Critics say many jails in the US are increasingly using video-calling services to cut costs and boost profits by restricting or eliminating in-person visits
We tried one of the awful video services many jails offer instead of visitation. — When Rebecca Parr visited her nephew Justin Harker recently … Tweets: @schestowitz , @johndyer , @f2fknox , @arilamm , @arstechnica , and @binarybits Tweets: Dr. Roy Schestowitz / @schestowitz : When technology makes people drift apart and not even by choice http://arstechnica.com/... John Dyer / @johndyer : This is evil, dehumanizing technology. I know this from personal experience. http://arstechnica.com/... Face To Face Knox / @f2fknox : Thanks to @arstechnica and @binarybits for taking the time to talk with folks here in Knox County about the problems with video visitation. http://twitter.com/... Ari Lamm / @arilamm : This is so unimaginably cruel, it's hard to comprehend. http://twitter.com/... @arstechnica : “I have experienced prison visitation a lot in my life. This was the most dehumanizing and impersonal that I've ever experienced. I've visited through glass before and that broke my heart when that happened. This was even worse.” http://arstechnica.com/... Timothy B. Lee / @binarybits : Jails are phasing out in-person visits in favor of “video visitation” services. They're as terrible as you'd expect them to be. http://arstechnica.com/... http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2018 investigation documented what was then an emerging jail practice: swapping free contact visits for paid, low-quality video terminals, with families like Rebecca Parr's paying to see relatives such as Justin Harker through a screen. The years since have validated the critics' core worry — that handing the entire communication channel to a private vendor creates harms beyond cost.
Subsequent reporting showed exactly how: HomeWAV left private inmate calls with families and attorneys on an unprotected server, while prisons moved toward tablets and FCC price caps on voice and video calls as regulators began pushing back on the pricing model this story exposed.
First-order effects
- Inmates' families absorb the cost directly: visits that were once free become per-minute paid video sessions on equipment the jail controls, and facilities that eliminate in-person visits leave no alternative.
Second-order effects
- Whoever wins the visitation contract gains a monopoly over inmate communication — a position HomeWAV's security failure shows is poorly policed, since the same vendor pipeline carries attorney-client conversations.
Third-order effects
- Once every family contact runs through vendor hardware, each call becomes billable and analyzable — the same infrastructure later underpins prisons exploring AI analysis of inmates' phone calls, turning communication into both revenue and surveillance data.
- The backlash path is already visible: contraband-phone phenomena like Prison TikTok show inmates routing around controlled channels, giving regulators such as the FCC a concrete case for capping prices and reasserting oversight.
The trend: Incarcerated people's contact with the outside world is migrating from in-person visits to vendor-controlled digital channels, with pricing and privacy failures steadily pulling regulators like the FCC into a market jails largely self-police.