House Bill 549 Restoring Face-to-Face Visitations backed by Senate
Amidst technological advancements that offer a “better” and cost-effective alternative to in-person communication, nothing beats eye-to-eye conversations especially for someone who is detained behind bars. This has been the call of many human rights advocates and fortunately they have been heard.
Detainees in some Texas county jails may now have a choice to rather see their loved ones in-person than over a video application after the Senate backed a House bill allowing face-to-face inmate visitation. The HB 549 will protect the in-person visitation rights of Texas county jail detainees. While the video alternative will not really go away, under the House Bill 549, inmates will remain to have this choice. Rep. Johnson further states that taking this privilege away from inmates will have damaging effects on the detainees as well on their families.
Thanks to Rep. Eric Johnson of Dallas, the author of the HB 549, families will no longer be stripped of their only chance to see their son, daughter, father, mother, sister, or brother – that is in-person visits. The bill requires county jails to give a minimum of two twenty minute in person visitations, available for inmates and their family member/s each week.
Recently the Senate has backed HB 549. According to Senator John Whitmire of Houston and Harris County Texas, who promoted the bill in the upper house, the bill will keep families intact, and prevents divorce. He further said, the inmates need constant communication and “real tangible talk”. This encourages them to be more cooperative and basically put the pieces back together and be with their family.
The legislation was brought as a response to a recent move to eliminate in-person visitations and provide “video visitations” as a more secure or cost-efficient visitation system. At this time, Texas County Jails may offer either video or face-to-face visitation; nevertheless a lot of these jail facilities have completely abolished in-person visitation. It has been recently estimated that at least 43 states now practice video visitation in their prison facilities.
Advocates for a more humane in-person visitation have criticized it as a profit-generating attempt that will only further disconnect detainees from society. According to Rep. Johnson, taking away in-person visitations has resulted in an upsurge in detainee-on-detainee and detainee-on-staff attacks within Texas prisons.
These apprehensions were back by Sen. Whitmire, who mentioned that he had lately learned that the company that monopolizes video visitation will be charging families or visitors in the future to be able to “communicate” with the inmates. He called this action an unethical conduct. The legislation that has passed with a vote of 24 to 7, is now on its way to the Governor.