By Paul Hampel
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
BELLEVILLE — When Sherry McCullough goes to the St. Clair County Jail to visit her son, she catches glimpses of his cellmates — sometimes more of the cellmates than she cares to see.
The problem, McCullough said, is that a video visitation system installed in December requires her to sit in one room as her son sits in a crowded jail pod in another section.
“I hate not being able to see him face-to-face when I come to the jail,” McCullough, 42, said Wednesday as she waited with her mother for her son’s image to appear on one of a dozen monitors in the visiting room.
“I want to get a good look at him, to tell him to stand up and turn around so I can see that he’s getting enough to eat and that he hasn’t been hurt.
“Instead, I have to see his cellmates marching around behind him in their underwear.”
But McCullough appreciated the new system in December when, for an introductory price, she could see and speak with him from the comfort of her home, over the Internet.
The special price has since expired, and McCullough said she could no longer afford the home option.
Her reactions are typical of mixed reviews of the jail’s video system.
St. Clair County officials say it is a marked improvement for the public and the jail staff.
“People who live two states away are now able to visit inmates every day, if they want to,” Sheriff Rick Watson said.
“And from the standpoint of safety and security, it’s a huge improvement. Every pod has a video monitor and the prisoners don’t have to be moved for visits, which saves on staff time. And if you cut down on movement of prisoners, you cut down on dangerous incidents.”
Attorney Tom Gabel, with the federal public defender’s office, said video from home was a good option. “If you can’t make it to the jail for whatever reason — that’s the good part of this system,” he said in a recent interview.
But he decried the jail policy that restricts most on-site visits to the video system, too.
“My clients hate it,” Gabel said. “They want to actually see people who come to visit them, not look at them on a computer screen from a crowded pod where other prisoners can gawk from behind and hear what they’re saying.
“It’s just one more thing prisoners find impersonal at the jail.”
And some nonprofit prisoner advocacy groups are blasting the video fees, which include a commission for the jail.
The area’s largest jails, in St. Louis and St. Louis County, are not using a video system, but officials said they were considering it. Officials in Jefferson and St. Charles counties say they want to install one as soon as possible.
While Missouri prisons have no plans to use video, the entire Illinois state prison system will begin offering it from various satellite locations in June. Eventually, the state may accommodate home connections as well.
Securus Technologies Inc., based in Dallas, installed the St. Clair County Jail system at a cost to the company of about $332,000. In addition to the visitor monitors, there are 24 video screens installed in pods for the 540 prisoners currently incarcerated at the jail.
Fees for off-site visits, in which people can connect with prisoners remotely, will be $20 for a 20-minute session, or $40 for 40 minutes. There is no charge for a video visit at the jail.
Tom Maziarz, manager of the county’s purchasing department, said the county would collect a 20 percent commission if it reached 729 paid visitors a month. In January, there were 388. After two years, the county gets the commission regardless.
Maziarz said the county’s revenue would go toward defraying jail costs. “That means that the same (prisoners) who are stopping up toilets and tearing things up will be helping to pay for repairs when they use the new system,” he said.
Last fall, the Federal Communications Commission banned commissions that private companies pay to prisons and jails on interstate phone calls. The FCC deemed as “exorbitant” rates as high as $17 for a 15-minute phone call — an amount not much higher than the rate for video visitations at the St. Clair County Jail.
In response, the FCC capped the fees for interstate calls at 25 cents a minute for collect calls and 21 cents for prepaid debit calls.
Visitors to the St. Clair County Jail chat with inmates on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2014. The jail is one of the first to use Internet video links to let relatives and friends visit with inmates from home for a fee or at the jail for free. Photo by Christian Gooden, cgooden@post-dispatch.com
Securus, which provides jail phone services at the St. Clair County Jail and elsewhere, challenged the FCC order in court. The company could not be reached for comment.
“The argument could be made that paying the high rate is still a good deal if it saves the expense and time of traveling a long distance to visit someone incarcerated in a prison,” said John Maki, director of the John Howard Association, a prisoner advocacy group.
“But the population for jails is almost always local, and there’s no excuse for such high fees.
“The bottom line is that prison visits are a basic right that need to be disconnected from a profit motive, both for private companies and the jails,” Maki said.
Maziarz, with the county’s purchasing department, defended the rates.
“A dollar a minute strikes me as a fair price,” Maziarz said, adding. “I guess it depends what viewpoint you’re coming from. The way I look at it, we’ve got a captive audience. If they don’t like (the rates), I guess they should not have got in trouble to begin with.”
Tom Shaer, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Corrections, said contractual details, such as visit costs and commissions, had not yet been worked out with the state’s provider, Globel Tel Link.
“Any money that comes to us will be applied to offset our costs,” Shaer said. “There is no profit motive for us. But we have so many families wishing to do this we may need more staff hours to make the service available.”
The state will offer one key option in its system: Visitors who travel to the prisons will still be allowed to meet with prisoners in person.
“I can’t imagine the scenario in which someone would travel to a prison and then wish to communicate through a video screen rather than see a prisoner face-to-face,” Shaer said. “All research shows in-person visits absolutely benefit the mental health of both parties; video can’t match that.”
Watson, the St. Clair County sheriff, said he had heard some complaints about use of video, but he asserts that prisoners and visitors are pleased overall and that “resistance to it is fading.”
He added, “If someone really wants to visit face-to-face, we’d consider it on a case-by-case basis.”