The end of American prison visits: jails end face-to-face contact and families suffer

[turbinetree]

One sunny day in October, at the Jefferson Parish correctional center just across the river from downtown New Orleans, Tiffany Burns, 34, was visiting her boyfriend.

The pair had been dating for almost two years and were still giggly in love when a late July knock on the door sent him away. Scooped up by the police after being accused of robbing a suburban bank at gunpoint, Chrishon Brown, 37, was sent to the correctional center while his case worked its way through the court.

A new, unwelcome chapter of their relationship began, with Brown using all his jail funds to call Tiffany, and Tiffany visiting as often as she could.

It was a long drive from her home in the Metairie suburb west of New Orleans, and could sometimes take about an hour each way with the traffic near downtown, but Burns was happy to do it. “When I visit, sometimes I forget about the glass and it feels like we are together again.”

She felt that way during her visit on 12 October, right up until the moment she walked out the jail door and was handed a pamphlet.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/09/skype-for-jailed-video-calls-prisons-replace-in-person-visits


This is just totally fucked up, no wonder this country is #1 in recidivism rates and highest per capital incarceration rate in the world, then we have traitors under house arrest, and flying down to Mar A Lago golfing.........................

[Bettie]

1. 12.99 for 20 minutes

this ensures that poor families won't be able to speak to their loved ones.

I'm betting this won't be put into effect for wealthy white collar criminals.

[CrispyQ]

3. They get ankle bracelets.

[Bettie]

4. Point taken

our "justice" system is so fucked up.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. For profit prisons are growing very fast.

and try to monetize everything.
this will end in court.

[malaise]

7. Private prisons

are neo-slave plantations

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. Yep.

Even worse down here are the state run prisons that rent out their inmates to work for people in the area, for about 1/2 the cost of hiring a regular guy.
actually helpful in cleaning away hurricane debris, but the money angle is problematic, since the prison takes most of the low "wage".

[CrispyQ]

2. We love to punish people in this country.

Not rich people, of course, but the working class, & especially POC & WOC.

The moral superiority these assholes have convinced themselves they have, is what galls me the most. Fucking hypocrites of the highest order.

[Hortensis]

8. CONSERVATIVES in ALL nations believe in the need

for strong and definite punishment. And some kinds of conservatives, estimated at roughly 20% by a leading psychologist studying this, are extremely punitive, to scary degrees.

It's not just an American problem. In fact, for a long time we were at least among the most advanced nations in that respect. People came from around the world to study our justice system.

But since the 1970s, planetwide wealth has quadrupled, and new ultrawealthy classes developed that have gained great power. Many of those people are of course conservative, some extremely punitive, and are driving a backsliding of decency and civilization in many nations, including ours.

This is a global problem, not just an American one. Great wealth is incompatible with the principle of one man, one vote and thus with democracy. We have to get control and tax them out of existence.

Vote liberal. Always.

[Me.]

5. Anything For A Buck