Montana State prison has gone from five days a week visiting down to three. Starting next week they are taking away Friday visiting, leaving only Saturday and Sunday visits. Visiting hours in Montana states they start at 2pm. This is not true! Here is how it works. You drive to the hill at 2pm and you wait in line behind other family and friends. A prison pilot car arrives (sometimes not until 2:30pm) and you follow down behind through the shack, where a guard asks you a few simple questions regarding contraband, etc. You proceed to the parking lot. You walk into the prison doors where you stand in line to sign in. From there you go to the desk and stand in line to receive your visitors badge and give them your drivers license. Then you go through security to be screened and patted down. Then you go in to a very small room where it is shoulder to shoulder (it is quite a fire hazard) and you wait until every last person is checked in. Guards come and lead everyone out of the tiny room, where you go in to another holding area by the Command Post. From there they take the high side visitors to the left and the low side visitors to the right. Once inside the visiting room, you quickly claim a table and sit and wait, while the visiting room officer calls the unit to have your loved one come down for visiting. This entire process can take an hour or even much longer. Most times the inmate does not arrive in the visiting room until after an hour or two of visiting time has passed. By taking away three days of visiting this puts an incredible burden on out of state families who cannot justify spending a thousand dollars of more (if there is more than one) for an airline ticket, rental car, motel, food and the twenty dollars in quarters allowed to take in to visiting, just to visit for two days. Second, if the visiting room is crowded or overflowing, local visitors are asked to leave so that out of state visitors can visit. This is unfair and upsetting to not only the inmate but also the visitor. Third, visiting will become even more crowded than ever with less visiting days allowed. Fourth, the length of time to check in visitors will take longer, since visitors are forced now to come only two days a week. Over crowding is inevitable. Resulting in shorter visiting time. Montana stop the lobbying and legislature games by claiming you are understaffed, so you can try to obtain financial gain. As always you are going backwards!
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 13:36:59 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015