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| Failure to allow holiday visits adds insult to NC incarceration |
| By newsobserver.com- Glenna Batson |
| Published: 12/31/2015 |
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This year, those who staff North Carolina’s 56 prisons got to spend Christmas with their families, thanks to the Department of Corrections’ generous vacation time policy. As a result, however, no one was around to oversee family visits for the state’s 38,000 incarcerated individuals. For them, the holiday season was anything but merry. For the last 17 years, I have had the privilege of corresponding with a man serving a life sentence for a crime with an ambiguous verdict. Sentenced to life without parole, this man remains a loving human being whose innocence has been in question over the 31 years he has served so far. He continues to make a viable life for himself under the harshest of conditions. Over the years, he has been transferred to six institutions due to overcrowding or closures. He has repeatedly fallen through the judicial cracks when every appeal to reopen his case reached a dead end. Even his closest relatives have disappeared from his life, severe poverty trumping the possibility of routine visits. This holiday, I had planned to make the 250-mile trip to visit this man for a few precious hours. Given that the prison requires 48 hours’ notice for visitors, I started calling Monday morning to arrange a Saturday visit. I called repeatedly for three days straight, but no one ever picked up the phone, nor was there a recorded message or website post about a change in visitation policy. Read More. |
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