To the Executive Office of Public safety, Superintendent Lisa Mitchell, & MASS Department of Corrections Commissioner Luis Spencer

We the undersigned have been recently informed that the visiting room at old Colony Correctional Center will be reconstituted to sit visitors directly across from inmates instead of the long-standing customary side-by-side arrangement. This decision making process has been conducted without consideration or consultation with the families and the affected community.
We are alarmed and dismayed by this proposal, for its actions would discourage family contacts and promote unnatural interaction. Already little privacy is afforded and due to these arrangements personal and sensitive conversations between family members will become extinct. This is a gross burden placed upon an already difficult circumstance that will severely dissuade family bonding, which have been proven a powerfully effective, and some would say best, tool in rehabilitating inmates.
According to the DOC Family and Friend Handbook, family reunification is an important and necessary component to rehabilitation. The handbook states that families’ “emotional support… During this time is important. Community connections maintained during the period of incarceration provide valuable reentry resources and overall stability. The Department of correction wants to be a resource for you so that you are better able to assist your family member or friend through this period of incarceration.”
Community ties and strong family bond are crucial to inmates returning safely to society, maintaining good prison conduct, and ensuring overall public safety. It’s incredulous to think years of university accepted policy and development will be discarded so carelessly. Furthermore, the strain on wives, partners and especially children will be tremendous. Fostering relationships between father and child must be expanded, not curtailed .FBI statistics indicate that a missing father is a more reliable predictor of criminal activity than race, environment, or poverty, while 72% of all teenage murderers grew up in an environment without the constant presence of the father. Appropriate and sustained contacts between child and father are required to build life sustaining intimacy.
As a community it is our responsibility to ensure the safety and proper growth amongst our families. For these reasons we are requesting a review and renunciation of this proposed policy change.

Sincerely,
The undersigned: