The personal touch: Sheriff says visits with contact are an important tool on the road to rehabilitation

By EMILY CUTTS

@ecutts_HG

Published: 07-28-2017 8:41 PM

NORTHAMPTON — Sitting on her father’s lap reading a book while her younger brother only half pays attention. The scene on a recent night at the Hampshire County Jail and House of Correction could be happening in living rooms across the country.

But for Dezmariah Collazo, 10, and her 4-year-old brother Jayvien Collazo, the visit happens under the eyes of multiple guards. Their father, Jose Collazo, 29, of Springfield has been at the minimum security jail for about two years and won’t be released until 2018.

The visits — which allow some physical contact between inmate and family members — mean a lot, not only to Collazo, but to his two young children and his girlfriend, Jayvien’s mother.

Collazo has been incarcerated since Jayvien was just a year old. The boy’s mom, Danielle Faust, said “contact visits” have allowed the two to maintain their bond.

“For him being so young, it’s crucial to make sure he has a relationship with his father,” Faust said in an interview at the jail. “Not being able to have contact visits, it’s heartbreaking.”

At the Hampshire County Jail and House of Correction, contact visits are done with people seated next to one another. Inmates are allowed to put their arm around their visitor, can give them a brief kiss and hold their hand. Children can sit on their father’s lap, rest their head on his shoulder and pull them close to whisper news of their lives or simply to say that they are missed.

“For the most part, it’s just giving two people the feeling that they are going to be OK,” Sheriff Patrick Cahillane said.

Not every jail in the state allows contact visits. In Bristol County — which already is a facility where visitors are separated by a glass barrier and must use a phone — in-person visits with family will soon come to an end.

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In about a month, the Bristol jail will be the first in the state to end in-person visits altogether. Instead, prisoners and inmates will talk via video conferencing. The plan was part of Sheriff Thomas Hodgson’s inaugural address but a formal announcement had not been made as of last week, said Jonathan Darling, public information officer for the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office.

“We’re always trying to be more efficient with our operation,” Darling said of the change. “What it will allow us to do is to keep visitors away from the secure area of our facility.”

Video-conferencing visits will take place in a separate building away from the main jail.

“It will also help us in the ongoing battle to keep contraband out of our facility. Every jail in the area is going through the same thing — people trying to smuggle drugs or weapons,” Darling said. “This will make our facility safer and more secure.”

Hodgson made headlines earlier this year when he said he would send inmates to help build Trump’s proposed border wall.

Hodgson’s plan to do away with in-person visits has drawn some criticism from fellow sheriffs as well as the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Cutting off the human contact of in-person visitation is cruel to people in jail, their families and loved ones,” the ACLU Massachusetts said in a statement. “As any Skype user can tell you, video communication may provide a benefit to people who are far apart or unable to travel, but it’s no substitute for being in the same room with a person you love.”

The experience of touch

The inmates and family members who spoke with the Gazette agree that contact visits are a positive thing.

Sitting next to his younger sister, Jimmie Oliver, 32, of Holyoke, was deep in conversation Tuesday night. The pair hadn’t seen each other in a while, Oliver said, and were at first reluctant to give up their limited time together to speak to a reporter. Inmates have three days each week with hourlong time slots for visits.

“Contact visits, it’s a lot more personal,” Oliver said.

His younger sister, Amanda Vega, added that no contact visits create more than just physical barriers. They also add emotional and mental blockages.

“It’s an unbelievable experience what a touch is,” Vega said.

Before coming to the Hampshire County jail, he said he had been in eight different jails.

If contact visits were to go away, Oliver said he’d be sad and angry, too. Vega said it would probably be more of a debate coming to visit.

“You’d be surprised how much a contact visits keep a person in-check,” Oliver said. “You don’t want to lose that privilege.”

Sheriff Cahillane said in Hampshire County, correctional officials feel strongly that family contact is important.

“Many of the individuals who are here may have destroyed those relationships along the way through their criminality, whatever that might have been,” Cahillane said. “If we can rebuild some of those trust factors while they are here and while they are clean and sober, then what we can do is, hopefully, get the family on board with being a support system for them, if and when they go back out.”

Family structure is important to re-entry, along with employment and a roof over one’s head, Cahillane said. Jail officials try and keep family connections as strong as possible. The all-male facility offers inmates several in-house programs including the “nurturing fathers program” aimed at boosting those skills.

Without contact, Dean Banks said it feels like his family is suffering along with him while he serves his sentence. Banks, 32, of Springfield, has been incarcerated since June 2016 and has been at the Hampshire County jail’s minimum security facility since March.

A father of three, Banks said when he was in facilities that didn’t allow contact, he didn’t want his children to visit.

“I didn’t want my kids to see me behind glass,” he said.

He said his family visits most weeks now that he is in the Northampton jail, which wasn’t the case when he was in more distant facilities that allowed no contact.

Contact visits help keep you sane, Banks said.

“It’s pretty good to be able to hug them,” Banks said. “I think it makes them feel happy, too.”

‘It can be tough’

While Oliver, Collazo and Banks were all smiles during their visits and conversations with the Gazette, that isn’t always the case for every inmate.

Emotions can run high when the bonds of trust in a relationship have been frayed and now the two are sitting face-to-face, Cahillane explained.

“It can be a tough visit situation but it also needs to happen if there is going to be any healing process,” Cahillane said. “It might be there is no healing process but we might as well get that piece over with also. It’s those types of dynamics that are reintroduced through contact visits and you don’t always get that through a video process. We want the dynamic of the family visit to continue.”

In addition to tense family situations, issues can also arise when the visiting policy is violated by someone attempting to bring drugs into the facility, inappropriate contact or on rare occasions, violence. Some incidents can end in prosecution of visitors, inmates or both.

“It becomes a balance of what is in the best interest of the most people. Do we throw contact visits out all together because of that small population that are going to try and violate policy and abuse the privilege? So far, we haven’t gotten to that point,” Cahillane said. “I would hope we never do because it does take away from the idea of good rehabilitation and good re-entry practices.”

The jail has facilities for no-contact visits, which entail the inmate and their visitor being separated by glass and communicating through a phone. Inmates can lose the privilege of contact visits for a period of time if they are found to be abusing substances or are engaging in inappropriate touching of a visitor, among other reasons. A board reassesses those decision on a weekly basis.

As sheriff for Hampshire County, Cahillane said he has to work with what makes the most sense in his jurisdiction. He’s concluded that video-conferencing visits isn’t it.

“But it is a choice that he (Sheriff Hodgson) chooses to make. He apparently thinks that it is in his best interest and the best interest of public safety in his county,” Cahillane said of the Bristol County decision. “I have enough on the plate everyday to worry about Hampshire County, I not even going to think about what happens in Bristol county.”

Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.

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