{"id":3057,"date":"2015-01-29T13:58:57","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T17:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=3057"},"modified":"2021-03-29T14:12:10","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T18:12:10","slug":"multnomah-reverses-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/29\/multnomah-reverses-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Multnomah County Sheriff reverses ban on in-person visits in Portland jails!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday we received some very exciting news! Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton is reversing the ban on in-person visits in Portland jails<\/a> and announced that families will now have the opportunity to visit incarcerated loved ones via video or<\/i> in-person.<\/p>\n

This is a tremendous victory that was made possible by powerful and consistent investigative reporting done by Street Roots<\/i> — which first broke the story<\/a> about video visitation in Portland earlier this month — as well as pressure from the public and county legislators who asked the sheriff to reconsider the elimination of in-person visits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As we explain in our new report, Screening Out Family Time: The for-profit video visitation industry in prisons and jails<\/a>, families have been extremely unhappy when video visits are implemented to take away traditional visits. Unfortunately, some of the biggest companies in the industry like Securus claim that they must ban in-person visits in order to be profitable. In our report, we found that another company TurnKey Corrections has actually had the opposite experience: if facilities give families more<\/i> visitation options, they will be more likely to use the paid, remote video visits. Preserving in-person visits can be better for not only incarcerated people and their families, but also for facilities and companies.<\/p>\n

The Portland victory is so important because:<\/p>\n