LAS VEGAS -- A group of hard-looking men in city-issue orange jumpsuits stare sullenly at Judge Michelle Fitzpatrick, who seems entirely unfazed by their fixed gaze. Perhaps that's because the men are actually three miles away, in a city jail.
The lockup, in Las Vegas Municipal Court, Department Three, is one of a growing number of correctional facilities and criminal justice institutions looking to video technology to get around the expense and risky business of moving prisoners.
A handful of lawyers, bailiffs, and clerks are gathered in the institutional-looking room to determine the short-term fate of a dozen-odd prisoners charged with everything from traffic violations to domestic violence. Fitzpatrick, whose bouffant blonde curls and lush lipstick make her look more like a showgirl than a judge, sits at her desk in the courthouse at the other end of the ISDN link.
As their names are called by an off-camera guard, the defendants, their movements a little jerky and outlines slightly blurry, step up in front of the camera to face the judge for a brisk arraignment.
Fitzpatrick, while praising her video system's efficiency, agrees that it has limitations. "When I take pleas, I prefer to have the defendant there in person, to make sure they hear me and understand what I'm saying," she said.
"Normally, inmates have to be escorted by correctional officers from the cell blocks to and from the visiting area whenever someone comes to see them, which takes up a lot of staff time," said Michael Bulriss, a spokesman for Datapoint, which makes the system used by the Vegas city courts. The company is actively marketing its product to jails around the country.
"You have problems with visitors smuggling in contraband. And sometimes a prisoner might not feel like going back to his cell, which leads to confrontations. Our system eliminates all that."
The explosion in the US prison population is driving demand for such systems. Since 1980, thanks largely to tough anti-drug and mandatory sentencing laws, the number of Americans behind bars has nearly quadrupled to almost two million, according to statistics from the Federal Bureau of Justice.
Prisoners are being transferred out of state because of overcrowding, making visits from loved ones and lawyers extremely difficult. In response, Michigan and Hawaii have set up state-funded video linkups for virtual visits to prisons in Virginia, Oklahoma, and Minnesota, where their inmates are held.
Supporters hail video for saving time, money, and improving security. But prisoner-rights advocates charge that in certain instances, inmates are robbed of genuine human contact and the right to be seen and heard in person.
"Video screens are absolutely no substitute for actual contact with a family member," says Kara Gotsch, who works on prison issues with the American Civil Liberties Union. "To have them in local facilities, when it's easy enough to have real contact, seems inhumane."
Gotsch argues that interstate video visits wouldn't be necessary if states relied less on incarceration and more on alternative sanctions, such as treatment for drug offenders.
Other jurisdictions have installed video systems for local visitors to save time, money, and trouble. Instead of getting together in person, visitors go to video rooms that are linked to similar booths inside the lockup, where the inmate they want to see sits.
Officials in Nevada's Washoe County found this argument sufficiently compelling to design their new jail, which opened in May 1999, to accommodate a Datapoint system. That enabled them to make the building smaller and hire fewer staff, saving $171,000, according to county Sheriff Jim Ganyon.
County officials are already talking about expanding the system to include local courts and public defenders' offices.
Several Florida county jails have also installed Datapoint systems in the past two years, including one with over 100 video booths.
Missouri, meanwhile, is experimenting with a system that allows visitors to make video-calls to state prisons from any Kinko's with video conferencing equipment -- on the visitor's dime.
"It hasn't been very popular," admits Missouri Department of Corrections spokesman Tim Kniest. "Face-to-face is still the preferred method."
Nonetheless, Bulriss is confident that the use of such systems will continue to grow. Datapoint systems, which cost about $4,000 per booth to install, are already in dozens of courts and six correctional facilities, with more in the pipeline, he says.
"There are 3,700 counties in the US, all with at least one jail, not to mention state and federal prisons," he said. "The inmate population is growing so much.... You do the math."
