The Static Screen: How We Lost Connection and Fought to Get It Back

I. Introduction: The Promise of a Pixelated Window

The day our county jail announced it was ending in-person visits, they sold it to us as progress.

A flyer in the waiting room, glossy and full of stock photos of smiling families, promised a “state-of-the-art” video visitation system.

It would be safer, more efficient, and would enhance accessibility, bridging the 100-mile gap that separated our home from the facility where my husband was held.¹

For a moment, I let myself believe it.

Maybe this technology, as impersonal as it sounded, could mean more frequent connections.

Maybe my daughter could show her father her report card without a three-hour round trip.

The promise was a window, a way to shrink the painful distance imposed by incarceration.²

That fragile hope shattered on my daughter’s eighth birthday.

The plan was simple: a paid video call so she could see her dad and he could see her new bike.

The reality was a bureaucratic and technical nightmare.

First came the labyrinthine process of setting up an account with the vendor, Securus, a confusing sequence of online forms, ID uploads, and waiting for approval that felt designed to frustrate.³

Then came the cost: a staggering fee for a 20-minute slot, a price far beyond what any comparable service like Skype or FaceTime would charge.⁵

I paid it, telling myself it was worth it for her birthday.

When the scheduled time arrived, we logged in.

My daughter, dressed in her party dress, sat beaming in front of the laptop.

His face appeared on the screen—a blocky, pixelated version of him—and then it froze.

The audio was a garbled mess of static and metallic shrieks.

We could see his mouth moving, but we couldn’t hear him.

He was a ghost in the machine.

My daughter’s smile faltered, then dissolved into tears of confusion and disappointment.

The call timed O.T. The screen went black.

The birthday “visit” was over.

My subsequent attempt to get a refund became a case study in corporate indifference.

I filled out online forms and waited on hold for what felt like hours.

A month later, after hearing nothing, I checked my account status online.

The reason for the failed visit had been changed to: “You did not log in for your scheduled visit”.⁷

It was a lie, a maddening, bureaucratic gaslight.

My family’s experience, I would soon learn, was not an isolated incident.

It was a symptom of a nationwide problem, a system that promised connection but delivered frustration, heartbreak, and financial exploitation.⁸

This isn’t just a story about a failed video call.

It’s about the systemic replacement of a fundamental human need—family connection—with a for-profit, technologically inferior substitute.

Research overwhelmingly shows that maintaining family bonds is one of the most effective tools we have to reduce recidivism, improve mental health, and ensure successful reentry.¹⁰

When we erect barriers to that connection, whether through plexiglass or a pixelated screen, we are not just punishing an individual; we are undermining the safety and stability of our communities.

My fight for a refund evolved into a fight for something much bigger: reclaiming the simple, powerful, and irreplaceable value of seeing a loved one face-to-face.

II. A Flawed Lifeline: The True Cost of “Connecting”

The sales pitch for video visitation is compelling and consistent across the country.

Companies and correctional facilities promote it as a modern solution that enhances security by reducing inmate movement and eliminating contraband, improves operational efficiency by cutting down on staffing needs, and increases accessibility for families who live far away.¹

But for the millions of families navigating this system, the gap between the promise and the reality is a chasm of frustration, debt, and emotional distress.

The Promise vs. The Reality

The core failure of these systems is the technology itself.

While marketed as being “just like Skype,” the user experience is notoriously unreliable.¹⁶

Families consistently report calls that won’t connect, frozen screens, severe audio delays that make conversation impossible, and pixelated video quality that obscures facial expressions.⁸

These are not occasional glitches; they are persistent, documented features of the service.

News reports have chronicled system-wide outages at jails across the country lasting for weeks or even months due to everything from lightning strikes to incompatible software updates, leaving families completely cut off.¹⁷

One former prisoner recalled, “You wouldn’t even get your visitation; you would have to wait until the next week, because even though the system was down, they would not make up the visitation you missed”.¹⁷

This persistent unreliability transforms a tool meant to alleviate stress into a constant source of it.

The Financial Burden

This subpar service comes at an exorbitant price.

While some facilities offer a limited number of free on-site video sessions, the remote option—the primary benefit for families living far away—is a significant financial burden.

