VIDEO VISITATION

FACT SHEET

The issue: A need to lighten the burden of families struggling to maintain personal contact with their incarcerated members, doing so in a way that is efficient and affordable via video visitation. This is especially critical in the time of a pandemic when in-person visits are not permitted.

The Purpose: The Federal Government and various states have already developed or are developing effective programs enabling the incarcerated and their families to remain in contact. Like Virginia, these state programs include prison family video contacts, and address, therefore, a fundamental human need for social contact while providing an effective strategy for facilitating re-entry and preventing recidivism—primary goals that make video visitation a win for the incarcerated, their families, and taxpayers.

As U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar and eleven of her Senate colleagues noted in a letter dated March 20, 2020, to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, citing a study entitled The Family and Recidivism: “Studies have demonstrated that family contact is a valuable source of support during incarceration and that those who maintain contact with their family experience lower rates of recidivism after release”…read more.

Why is this important? Almost every inmate has family ties, and we know almost every inmate returns to their communities, most within three years. To prepare inmates for successful re-entry, Virginia should follow a wise course of action by supporting and offering successful pre-release programs. Assisting Families of Inmates (AFOI) provides on such program.

Recent Experience: AFOI organizes and arranges for prison family video visits with inmates. Family-inmate links are few without AFOI. The AFOI program is made possible with volunteers, primarily generous individuals coming from various faith communities and non-profits.

The problem: 1) The cost of video visits facilitated via Global Tel Link (GTL) for the family of prisoners is prohibitive for many, unjustly impeding family contact with loved ones. When family members of the imprisoned engage in a video visit with an incarcerated relative, they are charged $8 for 20 minutes and up to $20 for 50 minutes; these rates, as noted above, can be prohibitive, discouraging family contacts that are critical for strengthening family bonds, successful re-entry and preventing recidivism. Contrast this with video visitation made available by Zoom to Virginia citizens not incarcerated: no cost for 40 minutes or less for an unlimited number of video visits during a month, for 100 individuals or less per visit; for visits of more than 40 minutes, a family subscribing to Zoom can pay an annual rate of $149.90 ($12.50 a month), and include up to 100 participants for an unlimited number of monthly video visits, with the duration of up to 24 hours per video visit.

2) Virginia’s public fiscal support is deficient. As a result, staffing and programs are stretched past limits. The faith communities and community volunteers lack resources to meet the existing needs. Volunteers simply cannot do all that is needed; and families, unfortunately, cannot easily afford the current Family Prison Video Visits facilitated by GTL, a company with a class action suit agains it in Maryland for allegedly inflating the cost of calls…read more.

Other Possibilities: The Brennan Center for Justice provides examples of what various states are doing to facilitate video visits and phone calls for families.

• The Minnesota Department of Corrections, as of March 13, uses video systems for visitation at no cost to those incarcerated.
• The South Carolina Department of Corrections has given all incarcerated individuals access to a free call program, including those who had lost phone privileges.
• Effective April 9, 2020, the Federal Bureau of Prisons made calling and video visitation free for those incarcerated in BOP facilities.
• Pennsylvania is piloting a new program allowing their incarcerated to have up to one free 45-minute video call per week using Zoom.

Recommendation: Consider a free video visitation program (see above) facilitated by AFOI or include in the Governor’s budget a Budget Amendment for MOE (Maintenance of Effort) that will provide the resources needed by families, for video visitation, including non-custodial parents. TANF resources should also be considered. Over fifty percent of TANF families are “Child Only Cases,” meaning the children in these TANF families are in relative care, i.e., “grandparents raising grandchildren.” A DSS sample found a large number of the “child-only” beneficiaries are receiving TANF benefits because a parent is incarcerated. Sixty percent of imprisoned women said their children are being cared for by grandparents. Federal TANF funds and/or MOE funds in the amount of no less than $250,000 should be made available annually for subsidizing the current prohibitive Video Visitation rates by sixty percent. In addition, funding for expanding the AFOI programs to areas of the state currently without a video visitation program is critical.

October 10, 2020