MAKING MATTERS WORSE

New Prison Visitor Rules Will Harshen Conditions Needlessly

Imagine a young mother in prison on drug charges. She wants to maintain
contact with her 2-year-old toddler, who's living with the prisoner's mother.

Proposed new state prison visiting rules say inmates convicted of drug
sales or manufacture won't be allowed any contact visits for the first year
of their confinements. The inmate mother may talk to her son by telephone
and look at him though a glass partition. But she can't hug him. She can't
kiss him. That's a form of punishment that extends tragically beyond the
mother, to the innocent child as well.

There's more. Under the proposed rules, after a year, the young mother will
be allowed to embrace or kiss her child but only at the beginning and end
of each visit, and only for a period not to exceed five seconds.

The rationale for these harsh rules is hard to figure. Inmates who maintain
relationships with family and friends on the outside are far more likely to
succeed when paroled. They are less likely to commit new crimes and return
to prison.

Research on that point has been consistent over many years. Yet despite the
public safety value, tough new visitor rules proposed by the Department of
Corrections will make it much harder for inmates in California to maintain
those ties.

The rule change prohibits male inmates, regardless of their crimes, from
holding anyone above the age of 6 on their laps, even if the visitors are
their own children. Children over age 7 must take picture IDs.

Prison officials say the new rules are intended to respond to a 1997 state
law that declared prison visits a privilege, not a right. The rules will
standardize visitation procedures from facility to facility and, most
important, improve security by cutting down on drug smuggling. In
justifying the harsher treatment, officials claim that 52% of illegal drugs
found in prisons come from visitors.

No doubt there's a need to better control drug trafficking behind bars. But
there's also a need to encourage one of the most successful rehabilitative
tools available -- family visits. Law-abiding visitors who travel hundreds
of miles to meet with family members regularly endure long lines,
humiliating body searches and other indignities. The new harsher rules mean
they will face still more hassles.

Some will just stop going.

That's a concern for all of us because most inmates will leave prison one
day. Those who have lost contact with their families are a bigger threat to
the community than those who have not. Prison authorities evaluating the
new rule changes need to consider that.