Fifty-three-year-old Michelle Griffin is an office manager in Fredericksburg. She is active in her church, comes from a military family and considers herself a modest person.
“I go to church, and I go to work, and I don’t dress in ways that I’m exposing my body," she says.
But on a recent trip to the Greensville Correctional Center, she was barred from admission when a correctional officer thought her blouse was too revealing.
“I had worn that same blouse like two months ago,“ and so I said, ‘Are you serious? ’And she said, ‘Yes. It’s possible that they could see cleavage when you bend over, if you want to get into this visit you’re going to have to change your shirt.’”
But she didn’t dare argue, because she feared being banned from future visits. Instead, she drove to the nearest store to buy a T-shirt. That errand cost her about an hour from what was supposed to be a two-hour visit.
“That upsets your family members because they look forward to having that time," she explains. "You drove to see them, and now the visit has been interrupted, and it’s not going to last long.”
Fatimah Mwahhid, a Richmond area accountant, has been to visit her husband in nearly a dozen different state prisons. At one, guards denied her access when they spotted what she says was a tampon during a routine scan.
“We see something in your abdomen area," they told her. "We probably know what it is, but we cannot let you visit.”
Another time, officers suspected Mwahhid – who wears a hijab -- was bringing contraband into the prison.
“Two complete strangers took me into the bathroom and made me strip naked, squat and cough three times. I put my clothes back on and then I went outside, and they tore my vehicle up.”
Thirty-four-year-old Anastasia Chase saved up for a visit to her partner at the Lunenberg Correctional Center. Her job paid $15 an hour, so it was a big deal to rent a car, book a hotel and make the three-hour drive, only to be turned away, because she had a new driver’s license, and the number on it didn’t match the one used to register with the Department of Corrections.
“Not only did they deny me, they also falsified a report against me – claiming I threw keys," she recalls. "Someone in the Richmond office looked at the footage, acknowledged that I didn’t do it, but because I called the rules petty at the time, she was still going to ban me for a year.”
Prisoner advocate Taj Mahon-Haft says hostile treatment of visitors has discouraged many from making what is often a long and expensive trip. A PhD sociologist, he cites studies showing family visits make prisons safer – giving inmates a reason to behave.
“Researchers since the 70’s have said they are our prime treatment agent.”
He did time in Virginia prisons on a drug charge, so he speaks from experience.
“Personally, I would not have survived, let alone come home thriving, if it was not for those visits when I connected with my family – had that moment of humanity got motivated to see them as much as possible and do things to make them proud.”
And he worries that the Department of Corrections may now bar prisoners from having visits if anyone breaks the rules.
“They are collectively taking visit opportunities from entire pods, because somebody misbehaves in that pod. Somebody else gets in trouble, and I can’t see my mom, I can’t see my son? That’s absurd!”
In response to poor treatment, Griffin says some people are now choosing to visit by video -- paying six dollars for less than an hour of screen time. Sometimes that’s satisfying, but other times not so much.
“You get on there, and the screen freezes, and you may have to log in and out several times, and that’s it. I know during Christmas one of the ladies was saying that they got on, ready to have a video visit with their loved one. She had her children on, ready to see their father for Christmas. The machine just stopped working, so the kids were upset, because they didn’t get to see their father. He was upset, because he couldn’t see the kids, and it’s like – what do you do?”
We asked prison officials to talk about these issues but received no response. State lawmakers aren’t waiting. Delegate Bonita Anthony and Senator Angela Williams-Graves will offer a bill called Protecting Family Connections. It would end strict limits on visitation by people who travel a long distance and prevent the Department of Corrections from denying visits unless an inmate breaks rules during visitation.
Delegate Holly Sieboldt is sponsoring another measure called Welcoming All Families that would create uniform standards for treatment of visitors and a process by which they could speak with someone higher up if an officer is barring them from coming in.
