Video Visits at LBJ

It’s been a long time since we’ve had any posts on our LBJ Website! I hope it still works 😊. As you all know, due to the Covid19 pandemic, all religious services at the jail were stopped in mid March. The prospects of starting services back up is still unknown. However, we have been able to do some one-on-one video visits with guys at LBJ, and that is the topic of this post.

First I’ll describe how the video visit works. Then I’ll give a little history of how we got here. And finally, I’ll discuss the prospects of other LBJ volunteers doing video visits.

A Video Visit

Once you get set up with an account, doing the video visit is pretty easy. First, you schedule the visit. You can schedule a visit for any duration you want, and at any open time. My experience so far is that almost all times are open. I scheduled 1 hour visits. When the scheduled time comes, the camera at the jail turns on in the visitation room. The CO brings in the man you’re visiting with. He can see you, and you can see him, and he talks using a handset.

How your visit is structured, and what you talk about, is up to you. I’ll explain how I have been doing the meetings, just as an example. You may have some good ideas I could use to improve my sessions. I start with a prayer. After the opening prayer, we first have some introductory discussion, e.g. how he’s doing, etc. If they want to talk about their case, I will listen, and be sympathetic, but we should not get involved in any legal stuff. I then steer the discussion to religious topics, since this is a clergy visit. We discuss their prayer life, what they’re reading in the bible, etc. I come prepared with scripture that we can read and discuss. When there is about 5 minutes left in the hour, I start to end the meeting, and we always end with prayer time.

I have received very positive feedback from the guys. They really appreciate the meeting, and look forward to the next one.

To do a video visit, you need a computer that has an internet connection, a camera, and microphone. Currently, we haven’t done any visits with smartphones. The software application that the jail uses requires software called Adobe Flash Player. Most smartphones don’t come with that software. If you have an Android smartphone, I think you can load the software, but I haven’t tried it. You can’t get it through the Google Play store. I don’t know about Apple iPhone. Just to add a complication, Adobe Flash Player won’t be supported starting next year, so they will have to change their software to use something different. There are always changes!

History

There are a couple of guys at LBJ that I had been doing one-on-ones with before the shut down. As you know, the typical stay at LBJ isn’t very long, but because of their cases, these guys have been at LBJ an unusually long time. Back in August, I asked Kevin if it might be possible to do video visits with them. He talked to management at the jail, and they said they could set us up to do free video visits with them under the category of ‘professional’ visitors, and specifically as clergy.

I was instructed to write to the guys, by sending a post card via old-fashioned snail mail, and ask them to put in a tank order for video visits. I did that, and both guys wrote me back (they didn’t have to do that) and told me they put in the tank orders. They were anxious for the visits.

I had to jump through some hoops, and iron out some wrinkles, but we finally got accounts to do video visits. We were blazing new ground. Unfortunately, it took about two months, but that was partially my fault for not pushing it more. It shouldn’t take that long in the future. There are currently three Diocesan volunteers that I know of (two from LBJ) who are set up for doing video visits, and three guys have been visited.

How to get Involved

To get more volunteers to help with video visits we need two things. First, we need names of men in jail who want the visits. Second, we need badged Diocesan volunteers with accounts set up to do the visits.

Kevin talked to management at the jail, and they are looking into finding the names of men who want visits. I’m quite sure there are a lot of guys that would love them. Jail management will instruct them to put in a tank order, and we need to be informed of the tank orders. Hopefully, this effort will be successful.

Then we need to find out which of you LBJ volunteers would like to participate. If this is something you are interested in doing, please let me know. I can’t guarantee yet that we can get you an account, or that we will have men to visit, but, as a first step, we can find out which of you are interested.

That’s it for now. Let me know if you are interested in doing one-on-one video visits. And, have a blessed Thanksgiving!