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Archive for the ‘Visits’ Category

Jails Must Trim Budgets

February 23rd, 2009
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dollarsThe economic crisis is hitting local jails throughout the country.  Just this weekend I found the following examples:

Ramsey County MN Corrections has been told to cut $550,000 from this year’s budget.

Community Corrections, which runs the jail, is being asked to trim $536,000. Department spokesman Chris Crutchfield said it’s unclear where those might slice.   “We have a hole to fill, and it’s a question of how we’re going to keep people safe with $500,000 less, and that’s a lot of money for us,” he said.

Orange County CA has cancelled an expansion:

A jail unit that houses nearly 200 inmates and was planned for expansion earlier this year will be closed because of budget constraints. Orange County sheriff’s officials on Friday began shutting down the unit at James Musick jail. The low-security inmates housed in tents, which were erected in the 1980s to ease overcrowding, will be moved to other areas of the jail as well as other facilities in the county system. The move is expected to save about $1.2 million a year.

Nassau County NY has cut visiting hours:

As part of a countywide initiative to close a $130-million gap in this year’s budget, the jail no longer has visiting hours on Saturday starting this weekend, Chief Deputy County Executive Marilyn Gottlieb said last week.   The change surprised some who stopped by the jail yesterday afternoon expecting to visit someone.

vericatrajkova CA Orange County, California, Economic Issues, MN Ramsey County, Minnesota, NY Nassau County, New York, Prison and Jail Construction, Visits

Prison Visitors’ Shelter Built In Fiji

February 16th, 2009
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fiji-shelterVisitors going to visit friends and relatives at Suva Women’s Prison will be happy that a a new shelter is there where they can take cover when it rains or shelter from the sun. The Fiji Times Online reports:

The shelter is being built five metres from the prison compound.   The project was an initiative of the Commissioner of Prisons, Ioane Naivalurua and is scheduled to be ready next week.  “We started building the shelter from Thursday and by next week, visitors can start using it,” said the Prison Commissioner’s staff officer, Lemeki Rokovesa.

The project costs $1000.  “We managed to get sponsorship from three businessmen who gave the cost of material, for the project by Mr Naivalurua,” said Mr Rokovesa.   Labour was provided by three inmates and warden Malakai Tamani who is the foreman.

vericatrajkova Australasia, Fiji, INTERNATIONAL, Inmate Labor, Visits

Florida Jail Bans Contact Visits

January 22nd, 2009
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visitation-by-video1The Charlotte County Jail is the latest corrections facility in Southwest Florida to ban visitors from coming into direct contact with inmates.

The jail … unveiled its new video phone system this week. Visitors come to a building next to the jail, pick up the receiver, and start their visit.  Deputies say the system helps keep contraband such as weapons and drugs away from inmates. That’s the number one reason the facility phased out direct visits, said Major Thomas Rodgers, the jail’s top administrator.   “They’ll leave [the contraband] inside the facility, whether it’s in the bathroom or up in a ceiling tile, anywhere visitors can leave it,” Rodgers said. “Then inmates as they clean the facility will come around and grab it.”

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Taping Inmate Calls Is Routine

October 17th, 2008
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Taping inmates’ telephone calls is the latest in a series of precautions that local wardens have taken to prevent contraband from making its way into jails and to deal with the increasingly pressing problems of gang violence, witness intimidation and prisoners orchestrating crime from behind bars.

The phone call from the Baltimore County Detention Center, like those from most local jails, begins with a notice that the recipient must accept the charges if the call from an inmate is to go through.  But these days, there’s another warning: “This call is from the correctional institution and is subject to monitoring and recording.”

Baltimore County jail staff recently started opening mail on attorney stationery – but in the presence of the inmate to whom the letter is addressed – after discovering that drugs were being slipped into envelopes stolen from law offices. And they’ve been checking more closely the clothes that families deliver for defendants to wear in court after discovering drugs hidden in the hollowed-out cavities of shoes and sewn into the linings of coats and dresses, said James P. O’Neill, director of the county’s Department of Corrections.  “It’s like water seeking a path,” he said. “If you leave any hole out there, inmates will find a way to take advantage.”

In July, Baltimore County became the most recent of several area jurisdictions to record the phone calls of inmates. The county’s decision has caused concern among some defense lawyers, who say it violates the legal privilege that protects communication between attorneys and their clients.   So this month, in an effort to balance inmates’ rights with the security needs of the detention center, Baltimore County jail officials will begin registering the phone numbers of private lawyers who want calls to their offices exempted from the recordings – a provision that’s already shielding calls from inmates to the county’s public defenders.   “That’s not what we’re interested in,” O’Neill said of conversations between inmates and their attorneys. “We’re interested in the people who are trying to contact witnesses or trying to put hits out on other witnesses, and guys and gals who are running their criminal enterprises from beyond the walls,” O’Neill said.

Of those facilities in the Baltimore area that tape calls, only Howard County does not exempt attorney calls from the recordings.  Jack Kavanagh, director of Howard County’s department of corrections, pointed out that attorneys who don’t want to be monitored are warned, and said: “That’s why we have attorney visits.”

In Carroll County, jail staff also recently started recording and monitoring conversations in the jail’s visitation area, where inmates and their friends or relatives on opposite sides of a window talk through a phone line, said Maj. Steve Reynolds, the facility’s assistant warden.  “It is a component of security. … We know there’s a correlation oftentimes between criminal activity and information being passed back and forth between inmates and people on the outside,” he said. “There are huge implications as far as intelligence gathering goes.”   The recordings have been used there in court to convict defendants of telephone harassment and, in combination with the system’s GPS capabilities, to locate prisoners who have wandered off from a court-ordered treatment center, Reynolds said.

More details on this at the Baltimore Sun.

vericatrajkova Inmate Telephones, MD Baltimore, MD Carroll County, MD Howard County, Visits

Daily Sweep 9/7

September 7th, 2008
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Staff Shortage Cancels Vists

July 29th, 2008
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In Hawaii, staff shortages are causing visit days to be cancelled.

On average, one in five visiting days at the medium security section of Halawa Correctional Facility has been canceled so far this year because there are too few corrections officers to oversee the visiting areas and process arriving visitors, prison officials said … Department of Public Safety Director Clayton Frank said the system’s first obligation is to make sure all critical security posts in the prison are staffed on visiting days. It takes about five extra officers to run visits, and “if we do not have additional staff to go around, then visits will be canceled,” he said. “This is important and we’re going to try our best to do it, but not to compromise the security of the facility.”

… Visitation at Halawa is generally allowed on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. As of mid-July, 13 of approximately 64 allowable visitation days this year had been canceled.

More on this story at the Honolulu Examiner.

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Daily Sweep 080529

May 29th, 2008
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Daily Sweep 080227

February 27th, 2008
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Daily Sweep 071227

December 27th, 2007
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Total Telephone Company adds video visitation functionality to Midland County Texas. In South Dakota, the Superintendent of Juveniles, Chuck Gilson, has retired; Jeff Haiar has taken over the position on an interim basis. An attorney (and political opponent of the Governor) says the Maine administration’s plans for jail consolidation contain hidden costs.

vericatrajkova Inmate Telephones, Juvenile Justice, Maine, South Dakota, TX Midland County, Texas, Video Use, Visits