Texas Lawmakers Support More In-Person Inmate Visitation

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas state lawmakers in both the House and Senate voted on Monday in support of House Bill 549, requiring that county jails provide inmates with greater access to in-person visitation. The bill, brought by Rep. Eric Johnson (D-Dallas) will require county jails to make at least two, 20-minute, in-person visits available to inmates each week.

The bill is a cause of concern for many of the state’s county correctional departments, which in recent years have made the switch to video visitation systems. Many who have migrated to the tech-based alternative cite benefits such as cost savings, reduced strain on correctional staff and the eliminated threat of contraband passing into the facility population. Video visitation systems can also allow inmates remote access to legal counsel, and give friends and family members more flexibility in scheduling visits.

"[The bill] doesn’t limit the availability of video visitation; it simply requires that in-person visitation in our jails be left intact," Johnson told the Texas Tribune earlier this month. "It relates to county jails, not prisons – 60 percent of those who are there are innocent, waiting for trial, and couldn’t afford the bond to get out of jail."

Johnson also told the Texas Tribune that removing the in-person visitation option has had detrimental affects in inmates, causing a rise in both inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-staff violence across the state. Further critiques of the system include poor image or sound quality, which can disrupt and devalue visits, and the fact that the systems require a level of technological literacy that may make them intimidating or inaccessible to some users. As some video visitation systems charge per visit, they may also prevent lower income families from maintaining consistent communication.

Despite potential drawbacks, many county jails now rely heavily on these systems, and a change of this magnitude could pose financial problems for more modern county jails that have been designed specifically to accommodate video visitation. In response, Rep. Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) proposed an amendment to the bill geared toward existing facilities. The amendment allows the roughly one dozen counties with existing facilities that do not already contain appropriate video visitation spaces an exception from the new requirements and potential reconstruction projects. Johnson has remained critical of the amendment.

"Often, inmates need to be seen and talked to, to be encouraged to do the right thing – told to cooperate, get back to work and get back to your family," Sen. John Whitmire (D-Houston) told the Texas Tribune after the vote.

A Minnesota Department of Corrections study supports Whitmire’s comment, showing that just one visit reduced recidivism by 13 percent for new crimes and 25 percent for technical violations.

The Vera Institute of Justice — a bipartisan, nonprofit center for just policy and practice with offices in New York, Washington, New Orleans and Los Angeles — is also in the midst of a study on the impacts of video visitation. The study aims to provide “valuable empirical evidence to inform policy debates about family contact, investments and policies related to video visitation, and recidivism-reduction strategies,” according to the organization.