Are there virtual visits to Inmates? Interestingly, but not surprisingly, many prison institutions have now incorporated virtual visits for their inmates. And for most of those prisons, that’s the “only” way of visiting them.
While benefits of computer-based visitation can include savings in traveling costs, waiting time, and the ability to visit from the comfort of one’s home, others find it to be unsatisfactory because there’s less of a “connection” and technological issues like glitches in the screen, and audio lagging in the video arise.
So with problems like these, why are jails incorporating them? The practice is partly being embraced because virtual-visitation is less time-consuming and requires fewer staff members to be available. Currently, only a fraction of the U.S. prison’s are currently using virtual visitations.
What do you think? Should prisons have face-to-face visitations? Should they set up virtual visitations? Maybe a combination of both?
Check out the original article in the New York Times here.