Looking for some corrections officers that don't mind me picking their brains...?

I am working on a story, and I need some info about an environment that (fortunately, maybe) is foreign to me - a maximum security prison. My protagonist has to have a series of visits and conversations with a violent sexual predator. What I am looking for is the little details that I wouldn’t know - how does the logistics of a visit work? What sort of clearances do visitors go through?

Anything else you can offer would be great…if you are not comfortable posting, please feel free to message me.

Also, anyone that has maybe visited someone under these circumstances that wants to offer a first-person account, I would be very happy to hear all about it?

Paging Little Nemo and casedave!

Paging Little Nemo and casedave!

No personal experience with this particular situation, but I can say that trying to serve a serving prisoner with legal papers can be extremely frustrating.

First, you have to find out where they are in the system. And, for good and sensible reasons, the folks in a corrections system are a bit leary of identifying where Prisoner X may be. So you have to establish your bona fides as a lawyer, with a good reason to need to know that information.

Then, once Corrections has told you where, you need to get someone to serve the documents. Rather than a private service office, I personally have found that going through the Sheriff’s office is more reliable. They have contacts with the Corrections folks, they send deputies out to corrections facilities regularly, they can talk the LEO talk and show their badge and get in. They’re also good about getting the affidavit of service to me.

Then there’s telephone communications. It’s tricky getting through to an inmate unless you’re their lawyer. Calls are carefully regulated, no doubt for good and proper security purposes, but it’s a real pain. Even the court sometimes has trouble getting the inmate on the line. I’ve been on the occasional call where we’ve got a judge, I’m there, the court clerk is on the line, and corrections has trouble scaring up the inmate. It’s better when they have counsel, but even then we’ve had the occasional problem.

Canadian experience, by the way. Mileage will no doubt vary tremendously from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Since the OP is looking for personal experiences let’s move this to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

I worked on death row at the Level 6 Supermax in Santa Fe several years ago. Pretty much about the most awful place you can imagine.

Would you mind if I sent you some questions? Just for general understanding?

Sure. My experience is old (early 2000’s) but from friends still on the job things appear to be about the same in terms of procedure.

You can send me questions if you wish. But keep in mind I’ve been retired since 2008.

In New York, you wouldn’t serve the papers directly to the prisoner. You’d serve them to the Inmate Records Clerk, who is a civilian employee and is legally authorized to accept legal papers on behalf of prisoners.

Again, this is New York procedures. It’s actually a lot more difficult for a prisoner to talk to his lawyer on official business than it is to make an ordinary phone call.

Prisoners have relatively open access to phone calls. But all prisoner phones are subject to being monitored (how much we actually monitor varies). There’s one big exception; phone calls in which the prisoner is discussing legal business can’t be monitored. So there’s a much more complicated procedure for a prisoner to get access to an unmonitored phone.

That would be very useful to have! :smack:

Exact logistics will vary from facility to facility, from state to state, and from one level of offender to another (and jails are different from prisons). My experience is based on Kansas, state-level, at several different facilities. This is the “family and friends” experience; professionals such as lawyers and doctors go through a similar but not identical version.

First, visitors must be on the approved list. You submit an application for who you want to see, with your name, address, ID, and relationship. They’ll weed out, or at least give extra scrutiny to, those whose purposes may be improper–people with criminal records, co-defendants, the offender’s victims, and so forth.

The prison will have regularly scheduled visiting hours, usually on the weekends. Visitors have to present acceptable ID, be checked off on the approved list, and go through security–metal detector, turn your pockets inside out, maybe take off your shoes. What you can take inside is extremely limited: your essential medications, money for snacks, photos to share, sometimes legal papers or a bible. Usually, you go through some version of sally port: one door closes behind you before the next one opens.

At “supermax” type facilities or if the inmate is in segregation, visits will be through glass or even over video link. At ordinary facilities, even maximum-security, typically the inmates and visitors will be in one or several large rooms, with long rows of tables/chairs and officers walking around patrolling. You’ll be surprised at the number of kids, even little kids, and a children’s play area is pretty common. Husbands and wives get a quick kiss at the beginning and end of visits (and a quick grope when the guard isn’t looking). Visits are usually several hours if not all day, so food is available (maybe vending machines, maybe a full snack bar operated by inmates, with hamburgers, pizza, and ice cream). The facility will usually have games (cards, dominoes, scrabble, etc.) and religious texts to help pass the time.

If one of the prison’s regularly-scheduled counts occurs during the visit, everything is locked down–visitors can’t arrive or leave until all inmates are accounted for. At one Kansas facility, the visitor restrooms are outside the sally port, so the officers will announce, “Count will be in 15 minutes; if you need to use the restroom, now’s the time.” Once the count starts, you’d better not need to go for the 30-60 minutes it takes to clear. At other prisons, there’s a visitor restroom in the visiting room; the guard will unlock it upon request. Inmates have their own restroom, and have to be patted down or searched before they can use it.

When the visit is over, the inmate will be strip-searched, and the visitor(s) can’t leave until the inmate is cleared.

Professional visits are similar, but typically have to be scheduled in advance. I attended a deposition of an inmate once; the general procedure was the same, although obviously more materials could be taken inside (the court reporter had her recording equipment, e.g., and everybody involved had binders and notepads and pens). We were placed in a small conference room somewhere in the administration building; the inmate was brought in by a guard, but the guard left after delivering him, and was summoned back to pick him up after it was over. Again, the inmate had to clear a search before we were allowed to leave.

Is this the sort of detail you were looking for?

Look at the web sites for correctional institutions. They should have information and rules for visits.

Note I’ve heard of some jails which had broken phone systems (intended for visitors to use to speak with the prisoners on the other side of the glass). The visitor/prisoner had to “shout” at each other through the glass. Other visitors/guards could hear what was being said. Some of these apparently have been broken for years!