Rates can be as high as $12.99 for a 20-minute call in Louisiana or $10 for a 60-minute call in Texas.¹⁸

In Michigan, a 20-minute call costs $3.20, while in Washington state, a 30-minute call has cost as much as $12.95.⁶

These costs are levied against some of the country’s poorest families, who are already struggling with the financial strain of having a loved one incarcerated.⁸

Compounding the issue is the practice of charging families even when the technology fails.

As my own experience showed, getting a refund for a dropped or failed call is an uphill battle against opaque customer service systems.⁷

One woman in Wisconsin reported paying $2.50 for visits that often wouldn’t connect, noting that if the system showed a connection on the facility’s end—even if it didn’t work for her—she was still charged.²¹

This creates a cruel cycle where families are forced to pay for the very technology that is failing to connect them, effectively a regressive tax on their hope and their relationships.

The Psychological Toll

Beyond the technical and financial frustrations lies a deeper, more profound cost: the psychological damage of replacing human presence with a digital facsimile.

Video calls are not, and cannot be, a true substitute for in-person contact.

First, they strip away the intimacy and non-verbal cues essential to meaningful communication.

Families and incarcerated individuals alike describe a “disconnected feeling”.²²

The poor camera placement on most terminals, often above the screen, makes direct eye contact impossible, a small detail with huge psychological implications for building trust and conveying emotion.⁸

As one man incarcerated in a Texas jail put it, “They’re probably less than 500 feet away from you and you feel like they’re still in another state… You can never look someone in the eye.

It’s impossible”.²²

For families, the pixelated screens make it difficult to truly assess a loved one’s physical and emotional well-being, replacing the reassurance of an in-person visit with anxiety.⁸

Second, the environment in which these calls take place is often hostile to connection.

To save on staffing and inmate movement, video terminals are frequently placed in loud, chaotic common areas or cell pods, devoid of any privacy.⁸

This makes sensitive or emotional conversations impossible and directly contradicts the rehabilitative goal of strengthening family bonds.

Finally, the impact on children can be particularly harmful.

While proponents suggest video calls are less intimidating for kids, the reality can be traumatic.

Young children often don’t understand the technology, becoming upset when they can’t physically touch their parent through the screen.⁸

The poor quality and frequent disruptions can create more frustration and grief than comfort, negating the visit’s positive value and potentially damaging the parent-child bond that visitation is meant to nurture.¹¹

The persistent and unaddressed technological failures, when combined with these high financial and emotional costs, amount to more than just a poorly run business.

For the vulnerable families forced to rely on it, this system becomes a form of systemic cruelty.

It dangles the promise of connection, charges a premium for it, and then snatches it away in a haze of static and frozen pixels, leaving frustration and heartache in its wake.

III. The Tollbooth in the Visiting Room: Why the System is Built to Fail Families

For months after my daughter’s birthday, I was angry at the glitches, the cost, and the terrible customer service.

I thought the system was simply broken.

The real turning point, my epiphany, came when I stopped looking at it as a faulty service and started seeing it for what it truly is: a tollbooth built on a once-free public path.

The problems families face are not bugs; they are features of a business model designed to extract wealth from a captive population, with little regard for the human cost.

The Monopoly Market

The foundation of this exploitative model is the lack of choice.

When a correctional facility decides to offer phone or video services, it doesn’t create an open market.

Instead, it awards a long-term, exclusive monopoly contract to a single private telecommunications company.²⁵

Incarcerated people and their families are a captive consumer base; they must use the chosen provider and pay their rates, or have no contact at all.

This market is dominated by a handful of powerful players, primarily Securus Technologies (owned by Aventiv, which also owns JPay) and ViaPath Technologies (formerly GTL), who control the vast majority of the industry.²⁶

Company Name	Parent Company	Sample Pre-FCC Cap Rates	Post-FCC Interim Video Caps	Notorious Practices
Securus Technologies	Aventiv®	$12.99/20 min 18; $6.00/30 min 29	$0.11 – $0.25 per minute 25	Historically required banning in-person visits in contracts; bundling services.8
ViaPath (formerly GTL)		$12.50/25 min 30	$0.11 – $0.25 per minute 25	Known for frequent system outages; bundling services.8

The Perverse Incentive of “Commissions”

The mechanism that drives the high prices is a practice known as “commissions”—a sanitized term for kickbacks.

