Local Politics: Same cruelties plague the new James A. Karnes Corrections Center

Children who have a parent incarcerated in Franklin County will not see their parent in person until release. This is true for the Jackson Pike Corrections Center and for the new James A. Karnes Corrections Center. As of May 28, people incarcerated in Franklin County also cannot hold a piece of mail sent to them by their family – or anyone else. Mail is scanned and sent as an electronic attachment to a message in the facility’s app.

The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office eliminated in-person visits in August 2022 and implemented video calls through a company called Viapath Technologies. In announcing the change, the Sheriff’s Office said that each incarcerated person would be given two 20-minute calls each week “for free,” as if it’s some kind of gift. Any additional video calls must be purchased through Viapath.

James A. Karnes Corrections Center was not yet open at the time the virtual-only policy was announced. JAK, as it’s often referred to, is a massive, 430,000 square foot facility located on Fisher Road between Hague and McKinley avenues. I drive by this prison often, and I never see vehicles coming and going – other than a few that are obviously being driven by employees (massive trucks with right wing stickers and nothing in the bed). So, I wanted to find out if there were in-person visits at JAK.

I first searched online and found nothing – only the video call policy for Jackson Pike. I then called the listed number for visitations at the center and got three beeps followed by a dead line. After calling the general number, I finally reached a real person who told me, yes, all visits are by video call. She then gave me the Viapath website address to register for calls. I detail all of this because the process would have taken a lot longer if I didn’t speak English, and any callers facing a language barrier might struggle to find an answer. 

It should be noted that last week the FCC passed a rule that will lower the cost of prison and jail phone calls. The rule also implements a per-minute price cap for video calls. These changes will not go into effect until 2025, but will at least decrease the costs to incarcerated people and their families in what amounts to a $1.4 billion per year extortion racket.

What’s especially disgusting about eliminating in-person visits and physical mail is that the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office co-opts mental health and abolitionist language in an attempt to spin the image of prison into something it is not. If you visit the JAK website or read early news articles about the facility, you will find its health care and educational amenities widely touted. The Sheriff’s website even states that “Today’s Inmate is Tomorrow’s Neighbor.” 

In practical terms, the benefits and services are a lie. An hour of counseling in a new health center cannot replace seeing your child in person. A class on woodworking or accounting cannot replace the bond that is lost with your spouse when you have only seen them through a screen for five years. If today’s inmate is tomorrow’s neighbor, then why are we emotionally punishing them, turning them into recluses whose emotional bonds with the outside world have been eroded and frayed? Is that good for any of us?

For the record, today’s inmates are today’s neighbors. If we treated incarcerated people as full members of our community, they wouldn’t face so many difficulties adapting when they are released. 

When our incarcerated neighbors are released from JAK, they either need to be picked up in a vehicle or risk injury and even death in trying to walk to a bus. The same is true for anyone who might want to work at JAK but doesn’t already own a giant truck. There is no COTA bus route that runs past JAK, nor is there one on McKinley Avenue. The closest bus stop is located at West Fifth Avenue and Seaport Drive, which requires a 27-minute walk down McKinley and Fisher Road. The speed limit is 50 mph on McKinley and 40 mph on Fisher, and neither street has sidewalks.

As we often hear, the system is working exactly as designed. Officials can dress up JAK by making it big and high-tech. But a prison is still a prison. And they can add a few extra nurses or counselors. But their policies still dehumanize, isolate and punish people before releasing them back onto streets where they risk getting struck by a car. JAK is exactly like the prison we already had, only newer and more expensive.

Rachel Wenning has been a resident of Columbus for 16 years, with 8 of those spent in the Hilltop. She is a double Buckeye, a workers’ compensation attorney, a Greater Hilltop Area Commissioner and a mother of one.