4 - Prisoners' Rights to Visitation/Association; Searches

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the prisoners' rights to visitation. The right of prisoners to have visitors while incarcerated has been strictly limited by prison officials. Many states permit a prisoner to see only those persons who have been approved by the prison administrators. Although visitation privileges are considered within the scope of internal prison administration, this fact does not permit discriminatory application of visiting regulations. Prisoners were graded on the basis of their dangerous propensities. The grades were numbered I through VI. The most dangerous prisoners were placed in either grade V or grade VI. With rare exceptions, contact visits were not permitted in either of these two grades. A Michigan District Court upheld the revised prison regulations and held that when prison regulations were reasonably related and supportive of legitimate penological interests, there should be no federal intervention. The regulations satisfied each of the four factors used to decide whether a prison regulation affecting a constitutional right that survives incarceration withstands constitutional challenge. The chapter also presents the pretrial detainees, communication among prisoners and union formation, conjugal visitation, news media interviews, attorney representatives, searches of visitors and prisoners, and juveniles. The liberalizing trend of judicial decisions over the years regarding visitors and associations have been drastically curtailed by such cases that held that only state-created liberty interests were constitutionally protected. Limits on the right of prison authorities to search visitors remain viable, either on Fourth Amendment grounds or privacy grounds.