Understanding The State Of Video Visits In Federal Prison
As it stands today, unfortunately, there are no video visits in men’s federal prisons, and there’s no given time frame in which we can expect this to become available.
Now, women’s prisons have had video visits through the TRULINCS kiosk for the past four years. The technology, like all technology in federal prison, is pretty antiquated.
Despite the fact that tablets were made available through commissary in 2021, they still are not the tool you can use for video visits.
So, what about the Wi-Fi? Inmates in federal prison were forced into the yard for a period of time in Fall of 2024 as Wi-Fi was rolled out and connected in every federal prison in the country. This was due to the Martha Reid Washington Act, which stated that the federal prison system needed to have Wi-Fi infrastructure in place by January 1st, 2025.
Notice – this was just to install the infrastructure. Unfortunately, you can’t expect the BOP to take the initiative to actually use this infrastructure for anything productive without a legal mandate.
Here we are in September, and there’s still no Wi-Fi compatible tablets nor a plan to roll them out. Now, Billy Marshall’s talked a lot about technology, and as a matter of fact, the Federal Bureau of Prison’s Facebook page just published a post about a “Technology Talk.”
So, perhaps making use of the recently-installed infrastructure will be a priority in the near future. They could at least examine using a Wi-Fi connection for message and media exchanges using the prison tablets. Time will tell.
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