Massachusetts gets closer to protecting in-person jail visits

By Peter Wagner

Both the Massachusetts House and Senate have passed major criminal justice reform packages that include a provision prohibiting jails from replacing in-person visitation with computer video chats.

The bills now go to a conference committee where the House and Senate will iron out other differences between the two bills.

For more on the national effort to protect in-person visits from the video calling industry, see our report Screening Out Family Time.

Reviewing our work over the last year

We just released our 2016-2017 Annual Report, and I'm thrilled to share some highlights of our work with you. Despite the new challenges posed by the White House, we had a number of big successes, including:

• Providing the first ever big picture view of who pays for and who benefits from mass incarceration.
• Exposing the real drivers of local jail expansion, and holding state governors and legislatures accountable for the state policy choices that have fueled jail growth.
• Exploring why "Stop-and-Frisk" policing -- which President Trump thinks is "incredible" -- is actually incredibly discriminatory.
• Protecting in-person visitation from the video "visitation" industry.
• Helping state lawmakers reverse a relic from the War on Drugs that prohibits people convicted of drug offenses from driving. (Virginia partially repealed their law, and other efforts are now underway in four more states plus D.C.)

But that's not all. In our highly-skimmable annual report, we review our work on all of our issues over the last year. Thank you for being a part of our successes over the last year. We are looking forward to working with you in the year to come.