Quick Take
It’s time to bring back contact visits to those incarcerated in our jails. Not allowing face-to-face visits harms families and especially kids, who can’t understand what happened to their parents or loved ones. Our county, which prides itself on forward thinking, needs to side with research and make good on promises by our top elected officials. We know staffing is an issue in our jails, but the sheriff’s department needs to make contact visits a priority.
Editor’s note: A Lookout View is the opinion of our Community Voices opinion section, written by Community Voices Editor Jody K. Biehl and Lookout Founder Ken Doctor. Our goal is to connect the dots we see in the news and offer a bigger-picture view — all intended to see Santa Cruz County meet the challenges of the day and to shine a light on issues we believe must be on the public agenda. These views are distinct and independent from the work of our newsroom and its reporting.
As we enjoy time with our loved ones this Mother’s Day weekend, we can’t help but think about an injustice that plagues our community – and which happens within walking distance of our downtown Santa Cruz office.
Since 2020, mothers and fathers incarcerated in the Santa Cruz County jails – even those not yet found guilty of a crime – have not been allowed to hug, kiss or hold their children for months, sometimes years at a time.
As their cases wind through courts, as they await trial dates or sentencing, as they endure the emotional and physical burden of imprisonment, they are not allowed to physically connect with those who might bring them the most comfort – and remind them who they are as people, as opposed to a six-digit number.
Denying contact punishes kids, who often can’t understand what has happened to their parents or loved ones.
This is not a fair or just policy. And we know it’s a policy that disproportionately affects communities of color.
Imagine what not seeing your loved ones for months or years would do to you. Imagine what it does to kids not to see their parents.
We imagine it for ourselves and our kids and know the outcome would not be good. We’d be disoriented, on edge, perhaps quicker to anger and lash out. Our kids would not perform well in school or at home. And we don’t have many of the myriad problems, traumas and addictions affecting the roughly 40 women and 300 men who regularly populate our three county jail locations.
It hasn’t always been this way. Until the pandemic in 2020, Santa Cruz County did allow contact visits for both men and women. Women held on nonviolent offenses and housed in the county’s 32-bed, medium-security facility (Blaine Street) could have visits in a quiet, semi-private, not obviously carceral setting. The facility closed during the pandemic and reopened a year ago, but without contact visits. The same occurred for men at the Rountree medium-security facility in Watsonville.
It’s time to bring the visits back – time for our county that prides itself on forward thinking to side with research, make good on promises by our top elected officials and join peer counties.
Evidence suggests visits are good for kids’ well-being and improve the chances families will stay together when an incarcerated person returns. Even if parents won’t be living with their children after release, maintaining communication and supporting relationships is important to the healthy development of children.
Our jails are the largest mental health facilities in our region. Close to 56% of those incarcerated are on prescription medication and 32% have prescriptions for psychiatric medication, according to numbers provided by the sheriff’s department. We believe preventing people from hugging and holding loved ones, smelling babies, touching faces, holding hands, feeling loved, can exacerbate existing conditions and perpetuate generational cycles of trauma.
Imagine what not seeing your loved ones for months or years would do to you. Imagine what it does to kids not to see their parents.
It’s also poor policy.
Decades of research starting in the 1970s shows that incarcerated people who maintain family ties behave better and have more success with reentry – meaning they more easily find housing and jobs. They are also less likely to become homeless and to return to jail. A 2013 study in Minnesota prisons found that a single visit reduces the likelihood of committing a felony upon release by 13% and of violating parole by 25%.
That’s why our county’s current policy troubles us, especially when we consider our rates of recidivism – 60% over the past 10 years.
Right now, the only way incarcerated Santa Cruz County mothers – who make up about 80% of the jail population in Santa Cruz, (mirroring the national figure) – can see their children is through a glass wall in the visiting area of the Santa Cruz jail or on a tablet via a video call that only sometimes works and costs $7.50 for 30 minutes.
We think this is shortsighted and unusually cruel.
We’ve talked to incarcerated people on tablets in recent months and we’ve regularly had problems with the connection, the power, the timing of the call and keeping our face in the right position. It’s been frustrating – and we aren’t emotionally invested, financially strapped or struggling with mental illness.
The sheriff’s department knows this problem exists. The department recognizes “the need and importance of in-person visits, especially for mothers/parents,” says spokesperson Ashley Keehn. She said the department is “currently reevaluating” protocols and “working on developing a plan for both locations.”
We are encouraged to hear it. We urge the department to make this a priority and to make its timeline public.
We know the budget is tight. We understand recruiting and keeping staff is difficult in corrections. The corrections staff is operating at only 75%, Keehn says, and officers already regularly work overtime. We know that allowing visits will require increased vigilance for contraband and that incarcerated parents often have complicated custody situations.
But it’s a practice our community should embrace.
It’s also one our county board of supervisors has already endorsed. In 2019, supervisors unanimously approved a “bill of rights” for children of incarcerated parents that explicitly guarantees children the right to “speak with, see and touch” their incarcerated parents.
Why haven’t we kept that promise to kids? Why are we violating our own policy?
The board of supervisors signs many resolutions, but this should be a meaningful one, a humane one. We call on the supervisors to revisit it at an upcoming meeting.
At the very least, the jails could host monthly family visiting days, as the county’s Commission on Justice and Gender has suggested.
At Blaine Street, the infrastructure is already there. Sheriff’s officials say it would take two additional staff to make contact visits possible at Blaine. At Rountree, both the minimum security (250 capacity) and the medium security (110 capacity) have indoor and outdoor spaces where visits could happen. That would similarly take at least two more officers.
Other counties – San Francisco, Sonoma, Solano, San Luis Obispo, Stanislaus and San Diego counties – all allow contact visits. It’s time for us to rejoin this club.
Here’s another telling fact: We can’t get the exact number of parents incarcerated in our jail because no one asks them that question at intake. That, too, should change.
We understand incarceration comes with restrictions – its purpose is not comfort. But it should not be inhumane. It should not divide families and reduce the chances of success upon release. It should not perpetuate harm and leave people worse off.
It’s time to rethink our policy. It’s time to return the basic humanity we pledged to enact as a community. The pandemic is long over.
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