None of the prisons I worked in had glass walls and phones for regular visits. Prisoners sat at tables with their visitors in a room that was like a big cafeteria.

We generally had the glass wall and phone system available but it was only used in rare circumstances like where a prisoner had been caught receiving contraband on a previous visit.

Some prisoners would choose to use the glass walls and phones for a lawyer visit. There was less searching before and after a “no-contact” visit.

Yes, and thank you to DeepLiquid for their help. I think I have enough to to go on, if not, I will definitely send some PMs out. Thank you everyone!

As an author, you would need to make some sort of contact with the prisoner.

You might try and write directly, but you would be much more likely to deal with probation staff with an outline of what you were trying to do and why.

Bear in mind that prison authorities place great emphasis on public confidence, so unrestricted access even with the consent of the prisoner is going to be extremely closely scrutinised.

It has long been recognised that serious offenders at the most extreme levels of criminality have made lots of money through ghost writers, having their stories published in some form.

This is so serious because in the UK it is a criminal offence to enable a convicted time serving prisoner to profit from their crimes.

So, you are likely to be vetted for security and trustworthy clearance. Your interest in the subject would need to be justified, for example as a criminologist academic or perhaps as an investigator.

Your visitor would need some sort of justifiable reason if you were to obtain clearance.

The other way is to make approaches to either other prisoners that might know the individual concerned or the prisoners family who are trusted enough by your violent sexual predator.

IF you can find a way to make contact this way, then the prisoner can apply for a visiting order - each prisoner is granted a specific number of visiting orders of varying types. Many prisoners would not be keen to offer you a visit because this uses up their allowance of visiting orders, not unless there was some sort of trust.

The prisoner would have to apply for you to be added to their visitor list, your details would be recorded. Increasingly those details will include fingerprint recognition - when you arrive at the prison you submit the visiting order, plus stick your digit into a fingerprint reader to verify your identity.

Visits last a set time, it would depend upon the exact type of prison as to what sort of visit you are allowed to have - some are in large rooms where lots of other visits are taking place, there might well be a crèche and play area and possibly childcare team there.

TO be continued after hitting submit accidentally

It’s not really clear to me that the OP is talking about writing a true-crime account about a specific real criminal, versus writing a fictional story that is set, in part, within a prison (or, perhaps, a fictional story about a fictional author writing about a fictional criminal). OP, can you clarify?

Other visits may be what are called ‘closed visits’. These are reserved for very high risk offenders, those who have been flagged up as trying to get visitors to bring in contraband, and those whose behaviour have caused them to be put on to restricted privileges.

These pretty much take place in a closed cubical where there is no possibility of any physical contact.

All visits of all types are heavily monitored by cctv and patrolling staff.

When you visit the higher security prisons, you will certainly undergo various entry checks, and you will face restrictions about what you may bring in and what you cannot - the list of restrictions will be made very plain either by signage or by multilingual notes on the visiting order. I am not going to tell you what sorts of searches and checks you would undergo, except to say there would some sort of physical check of your possessions.

There would also be some checks on your background due to there being some fairly loose restrictions on who can visit as a guest of a prisoner - mainly these are on visitors who have recently been released from prison within a set period of time - sort of a ‘cooling off’ period.

Whilst on a visit, the visitors who are experienced find life is much easier if they bring in very little belongings, so they will empty their pockets before going in - there is less to search, keys and mobile phones can be put into secure lockers in the external visitor area - the external visitor area is where you go to present your visitor credentials before you enter the prison and the prison visiting area.

Lots of prison visits areas will have facilities to buy hot or cold drinks and maybe candy or pre-packed snacks, in some the prisoner is allowed to purchase items from their pay for their visitors.
Visitors can also bring in items that the prisoner is allowed to receive (there is a specified list of items that varies from jail to jail, some jails allow training shoes or even small ghetto blasters, some allow personal clothes that meet the allowable requirements ) These are handed over, booked to the prisoner’s property box - very carefully scrutinised(I will not tell you in what ways) and the prisoner will apply to be allowed to receive them - and that might depend on their level of privilege as to what they can have in their possession.
Small gifts to a prisoner can mean a huge amount to them, something like a book that is not obtainable from the library, perhaps things that they are allowed but they have no other way of obtaining such as an acoustic guitar - yes I have seen these, one prisoner was able to get an electric word processor back in the day - took him a lot of applications and justifications, but he was a writer for the prison magazine.
You’d be surprised but even socks and underpants can be treasured, instead of having to wear the prison issue clothing.

If you are going to bring in an item, you would need it to be cleared before you arrive - this is done by the prisoner who will submit an application for you to bring it, and it must be exactly as described.

My impression is that the OP is wanting to find out what someone who is an author would need to know if they were visiting a real prisoner.

This is not to say the OP themselves is trying to visit a prisoner, but is trying to write s story that has some truth to it.

Exactly. I realize I have some creative license, but the story I am trying to tell is best served by keeping it as real as I can

I don’t know the details of your story but one thing to keep in mind is that it’s almost impossible to force a prisoner to accept a visit. Barring a few situations where there are legal orders, prisoners can refuse to see anyone they wish. So you can’t realistically have a character go to the prison and confront a prisoner against their will.

Also don’t call them prisons, prisoners, or guards. They’re facilities, inmates, and C.O.'s (at least in New York). And the person who runs the facility if a superintendent not a warden.

And if an inmate breaks a rule, he gets a misbehavior report, which is commonly called a ticket. If it’s a serious violation, he’ll get locked in his cell which is called being keeplocked (pronounced key-blocked for reasons I never really understood). If it’s a really serious violation, he’ll be put in the Special Housing Unit (aka SHU or the box) where everyone is keeplocked.