The criminal justice system in America is known for hurting criminals more than it helps them. Rather than being a place for criminals to reflect upon their actions and serving as a form of justice, prisons often become so isolating for inmates that when they are released, they are bitter or unable to readjust to the outside world. In an effort to fix the prison system, legislators have drafted several bills in an effort to keep the prison system in check and ensure prisoners serve their fair time in a broken system.
The Department of Correction in Massachusetts recently issued a policy that will go into effect March 9 which limits the number of visitors a prisoner can have. The number of visitors depends on the prisoners’ level of security. In a maximum security, where inmates are often sentenced for more severe offenses, prisoners are allowed no more than five different visitors. These visitors, including family members and friends, must be pre-approved by prison officials beforehand. The list of visitors can be changed just twice a year.
The official justification for limiting visitors is that such a measure will prevent drug smuggling from outsiders to prisoners. According to the department officials who passed this policy, restricting the number of visitors could better the safety of the other inmates and families. In addition, the hope is that prisoners who demonstrate good behavior will be rewarded by relocating them to prisons with less security and thus entitled to having more visitors. But it is such visits that result in many inmates’ successful, sometimes even early, release from their sentence. Thus, the impact visiting family members and friends have on prisoners far outweighs its costs in perpetuating the drug trade in prisons.
For many prisoners serving life sentences, visiting their loved ones is their only time to interact and connect with people from the outside world. It’s one of the few things they can hold onto while serving their time. Even more, for those inmates serving 20 or 30 year sentences, seeing their family members can serve as a beacon of hope for them to behave appropriately in the hopes of getting released early. They have people to look forward to spending time with upon release and living the rest of their lives with. Receiving this community support in prison is key to many prisoners in assuring that people care for them and they are needed in the outside world. In a place where it is otherwise easy to lose touch with the world beyond its walls, family and friends are some of the only things prisoners have.
Any measure that strips away this key aspect of humanity is unacceptable, especially in a system that is already so broken. This policy treats the time that prisoners spend with their loved ones as a privilege, not a right. Regardless of the crime they may have committed, each and every prisoner should be allowed the right to visit their families. It would not be unusual for a prisoner to have a large, extended family or even have multiple children whom they would like to keep in touch with. In effect, this policy would result in families being torn apart and potentially even more broken if one of its members is not with them.
Of course, an easier fix to address the issue of drug smuggling in prisons — which has become a serious issue in prisons across the country — would be to increase security checks for those visitors. Additional vetting and more thorough background checks for visitors would be more effective in reducing criminal activity within prisons. In many prisons, illegal activity occurs on the inside, with prison guards and officers often playing a part in it. Simply reducing the number of visitors who do engage in smuggling drugs would not necessarily result in less crime. Those engaged in drug smuggling will simply find other means to do so by potentially abusing the policy and including those complicit people as one of their visitors.
Reducing the number of people allowed to visit their friend or family member in prison is not productive for the prison system. In addition to the potential for prisoners to have an uptick in bad behavior as a result from less interaction with family members, limiting prisoners’ number of visitors also strips away rights from prisoners in a system where they already don’t have many.
It’s no secret that the American prison system is in dire need of reform. If we want to see progress in the criminal justice system, we should start by retaining those elements that actually help and support prisoners.
