{"id":7367,"date":"2018-03-26T13:42:16","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T17:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=7367"},"modified":"2019-09-11T16:54:35","modified_gmt":"2019-09-11T20:54:35","slug":"ma_cj_reform18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/26\/ma_cj_reform18\/","title":{"rendered":"New Massachusetts reform package aims to protect in-person jail visits"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nLast week, after many months of effort on the part of grassroots organizations and lawmakers, the Massachusetts conference committee between the House and Senate reached an agreement<\/a> on criminal justice reform – including a measure that will protect in-person visits for incarcerated people and their families.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe bill is quite extensive, but the language around visitation reads:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nA correctional institution, jail or house of correction shall not: (i) prohibit, eliminate or unreasonably limit in-person visitation of inmates; or (ii) coerce, compel or otherwise pressure an inmate to forego or limit in-person visitation. For the purposes of this section, to unreasonably limit in-person visitation of inmates shall include, but not be limited to, providing an eligible inmate fewer than 2 opportunities for in-person visitation during any 7-day period.\n<\/p>\n

\nA correctional institution, jail or house of correction may use video or other types of electronic devices for inmate communication with visitors; provided, that such communications shall be in addition to and shall not replace in-person visitation, as prescribed in this section.\n<\/p>\n

\nNothing in this section shall prohibit the temporary suspension of visitation privileges for good cause including, but not limited to, misbehavior or during a bonafide emergency.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThe Senate and the House will get opportunities to vote<\/a> on the bill before it finds its way to Gov. Charlie Baker’s office for a final signature. We encourage lawmakers in Massachusetts to support this policy measure and join advocates from across the country<\/a> in recognizing that the pernicious, profit driven trend of replacing in-person visits with video chats<\/a> is an unacceptable one.\n<\/p>\n

Update, April 13 2018: Gov. Charlie Baker signed this bill into law.<\/b> See coverage by the State House News Service<\/a>, or a more detailed breakdown of the bill<\/a> from state Sen. William Brownsberger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Massachusetts conference committee between the House and Senate recently reached an agreement on criminal justice reform which includes an important measure that will protect in-person jail visits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,1],"tags":[59],"coauthors":[42],"class_list":["post-7367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-briefings","category-uncategorized","tag-jails-bail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7367"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7430,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7367\/revisions\/7430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7367"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}