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Street Roots » January 2-8,2015
•P HO TO BY EM ILY GREEN
Four video visiting boxes hang on the wall in the lobby o f Multnomah County Detention Center in downtown Portland. These boxes are currently being used to communicate with inmates at the
Inverness Jail, as installation at MCDC has not been completed. These boxes will take the place o f all non-professional in-person visits by the end o f 2015.
BY EM ILY GREEN
STAFF WRITER
here’s big money to be made in our
jails and prisons. Just ask Securus
Technologies, Inc.
In 2013, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s
Office (MCSO) signed a four-year contract
with the Texas-based prison-industry giant,
allowing it and two other out-of-state
corporations to begin profiting off
Multnomah County inmates and their
families — charging for services the county
historically provided free of charge.
Under the terms of the contract, one of
the three corporations is profiting every
time a deposit is made onto a Multnomah
County inmate’s account, another profits
from fees charged to inmates who are
issued a debit card upon their release, and
tiie third profits from its video visiting
system. The contract requires the county to
eventually eliminate in-person visiting and
promote video visiting instead.
With the exception of attorney and other
professional visits, all in-person visiting will
be eliminated in Multnomah County
correctional facilities by the end of this year,
according to a MCSO spokesperson Lt.
Steven Alexander. That’s if the planned
installation of the video visiting systems is
completed on time. After the switch is
made, family and friends of MCSO inmates
will only be able to visit their locked-up
loved ones by communicating through a box
with an attached phone for audio and a
a
small video screen for visual. Prior to the
video setup, visits in MCSO jails were*done
with the inmate and visitor only a few feet
from each other, on a phone, with a piece of
shatterproof glass between them.
Unless you’re using the visitation kiosks
in the jail, charges will apply.
Securus is only one of many companies
profiting by charging families of prisoners
money for services now outsourced from
the correctional system. Today, Securus
serves 2,600 facilities in 46 states. It boasts
that it has paid $1.3 billion in commissions
to correctional facilities over the past 10
years; In 2009, the last year financial
information was made publicly available,
Securus brought in more than $363 million
in revenue.
Video “visits”
Video visiting has “really taken off over
the past three yefers,” says Prison Policy
Initiative spokesperson Bernadette Rabuy.
Her organization has been studyihg the
prevalence and effects of video visiting
across the country, and she says it’s more
common than she previously thought, with
upwards of 500 facilities using the service.
Visits can be conducted on site, usually
from the lobby of a correctional facility, or
remotely, which can benefit inmates whose
families live far away, which is often the
case with state facilities. But, says Rabuy,
“In the county jail context, it’s been really
harmfril.”
According to the Dallas Morning News,
Dallas County, Texas, turned down a similar
deal with Securus last year on the grounds
that the “elimination of in-person visits was
inhumane.”
Rabuy says Securus is the. only company
offering video visiting that requires the
elimination of in-person visits in all of its
contracts. While the technology for video
visiting has existed since the 1990s, Rabuy
says most systems, including Securus’s, still
experience many glitches, with frozen
screens, audio delays and poor picture
quality. In testing, Rabuy says she
experienced 10-second audio delays that
made communication during the video visit
virtually impossible.
Rabuy says her organization has found it’s
difficult for family members to determine
„the well being of an inmate through the
small screen, something that’s very
important to them. They can’t tell if the
inmate has lost or gained weight or see
changes in their skin tone. Prison Policy
Initiative’s study on video visiting will be
released later this month.
Street Roots asked Multnomah County
Sheriff Dan Staton if he thought the switch
to video visiting at MCSO facilities would
make visiting less personal than it was with
face-to-face visits. In an e-mail response, his
office didn’t answer the question, but stated,
See CAPTIVE, page 5