Link of possible interest ...

[sholio]

... to White Collar writers, or anyone who's writing something that involves prison visits. I stumbled across this while looking up New York prison visitor policies (... it's for fiction, I swear) -- a blogger's detailed account of visiting her boyfriend at Manhattan Detention Center. Lots of information that you can't get from just reading the visitor policies, like how the strip searches are handled and where the waiting area is relative to the visiting area.

Comments

[veleda_k]

Oh, you have no idea how relevant this is to my interests. I've had hard time getting good information on what it's like to visit prisoners. This looks like it could be exactly what I need.

[sholio]

Glad to be helpful! :D I've been trying to come up with good solid information, too -- mostly all I could find were the official guidelines, but those aren't too useful in getting the little authentic details of the experience.

[florafic]

Eeeeeeeeeee thank you! This is very relevant to my interests as well!

[sholio]

Glad to help! :D I've been having a hard time coming up with authentic information beyond the basic visitor policies; this looks very helpful.

[magibrain]

Wow, that's amazingly convoluted, invasive, and apparently inefficient. None of which surprises me, really, but still.

[sholio]

Isn't it, though?! I suppose it's basically what I was expecting of the American criminal justice system: depressing, check; inefficient, check; dehumanizing, double check. Go USA!

(I've had occasional relatives in prison, though I've never visited anyone there, and the arbitrary restrictiveness is just nuts. My mom has tried to send handmade artwork to imprisoned relatives and had it returned ... because drawings on paper could be used ... to ... something? WHO KNOWS.)

[magibrain]

(They could contain secret messages! Possibly launch codes! For the facility's ballistic prisoner-suppression systems, you know.)

[sholio]

I seem to recall that the stated reason for returning them was because they were made with crayon, which ... doesn't actually clear things up, because a) they weren't (pencil ... crayon ... easily confused ...), and b) CRAYON? Is it a high explosive now?

[magibrain]

...apparently drugs can be smuggled inside the crayon wax. The more you know!

I have no logical explanation for mistaking pencil for crayon, however.