Prisons Expanding Video-Teleconferencing

Stateline
Faced with the high costs of transporting and escorting sick inmates to the doctor, states are expanding their use of videoconferencing to provide health consultations to prisoners without resorting to costly — and sometimes dangerous — off-site trips.

Illinois is considering joining at least 26 other states that use “telemedicine” to help sick prisoners get advice from doctors, according to Derek Schnapp, a spokesman with the state Department of Corrections. State prison officials recently met with their counterparts from Texas — which has been using telemedicine for years and is considered a national leader — to discuss whether it should be introduced in Illinois, Schnapp said.

Elsewhere, videoconferencing in prisons and jails is replacing inmates’ in-person trips to the courtroom or parole board, and even the way family members visit.

Supporters say the technology saves money when few states have funds to spare; Arizona, for instance, saved $237,000 in 2008 by using telemedicine at nine correctional facilities, according to the state Department of Corrections. But some have criticized the expansion of videoconferencing.

Relying on technology to keep inmates behind bars makes them “disappear more and more from the public consciousness, and I think there’s a (negative) long-term consequence of that,” said Nancy Stoller, a professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz and the coordinator of a jail and prison task force at the American Public Health Association.

Telemedicine is not a new invention, but experts say the recession could drive more states to consider it. Many of those that already rely on telemedicine, meanwhile, are using it for a wider range of purposes.

In Georgia, about 700 of the state prison system’s 1,000 monthly videoconference consultations between doctors and inmates are for psychiatric — not physical — problems, said Alan Adams, director of the Office of Health Services for the Georgia Department of Corrections.