in late January. Kinks still are being worked out, such as the lack of a warning when the visit is about to end, shading on prisoners’ faces and a lag time between the prisoner’s words and the screen image on certain machines.
Douglas County Detentions Capt. Robert McMahan said the system represents a dramatic improvement over the old one. Family members can schedule visits online. There’s no worry about mixing inmates - such as women and men or codefendants - in a visitation room. They use a computer kept in their own pod.
McMahan said most of the jail’s inmates only stay a couple weeks, anyway.
“It is jail,” McMahan said. “You just lose a lot of liberties.”
System expanding
Systems such as Douglas County’s are cropping up across Colorado.
The Colorado Department of Corrections has a pilot video visitation program scheduled to begin in a year or two at its Sterling facility, where 100 visitation kiosks will be installed.
It is DOC’s ultimate goal to expand the program statewide and one day allow family members who live hundreds of miles away to talk with the inmate from their home computer.
“A lot of inmates come out of the Denver metro area,” DOC spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti said. “It’s difficult to drive all the way to an outlying facility to visit.”
And the new jail at the Denver Justice Center, slated to open in two years, will feature mostly video visitation, although some contact visits will be allowed for grieving inmates or those enrolled in parenting classes. A small number of non-contact visits through glass also will be available to inmates based upon good behavior, Denver Director of Corrections Bill Lovingier said.
Denver jail spokesman Capt. Frank Gale said the city is toying with the idea of installing video visitation kiosks in certain neighborhoods so family members don’t have to travel far.
The technology isn’t limited to family visits. Jails are creating “telemedicine” systems, which allow online doctor visits.
Lack of contact decried
Critics are concerned about the effect the lack of real contact has on children.
Cathryn Hazouri, executive director of the ACLU of Colorado, said video visitation is acceptable as one option, but she decried computers as a replacement for all visits in-person or even through glass.
“We believe that the more personal contact people who are incarcerated can have, the greater the likelihood that they’re going to be able to adjust better when they are released,” Hazouri said. “And they’re likely to be less problematic while incarcerated.”
That seems to be the case in New York City, which still allows contact visits for its 14,000 inmates “unless the security and safety of the facility might dictate otherwise,” said Stephen Morello, deputy commissioner for the New York City Department of Corrections.
About 350,000 visitors come to Rikers Island each year.
“The vast majority are contact visits,” Morello said. “They can kiss and embrace.”
The Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition made a stink about plans that once called for only video visitation in the jail under construction at the downtown Denver Justice Center.
The group’s Executive Director, Christie Donner, was especially concerned because people at the facility haven’t been convicted of a crime. They are awaiting their day in court.
“It degrades the quality and intimacy of those visits,” Donner said. “It minimizes the importance of visiting. You are sitting literally on top of the next person. There is no privacy.”
In response, jail planners reconfigured visitation options, allowing for some contact and non-contact visits. Still, most will be done by video.
Blown kiss and goodbye
After talking about gymnastics, a sore ankle, friends, Amy Anderson says goodbye to her mother, who she hopes will be released this month.
The 12-year-old says “I love you” as she blows kisses into an electronic eye. The screen goes blank and she prepares to leave the Denver County Jail with her grandmother, Mary Jane Brown.
Brown says she wishes more than anything that her daughter wasn’t in jail, that she didn’t struggle with addictions and hadn’t made bad choices.
But God has a plan, she believes. She only wishes now that her granddaughter, who is beginning to face social pressures in middle school, could see her mother in the flesh.
“It’s her mom,” Brown says. “Just looking through the screen is just about like looking at TV. You don’t feel that closeness.”
Video Linkup
Adams County Jail
* Began: September 2005
* Cost: $800,000
* Provider: Multimedia Telesys
* Number of stations: 28 video booths for visitors; 60 for inmates throughout facility.
* Number of annual visitors: 34,892
* Number of inmates: 1,400
Arapahoe County Jail
* Began: 2001
* Cost: $24,960 for original setup; $50,000 to upgrade the system in subsequent years.
* Provider: Interwest Sound Communications
* Number of stations: 14 terminals for visitors; 48 throughout jail for inmates.
* Annual visitors: NA
* Inmates: 1,219
Denver County Jail
* Began: October 2005
* Cost: $456,000
* Provider: Digitron, in negotiations with another vendor to service machines.
* Number of stations: 24 for visitors in lobby; 14 in inmate multipurpose room; 8 in Building 22; 2 in Building 6; and 4 mobile units.
* Annual visitors: 18,000 in 2007
* Inmates: 2,100
Douglas County Jail
* Began: January 2008
* Cost: $650,000
* Provider: Inmate Calling Solutions
* Number of stations: 16 terminals open to visitors; 38 units for use by inmates
* Annual visitors: NA
* Inmates: 325
OTHER COLORADO COUNTIES
* Boulder, Broomfield and Jefferson counties do not have video visitation yet but plan to some day.
Other U.S. cities
* Atlanta: 1,200 inmates in Atlanta Pretrial Detention Center; visits are non-contact through glass.
* Indianapolis: 1,000 inmates at the Marion County Jail; visits through video visitation.
* Phoenix: New facilities use video visitation.
* Kansas City, Kan.: 300 inmates at the Wyandotte County Detention Center, all visits are non-contact through glass.
* Portland, Ore.: 1,608 inmates at the Multnomah County Jail, social visits are non-contact through glass.
* Seattle: The King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention offers no-contract visits through glass, but is looking into video visitation.
Copyright 2008 Denver Publishing Company