Dallas Texas to consider banning free in-person visits, requiring expensive video visits instead
by Peter Wagner, September 9, 2014
Later this morning, Dallas County Texas will vote on a new telephone contract with Securus that will also ban free in-person visits and require families to pay for video visitation instead.
There have been two good stories this week:
- Dallas Morning-News: Dallas County considers using video chats for jail visitation (This article is a good introduction except that it subtly legitimizes the bizarre argument that the contract might not ban in-person visits.)
- Dallas Observer: Dallas County Set to Stop Most Face-to-Face Jail Visits, Charge Families for Video (This article squarely presents the evidence to address the fact that this contract will ban in-person visits.)
With the vote scheduled for this morning, our friends at SumOfUs collected 2,053 petitions from their Texas members in under 12 hours yesterday urging the county to reject a “contract that would substitute visiting hours for expensive corporate-sponsored video calls.”
To our friends in Texas, good luck today!
