Twice a month, Shirley Ross drives two hours from her home in Maben to the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County to visit her little sister who is serving time for a drug conviction.
Her husband drives her, and they bring along their three grandchildren — ages 1, 2 and 6 — as well as Ross’ disabled mother and 21-year-old niece.
But starting next week, the family won’t be able to do that thanks to a new visiting policy the Mississippi Department of Corrections just announced.
State prisoners will now only be allowed to visit with immediate family, according to a memo from MDOC.
The new policy allow visitors including parents, spouses, siblings, children and stepchildren if the prisoners raised the stepchildren before they were 12. It will not allow aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, unmarried romantic partners, close friends or pastors.
This would mean that Ross’ husband and their three granddaughters will no longer be able to see Ross’ sister.
“This is going to be very, very hard,” Ross said.
Inmates upset
When Ross’ sister, Monta Bell, learned of the new policy, she called Ross from the prison and told her. The inmates had learned about it from memos posted around the jail, Ross said. As she spoke to her sister, she said she could hear other upset inmates in the background.
Ross said she could understand not allowing boyfriends or girlfriends to visit.
“But your brother-in-law?” she said. “Your nieces?”
Ross’ husband doesn’t like the idea of Ross, her mother and her niece all driving to Rankin County by themselves. Ross herself said she isn’t comfortable taking care of her mother and her niece by herself. They don’t know the area well enough for her husband to take the three grandchildren somewhere else while Ross visits.
It’s frustrating — and not just because she just paid $30 plus taxes to get new copies of her grandchildren’s birth certificates so they could visit Bell. Bell also wants to be able to see her great nieces.
“She loves to see them,” Ross said.
It’s difficult for other inmates as well, she said, especially those who wish to meet with ministers.
“When they’re taking the pastors away, they’re taking a big part out of these people’s lives,” Ross said. “They need Jesus in there.”
Bell has served three years of a nine-year sentence.
No affect on local jails
MDOC’s new policy doesn’t affect local jails. The Clay County Jail in West Point has its own set of visitation policies, Sheriff Eddie Scott said.
Inmates in Clay County have always only been allowed two, sometimes three, visitors who are immediate family. This goes both for local inmates and for state prisoners being held at the jail.
“We don’t just let anybody off the street (come in),” Scott said.
However, there is a separate time for ministers to visit with inmates, Scott said. The jail hosts a ministry for inmates and families on Tuesdays, and inmates can attend chapel Friday nights, Scott said.
He added there hasn’t been much of a problem with people who are not immediate family members trying to come in and visit on a whim. Usually the inmates choose two visitors who are immediate family.
Lowndes County Adult Detention Facility, which does not house state inmates, allows each inmate up to five visitors, administrative assistant Karen Stanford said. Those visitors may not always be family members. However, she added, pastors, like attorneys, don’t count as any of the inmates’ five.
Only two people can visit at once and then only for 15 minutes. Inmates only get one visit per weekend. All visitors go through a background check.
That policy has been in place for a few years, Stanford said, since about 2010. It hasn’t really fluctuated with MDOC’s policies at all.
“We try to be as compassionate and understanding as we can and yet still operate in the guidelines of the facility,” Stanford said.
‘That’s the only sister I have’
Ross said she knows of at least one other inmate whose uncle drives her grandmother to see her at the same facility. Now that uncle is not allowed to visit.
“(The grandmother’s) a 60-year-old lady,” Ross said. “You know she’s not going to be able to drive down there by herself.”
The new policy begins next week. Ross is already in the process of looking for a second job so she can pay someone to watch her grandchildren while she goes down to Rankin County.
“That’s the only sister that I have,” Ross said. “I love her.”
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