Death penalty protestors, state at odds over jail visits

A new visitation policy at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is rankling some Europeans who make frequent visits to state prisons, the Chronicle reports. The policy, which limits people who travel more than 300 miles to visit a Texas prison to one "special visit" per trip — that's two four-hour sessions on consecutive days — prevents long-distance death penalty opponents from making connections with inmates, they claim, but prison officials say they're just trying to keep some people from taking advantage of the system.

Under the former policy, back-to-back special visits were allowed during a trip — for example, one at the end of a month and another at the beginning of the next month. That led some long-distance visitors to stick around for months at a time so they could take advantage of as many prison visits as possible. It was such an issue with some European visitors to the death row at the Polunsky Unit near Livingston that prompted the policy change, TDCJ spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said: One woman tried to establish residence in the area, getting a post office box and cell phone and making plans to open a business:

"For years and years," she said, "this has not been a problem. But the change has been prompted by foreign visitors who have taken it a step further and established residency for months at a time. When you’ve got a local post office box, we no longer consider you someone who has traveled more than 300 miles to make a visit."

The new policy, which limits long-range visitors to a total of eight hours per visit with inmates, makes things much harder for people like Sandrine Ageorges, who said she has advocated for Texas death row inmates for 10 years. "Most visitors can only afford to stay a week or so," she told the Chronicle. "Two special visits, when one visits at the end of a month back to back with another (early monthly visit) makes the trip, the expense and the time really worthwhile to all concerned." She noted that regular weekly two-hour visits, which aren't affected by the policy change, aren't any good because "two hours is about the time a segregated prisoner needs to adjust to a visitor."

According to the Chron, some European visitors have started a petition asking the TDCJ to reconsider its visitation policy. There's no word yet on whether the agency will do so.