Small Town News

Future visitors to J. Reuben must say their hellos on TV

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Video technology is invading just about every aspect of life.

From pictures taken by videophones to security cameras mounted all over the place to satellite-mounted monitors that can follow individuals walking along a street, cameras capture so much.

The latest use of video in Horry County can be found at the J. Reuben Long Detention Center. Anyone who has visited a prison inmate is familiar with the routine of being ushered into a room with individual booths. Each booth is equipped with a heavy-glass partition and a telephone handset.

The inmate sits on one side and his or her visitor sits on the other. They talk to each other over the phone. There is no opportunity for touching or for passing any kind of object to the other side.

As cold as that may seem, what has been installed at the detention center is far icier, and the inmates and most of their visitors don't like it.

When a visitor arrives, he or she is still ushered into a room with booths. But instead of a plate of glass with an inmate behind it, the only things to be seen are a television camera and a monitor.

The inmate appears on the monitor and communicates with his visitor over the television hookup.

In most cases, the inmate and his visitor aren't even in the same building.

loey Johnson, the deputy director of the center, said the rather limited intimacy of the glass and phone system is gone, but the new camera system saves money and manpower. "We have had to move inmates in order for them to be allowed to visit with family and others," Johnson said.

Under the new system, inmates in the prison building simply go into a day room set up with the technology.

Prison staff is not needed in order to move them around. Johnson said the conversations can be monitored, but it's not something that is done routinely.

While monitoring is easy, Johnson said when there are two dozen or more visitations going on, it's not practical to expect the staff to try to keep track of what everyone is saying.

There is no doubt about the increased efficiency of the system.

"We are hoping that what it is going to let us do is extend those hours and those times to where we can allow more visiting time," he said. "It also eliminates the need for us to move inmates to the visitation area, which is not located in the housing units."

Johnson said county officials went to Charlotte, N.C., to study how the system operates there and they found "it was Working well."

As to how the inmates feel about the new system, Johnson said they're not pleased.

"I would think that they don't like it," I he said. "We've had some feedback, and a lot of them don't like it."

As to the families who come to visit, the feeling is similar.

"If you were a family member you would probably want to see the inmate face-to-face or touch him, but some of them do like it because of its convenience," Johnson said.

In the future, Johnson said the system could be extended to various government locations around the county so family and visitors can go there to talk with inmates via television instead of traveling to the prison itself.

However, he doesn't expect that to change soon.

Johnson said the system cost about $675,000.

He hopes that in the long run the increased efficiency will outweigh the cost.

Horry County Council Chairwoman Liz Gilland hopes so, too.

"If they say it's a money-saving thing, then I'm very interested in it," she said. "It does depersonalize it a bit. Even if I couldn't touch the person, I'd like to be in close proximity to them.. .That will be the downside. The upside will be that it will be easier, more convenient for the families perhaps, less intensive as far as oversight because there's not any dan Myrtle Beach Herald editor Charles Perry also contributed to this story.



Copyright 2010 The Horry Independent, Conway, South Carolina. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from SmallTownPapers, Inc.

© 2011 The Horry Independent Conway, South Carolina. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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