In exchange for the monopoly contract, the telecom company agrees to pay a percentage of its revenue back to the correctional facility or the government entity that runs it.³¹

These kickbacks can be massive, sometimes constituting up to 50% or more of the cost of a call.²⁸

This practice creates a deeply perverse incentive.

When a sheriff or county board chooses a vendor, their financial interest is not to select the company that offers the best service at the lowest price for families.

Instead, the incentive is to choose the company that charges the highest rates, because higher rates generate more revenue, which in turn leads to a larger kickback for the facility’s budget.³³

The correctional facility ceases to be a neutral public servant and becomes a business partner in a scheme that profits directly from the financial strain placed on the families of the people in its custody.

The Strategy of Replacement

For the tollbooth model to be maximally profitable, you must force everyone to use the toll road.

The most effective way to do this is to close the free, public path.

In this context, that means banning in-person visitation.

Research from the Prison Policy Initiative found that an estimated 74% of jails that adopted video visitation subsequently eliminated or severely curtailed traditional in-person visits.⁸

Some companies, most notably Securus, historically wrote clauses into their contracts that explicitly required facilities to ban in-person visits for non-professional visitors as a condition of installing their “free” equipment.⁸

This is the core of the “Trojan Horse” strategy.

A private company approaches a cash-strapped county with an offer to install a modern video visitation system at no upfront cost to the taxpayer.⁶

In exchange, the county signs a long-term, revenue-sharing contract.

But for the company and the county to profit, they need a steady stream of paying customers.

By eliminating the free alternative of face-to-face visits, they manufacture that customer base overnight.³⁵

The county saves money on capital investment, but it does so by sanctioning the financial exploitation of its most vulnerable residents.

The true cost is simply transferred from the county budget to the pockets of families.

This profit motive is starkly revealed by where these bans are most common.

Logically, video visitation would be most beneficial in remote state prisons, where travel is a significant barrier.

Yet, state prison systems have been far more likely to preserve in-person visits and use video only as a supplement.

It is local county jails—where families are nearby and in-person visits are most feasible—that are most likely to ban them.⁸

This illogical pattern makes it clear that the primary driver is not logistics or even security, but revenue generation.

Entrenching the System

Once embedded, these companies use several strategies to solidify their control.

Contracts are often bundled, packaging video visitation with essential services like phone calls, email, and commissary accounts.

This makes it incredibly difficult for a facility to switch one service without disrupting all of them.⁸

Furthermore, the industry has spent millions of dollars on lobbying at both the state and federal levels to pass favorable legislation and fight regulation.

A prime example is the successful lobbying effort to pass the Cell Phone Contraband Act, which criminalized the possession of cell phones in federal prisons—effectively outlawing a cheaper competitor to their high-priced services.³⁶

This combination of contractual entanglement and political influence makes the system incredibly difficult to dislodge once it has taken root.

IV. The Human Connection Blueprint: A Framework for Visitation That Works

My epiphany—seeing the system not as a broken service but as a predatory business—was infuriating, but it was also liberating.

It meant the solution wasn’t to plead for a better product from a company with no incentive to provide one.

The solution was to change the entire framework.

If family connection is an essential service, critical for public safety and human dignity, then it should be treated like one.

It should be managed like a public utility, not sold as a luxury good.

This shift in perspective is the foundation of what our community came to call the Human Connection Blueprint, a framework for visitation that prioritizes people over profit.

Feature	The Profit-Driven Model	The Human Connection Model
Primary Goal	Revenue Generation 34	Rehabilitation & Public Safety 12
In-Person Visits	Eliminated or Restricted 9	Prioritized & Encouraged 16
Video Visits	Mandatory Replacement 8	Optional Supplement 24
Pricing	High, Per-Visit Fees 18	Low Per-Minute or Free 25
Technology	Unreliable, Poor Quality 8	High-Quality, User-Focused 8
Outcome for Families	Financial/Emotional Distress 39	Strengthened Bonds 13
Outcome for Public Safety	Undermines Reentry 40	Reduces Recidivism 10

Pillar 1: Supplement, Never Supplant – The Primacy of In-Person Connection

The first and most crucial principle of the blueprint is that technology must only ever be a supplement to, never a replacement for, in-person visitation.

