Cuyahoga County has no plans to restart in-person visitation for friends and family at the county jail.
“We have found that most families prefer online visitation due to its ease of access and convenience,” Sheriff Harold Pretel told Signal Cleveland. “Online visitation enhances the safety of both inmates and staff, creating a safer environment for all involved.”
Pretel, in an email sent by a county spokesperson, said the county is “still evaluating” visitation options for the new jail and services campus it plans to build in Garfield Heights.
Earlier this week, a report released by Wren Collective, a criminal justice reform policy group, called on officials to bring back in-person visits for friends and family. Attorneys still have the option to visit clients in the jail virtually or in person. They also have a method available to identify as attorneys so their calls are either not recorded, according to officials.
The group asserts that a shift to video-only options at the Cuyahoga County Jail, and other large jails across Ohio, left people who were facing – but not convicted of – criminal charges with no options to privately discuss evidence in their cases or plea deal options with loved ones.
In Cuyahoga County, phone calls, video visits and mail sent to the jail are all captured by the company the county contracts with to handle communications for the jail. County prosecutors have an agreement with the county sheriff’s office that allows them to access and search communications. An office spokesperson said jail calls are public records.
Cuyahoga County’s Chief Public Defender Cullen Sweeney said his office has some access, though it doesn’t have the same signed agreement with the sheriff’s office.
Cuyahoga County Council Member Michael Gallagher said safety concerns related to in-person visits at the current downtown jail make video visitation a better option. To his knowledge, he said, the new county jail and services center is being designed with in-person visitation in mind, including a turnaround for Greater Cleveland RTA buses and additional parking spaces.
“As we sit today, a new jail will incorporate in-person visits,” he told Signal Cleveland. “Nobody has told me otherwise.”
In-person visits banned since 2020
In 2020, the county unveiled a plan to replace in-person visitation in favor of expensive video visits on a platform provided by Securus Technologies. It was a plan the county planned to profit from, though they quickly reversed course, lowering the price of online visits and promising to allow in-person visits one day each week. But before in-person visits could resume, the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
The county still gets a commission from prepaid jail calls, which cost 16 cents per minute. That adds up to about $30,000 a month, which goes into the county’s general fund, Gallagher said. Video visits cost about $4 for a 25-minute visit, plus taxes and fees. For free, people can schedule a visit using a video kiosk in the downtown Justice Center. People have completed more than 141,000 video visits since 2020, according to the county.
In-person visits never returned after state orders prohibiting visits due to the pandemic were lifted. Jails in many of Ohio’s largest counties, which hold thousands of people accused of crimes, no longer have in-person visitation, including Franklin, Hamilton, Montgomery, Lucas and Butler counties.
Evan O’Reilly, organizer and administrator with Cuyahoga County Jail Coalition, said seeing and talking to family members helps those in the jail “feel like a human being in there.”
“On a very basic level, in-person visitation is the only form of real comfort that a lot of these people are able to receive while they’re awaiting trial or serving out a misdemeanor sentence,” he said.
Civil rights and ‘the humane perspective’
O’Reilly said if the county builds a new jail in Garfield Heights and it doesn’t have an in-person visitation area, that will contradict county officials’ claim that they want to build a more humane facility.
“It’s shameful that they are so focused on this new jail plan and all of these external factors,” he said, “when these very basic rights and privileges are constantly being taken away from people down at the county jail.”
O’Reilly said the jail coalition will push strongly for in-person visits at the new jail.
“Both from the civil rights perspective of everything being recorded and that kind of being a restriction on the right to counsel, as well as just the humane perspective of, people in those situations should be able to talk to their families and visitors.”
Even if prosecutors are not listening in on attorney calls to avoid a civil rights issue, it’s still concerning that they listen to calls with family members. People sometimes talk about their cases or abuses happening in the jail, he said.
The real concern, he said, is that there is a loophole: “Well, it’s not an attorney, so it’s fair game to use this recording as evidence.”
