Cutting Inmates’ Visitation Rights a Specious Way to Save Money

Visiting your favourite mobster or godfather in the clink just got a whole lot easier, albeit, less personal. The new Edmonton Remand Centre, set to open in 2012, will not allow visitors to actually visit the centre, where the majority of inmates are only awaiting trial, not actual convicted criminals. Instead, visitors will trek to a yet-to-be-determined off-site location to video chat with prisoners. The reasoning behind the switch is simply to make the system more efficient, says the province. Every time a visitor arrives at the current centre to see an inmate, they must go through security screening, which is costly and time-consuming. Also, the current in-person visiting system only allows for 12 visitors at a time. The new system would most likely have 60 booths at both the Remand Centre and the off-site location, which would allow for about 1600 half-hour visits per day. Visitors would still have to make an appointment to speak to an inmate and would need to travel to the off-site location for the video conference.

While the reasoning behind the new visiting system may be purely financial from the province’s point of view (after all, times are tough and any changes that save the province money are seen by many as a good move, whether or not the changes are beneficial or harmful). However, many of the people who are favour the idea of video visits over face-to-face visits say that it is a good idea simply because the inmates at the Remand Centre don’t deserve in-person visitors. At best, this is specious logic; at worst, it’s vindictive. The Remand Centre is primarily a facility to hold people awaiting trial, meaning that inmates have not yet been found guilty of a crime. It is one thing to take away the visiting rights of convicted murderers; it is quite another thing to take away outside human contact from people who are supposedly presumed innocent until proven guilty. Many people will say the prisoners awaiting trial in the Remand Centre are criminals and don’t deserve visitation rights; I say, that’s for a judge and jury to decide.

The average prisoner is only in the Remand Centre for approximately 18 days; however, some prisoners are kept in the centre for years before their cases go to trial. Imagine having no direct human contact with your wife, your brother, your best friend or your kids for almost three weeks. Sure, people often go that long without seeing loved ones if they live far apart or are away at university or on a business trip. But imagine not having direct contact with your husband or grandchildren for two years not by choice but because you are incarcerated for a crime you did not commit and have not been convicted of. I don’t think any of us can pretend that it wouldn’t be hard not seeing the people we are used to seeing or living with every day. Removing a prisoner’s right to speak to their loved ones in person punishes not only the prisoner but also the wives, husbands, children, siblings and parents of prison inmates.

Not only will removing in-person visitation rights for prisoners be detrimental to the well-being of a prisoner’s family and friends, it may potentially cause a prisoner to have difficulty successfully rejoining society after their time in the Remand Centre. Having to tell friends and co-workers your two-week vacation was actually spend in doing time in the clink for a crime you didn’t commit is socially awkward enough as it is; imagine having to have that conversation if you had spent the entire two weeks you were away not talking to anybody face-to-face except prison guards and your fellow inmates. Humans are creatures of habits; social skills are learned and must be practiced, otherwise they will be lost. Isolated inmates run the risk of being unable to rejoin society as a functioning human being, making them kind of useless to the world at large. But 18 days is such a short time, you say. Well, why don’t you lock yourself in solitary confinement in your basement with no laptop, no TV, no people to talk to for the next three weeks and report back on how you feel after that experience, if you’re still able to communicate your feelings. Innocent people who have not been convicted of a crime by a court of law should not be cut off from their loved ones, with possibly long-lasting detrimental effects on one’s quality of life.