On Sunday, Oct. 13, Miami CF is once again going to no-contact visitation, using rates of positive urinalysis increasing as a justification for the move. THIS IS A FALSE JUSTIFICATION.
No facility has provided any documentation of the data they are using to determine that rates of positive urinalysis are increasing, nor have they provided any data to connect increasing positive urinalysis rates to drugs coming in through visitation. Indeed, the DOC has specifically refused IDOC Watch’s public records requests for this information. Why? Because their random drug screenings prove nothing, and there is NO CONNECTION between contact visitation and rates of positive urinalysis. Everyone knows that the guards and staff bring the majority of the drugs in.
What is really going on here? We think that the point of restricting contact visitation is to test the willingness of the prisoners and their loved ones to submit to completely arbitrary restrictions. Their goal is to eventually eliminate contact visitation completely, to only have video visits (as is already the case in many jails), which will cut down significantly on the cost of running the prisons, because less staff will be needed.
If we don’t want to be completely cut off from our loved ones other than through screens, we need to fight back and put a stop to these arbitrary restrictions on contact visitation!