The evidence is overwhelming and unambiguous: contact with loved ones is a cornerstone of successful rehabilitation.

Studies have shown that visitation is linked to a significant decrease in recidivism, with one meta-analysis finding a 26% reduction.¹²

It improves behavior inside facilities, reduces misconduct, and provides the psychological support necessary to navigate the immense stress of incarceration and reentry.¹¹

Expert bodies, including the American Correctional Association and the American Bar Association, have long recognized this, establishing in-person visitation as a correctional best practice.⁸

Therefore, any policy that eliminates or curtails this vital tool in the name of convenience or revenue is actively working against the goals of public safety and rehabilitation.

Pillar 2: Fair Access and Affordability – Dismantling the Tollbooth

To treat communication as a public utility, it must be accessible and affordable.

The key to dismantling the predatory “tollbooth” model lies in regulation.

The landmark Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022 gave the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) clear authority to regulate in-state prison and jail communication rates.²⁵

The subsequent FCC rules are transformative: they establish the first-ever rate caps for video calls (interim caps range from $0.11 to $0.25 per minute depending on facility size) and, most importantly, they prohibit the practice of paying commissions or kickbacks to facilities.²⁵

Banning kickbacks severs the perverse financial incentive that drives facilities to choose the most expensive providers.

It realigns the facility’s interest with that of the community it serves.

While the ultimate goal should be to make all forms of family communication free—an investment that pays dividends in reduced recidivism—these regulations are the essential first step.

Jurisdictions like New York City, Pennsylvania, and Colorado have already shown that offering free or low-cost calls and visits is not only possible but beneficial.¹⁸

Pillar 3: Technology for People, Not Profit – A Human-Centered Design

The final pillar insists that when technology is used, it must be designed and implemented with the needs of its human users—especially children—at its core.

This is not an anti-technology stance; it is an anti-exploitation stance.

A human-centered approach begins with making video visits child-friendly by design.

The CSG Justice Center has outlined a comprehensive set of best practices, which should be standard in any facility.

These include offering flexibility in scheduling to accommodate school hours, providing activities and games to facilitate interaction, creating welcoming physical spaces for on-site calls, and training staff in trauma-informed principles to support families through a stressful process.²⁴

Furthermore, contracts must include minimum quality-of-service standards to ensure reliable connections and clear audio-visual quality.

Technology must be accessible on a wide range of devices, not just specific operating systems, and must be backed by responsive and effective customer support that provides timely refunds for technical failures.⁸

When implemented ethically, technology can be a powerful positive force in corrections.

Video conferencing is already being used successfully for remote court appearances, telehealth, and telepsychiatry, which increase access to essential services while reducing the costs and risks of transport.¹

Secure tablets and laptops are transforming correctional education, preparing individuals with the digital literacy skills necessary for reentry into the modern world.⁴⁹

The problem has never been the technology itself, but the predatory business model that has been wrapped around it.

V. From Theory to Action: Pathways to Reclaiming Connection

The Human Connection Blueprint is not a theoretical ideal; it is an achievable reality.

Across the country, a growing movement of families, advocates, and reform-minded public officials are successfully pushing back against the for-profit model and implementing visitation policies that prioritize human connection.

These victories provide a clear roadmap for any community seeking to make a change.

Case Study in Success – Mecklenburg County, NC

Perhaps no single case better illustrates the path to reform than that of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

Under a previous sheriff, the county jail eliminated in-person visits and implemented a video-only policy with the provider GTL.³⁰

The rationale was the standard industry pitch: safety and efficiency.

The result was the standard outcome: frustrated families and a system that profited from their isolation.

However, the community did not accept this as the new normal.

The issue of visitation became a central theme in the 2018 sheriff’s election.

Challenger Garry McFadden made restoring in-person jail visits a core promise of his campaign, arguing that connection improves mental health and public safety.¹⁸

Upon winning the election, Sheriff McFadden made good on his promise.

In January 2019, the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office announced the full restoration of free, weekly in-person, face-to-face visits, while keeping video visitation as a supplemental option.³⁰

McFadden’s reasoning directly mirrored the principles of the Human Connection Blueprint.

“Allowing our residents to stay connected to family and loved ones through in-person visits improves public safety,” he stated in a news release.

“This simple step alone has been shown to significantly lower the chances that a person will commit another crime after they get O.T. It also reduces the chance a person will commit an infraction inside the jail”.¹⁸

The Mecklenburg County story is a powerful testament that change is possible when a community demands it and elects leaders who listen.

It demonstrates that lasting reform is built on a three-legged stool: top-down federal regulation provides the framework, but it must be supported by the political will of local leadership and the persistent, bottom-up pressure of community advocacy.

The Growing Chorus for Change

Mecklenburg County is not an outlier.

It is part of a growing trend of successful campaigns to protect human connection.

• Legislative Victories: In Massachusetts, a 2018 law now requires jails to provide at least two in-person visits per week and explicitly prohibits them from being replaced by video calls. California passed legislation in 2017 statutorily requiring jails to provide in-person visits. Similar protections have been enacted in Illinois and Texas, and Dallas County, Texas, famously rejected a Securus contract in 2014 that would have required banning in-person visits after a massive public outcry.¹⁶
• The Role of Advocacy and Research: These victories were not spontaneous. They were the result of tireless work by advocacy and research organizations. Groups like the Prison Policy Initiative and the Vera Institute have been instrumental in exposing the practices of the for-profit industry, conducting the research that quantifies the harm, and arming local activists with the data needed to make their case.² At the same time, family support organizations like FAMM, Restore Justice, and the Prison Families Alliance provide the community and resources that empower families to become effective advocates for themselves and their loved ones.⁵²

An Action Plan for Your Community

For families and community members who see their own struggles reflected in this story, the path forward is clear.

Change begins with transforming private pain into public action.

• For Families and Advocates:

1. Share Your Story: The most powerful tool for change is your personal experience. Testify at county commission meetings. Write letters to the editor. Contact your local representatives and sheriff. Humanize the issue beyond statistics and contract clauses.⁵⁶
2. Connect with Others: You are not alone. Find and join local or national advocacy groups that work on criminal justice and family issues. Organizations like those mentioned above can provide resources, support, and a platform to amplify your voice.⁵³
3. Demand Transparency: Use public records requests to obtain your county’s contract with its telecom provider. Expose the commission rates and any clauses that restrict in-person visits. Public scrutiny is a powerful disinfectant.

• For Policymakers and Correctional Leaders:

1. Prioritize People in Procurement: When drafting Requests for Proposals (RFPs), explicitly state that in-person visitation must be preserved and that video may only be offered as a supplement.
2. Refuse the Kickbacks: Voluntarily refuse to accept commissions or revenue-sharing from telecom contracts. Align your facility’s policies with the new FCC regulations ahead of the compliance deadlines.
3. Mandate Fair Terms: Insist on contracts that include quality-of-service standards, transparent and affordable per-minute pricing (not per-visit), and robust, family-friendly customer service and refund policies.⁸

VI. Conclusion: More Than Just a Call

Following the blueprint laid out by communities like Mecklenburg County, our local group of families began to organize.

We attended county meetings, armed with research from the Prison Policy Initiative.

We shared our stories—of missed birthdays, of technical glitches that cost us money we didn’t have, of the simple, aching need to see our loved ones in three dimensions.

It was a long fight, but eventually, we won.

Our county commissioners voted to amend the jail’s contract, restoring free, weekly in-person visits.

I will never forget that first visit back.

The waiting room was the same, the security checks just as tedious.

But when I sat down at the booth and my husband walked in on the other side of the glass, the world changed.

There was no static, no lag, no frozen screen.

When my daughter put her small hand up to the glass, and he put his up to meet it, the connection was real, immediate, and profound.

In that silent gesture, there was more communication and more hope than in a thousand failed video calls.

How we manage communication in our correctional facilities is a direct reflection of our values.

For too long, we have allowed a system that profits from isolation to masquerade as progress.

We have a choice between that system and one that invests in connection.

The evidence is clear that the latter is not only the more humane path, but the far smarter one for creating safer communities for everyone.

The fight against predatory video visitation is about more than just a phone call or a glitchy screen.

It is about recognizing and preserving the fundamental human bonds that are the bedrock of rehabilitation, reentry, and redemption.

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