Community Outcry Tables New Restrictions on Prison Visits-For Now

By Bonnie Tenneriello

Jannuary began with a blue moon, that rare event when a second full moon shines in the month, as it did on New Year’s Eve.  And then we had a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence: the Department of Correction appeared – maybe – to be retreating from proposals to restrict prison visits.  While most DOC regulations sail through approval after a tranquil hearing, the public outcry over proposed changes to visiting regulations threatened a noisy fight, and the planned hearing on these regulations was indefinitely postponed.  Prisoners, their relatives, and advocates were alarmed at the prospect of greatly reduced visiting opportunities and new hurdles for visitors.  While it’s impossible to say why the hearing was cancelled, it seems reasonable to guess that outside pressure played a role.  Advocates still expect some changes to the visiting rules to be proposed.

Among other things, the changes would have limited each prisoner to 10 pre-approved visitors, and would have limited each visitor to seeing only one prisoner throughout the entire DOC system (except when the prisoners are both immediate family members of the visitor).   This would be devastating to prisoners and their visitors.  A visitor with more than one loved one in prison would have to choose whom to see and whom to give up visiting.   Prisoners with more than 10 people willing to come see them would have to sacrifice precious visits.   It would also devastate the communities from which large numbers of prisoners are drawn.  According to data for 2002 (the most recent available), 19 percent of state prisoners being released were from Suffolk County and 18 percent from Worcester county.  In the urban neighborhoods where the rate of incarceration is high, a person is far more likely to have several incarcerated friends and relatives.

Visitors would also face new bureaucratic hurdles.  They would need to submit a written application and undergo a Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) check in order to be approved and placed on the prisoner’s visiting list. (Those with felony convictions are already barred from entering without special permission from the prison Superintendent.)  Before entering the prison, visitors would have to be checked against the prisoner’s list.  This will only add to waiting times that already can stretch for hours.   As it is, many visitors travel for hours from urban communities to rural prisons that lack public transportation, often at great expense and often with young children.  And after all that, if and when a prisoner’s visiting list is not properly maintained, visitors may well be turned away despite having been pre-approved.  Other provisions, such as searching mothers after breastfeeding (in addition to the search before entering prison) add unnecessary humiliation.

It is a truism that prison visits help maintain ties to the outside world and make for a better transition on release.  The proposed regulations themselves acknowledged “the importance of maintaining contact with family and the community.”   Let’s hope that the DOC comes back with a proposal that will do more than lip service to this notion, but let’s not count on it.  Those concerned with prisoner welfare and re-entry remain on guard and prepared to fend off proposals to restrict visits.  One effect of our nation’s high rate of incarceration (we lead the world) is that more and more people visit prisoners.  Unlike most prison issues, this one will not slide under the public radar.

Bonnie Tenneriello is an attorney with Prisoners’ Legal Services, formerly known as Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services.