Friday, October 20, 2023

Institutional Libraries Long Closed to the Public, part I: Institutions for Adults

Dear Diary,

This page is about several classes of libraries that I explicitly put aside in "Library Hours Six Months Later" despite my avowed goal of covering all libraries listed in my sources, and one class on which I spent much effort and some actual writing in that page.

What these libraries have in common is that they are available to people who live in, or spend many of their waking hours in, institutions in which their freedom of movement, their literal "liberty", is often or always restricted.   Because these people, sometimes or always, can't physically go to, for a notable example, public libraries, it's important that they have access to libraries inside the institutions in question.

I separated out academic libraries as a category in "Six Months Later", and handled it differently, because I believed and believe it's essential to academic work to have library access.  The argument this time is different, but more compelling in the context of the issues you're about, dear Diary.  No, it isn't possible for homeless people, any more than most housed ones, to use the restrooms inside these institutions.  But the institutions for adults covered in this part are all well-known as places whose residents often leave them to become homeless.  I have absolutely no evidence, but I believe, nonetheless, that it's obvious that libraries in the institutions should decrease the percentage who actually do become homeless.  Therefore, as with the academic libraries, I'm proceeding not just library by library but more importantly campus by campus.  Or anyway physical location by physical location. The point being that each physical site (except maybe ones very close together) should have its own library.  So this page is really about whether sites have libraries, not what sort of libraries they have.

Both this argument and my history with these libraries dictate my methods.  Because this is my first time dealing with most of these libraries, I don't consider myself free to e-mail or telephone anyone.  (Separately, all the people I'd be e-mailing or telephoning are people governments sometimes authorise to use force on other people, and I'd be nervous about bothering them.)  And not only am I not going to physically visit each site, I'm not allowed to physically visit each site.  So all I can do is take these places' word for it that libraries exist, if they say so.  In the body of this part, I go into how much justification I think I actually have for taking each place's word.  Moreover, since libraries' existence is my main concern, and not their hours, or their conduct or borrowing rules, the rest of this part is terser than this introduction.

Contents of this part:

Dear Diary, some of your readers may object to the idea that military bases are anything like mental hospitals, let alone prisons.  The military, after all, is just another job!  I can sympathise with such objections.  In fact, in "Six Months Later", I listed the military base libraries properly according to my criteria, but dismissed the prison libraries and mental hospital library much more casually as beyond my purview, even though, at that time, my main concern was public restrooms and none of these offer any, so I should've treated them all the same.  The difference was precisely:  It could be argued that the military is simply a job.  Whereas the other two categories required me to look into very bleak "There but for the grace of God go I" situations.  Even now, I'm organising the three parts of the body of this part not by the distance of the closest member as I usually would, but by a more or less moral scale, best to worst.

While the military is indeed significantly different from mental hospitals and prisons by virtue of the fact that the adults in the military chose to be there (which hasn't always been the case in American history), in fact, members of the military who physically move off the base without formally granted permission not only can be forced to return but can be put into prison for leaving.  (As best I understand it, they usually aren't, but they can be.)  Whereas at most jobs, employees are physically free to leave at any time, albeit they may have trouble getting another job after doing so.  In fact, when someone at a private employer isn't physically free to leave, we call it "slavery".  Well, I don't expect slave-owners to permit their slaves to go to libraries.  (I do expect slave-owners to die miserably, but that's another matter.)

But if the military is an ordinary job, and yet soldiers (sailors, airmen, Marines, etc.) can't go to the public library in their free time without explicit permission, then there ought to be libraries on military bases, I'm glad there are, and I'm now going to show how the military, in western Washington, in fact takes better care to provide library service to its volunteer charges than mental hospitals and prisons do to provide them to their conscripted ones.

Previous parts of pages relevant to this part:

Throughout this part, given that the populations in question are heavily male, I'm less politically correct in certain locutions; mainly "his (her)" instead of "his or her", let alone "her or his", which I think both convey a misleading impression of parity.

Military bases

Because I never registered for the draft, I'm ineligible to work for the US government, so for thirty years now, it's been extremely unlikely for me to end up on any military bases.

I consider the existence of the libraries and other forms of library service described in this section extremely probable.  The vast Web presence of the US military is unlikely to be purely a performance for spectators like me.  So I think many members of the military read pages relevant to themselves, and if the military promised libraries that don't exist, there would probably be lots of complaints.  Also, most of the libraries are presented not on strictly military sites but on .com ones meant to give military people warm fuzzy feelings; I don't see how it would benefit morale at all to lie on such pages.

Military bases whose websites say they have libraries

I gave distances to these in part XI of "Six Months Later", according to the distance calculator I used to use. In that part, I also mentioned other libraries not intended for the populations of the bases at large, such as medical libraries, which I'm ignoring this time.

  • Naval Base Kitsap.  English Wikipedia says it has 15,601 active duty personnel, without a reference.  It used to be two separate parts, which no longer have their own websites, and are geographically disjunct.
    • Naval Station Bremerton. Its Bremerton Recreation Center offers "Library services".  Naval Hospital Bremerton, some distance from the recreation center, used to make known that it had a library for its patients, but no longer appears to make that known.  (I have no idea whether it still has the library.)
    • Naval Submarine Base Bangor  Its Liberty Center, Bangor offers "Lending Library & Board Games".
  • Naval Station Everett. English Wikipedia says it has about 350 sailors and civilians assigned to the station, but also hosts naval commands totalling about 6,000 people, without a reference. Its Resource Center offers "a free paperback exchange program and hardback book checkouts".
  • Joint Base Lewis-McChord. English Wikipedia says it has about 210,000 active population, referring to a website titled "The 5 Largest Military Bases in the World". It used to be two separate parts, which no longer have their own websites, and are geographically conjunct.
    • McChord Air Force Base. It includes McChord Library. This library is to close for re-carpeting for January and February.
    • Fort Lewis. It includes Grandstaff Library. Within that library is a smaller one that also has its own website, Book Patch Children's Library. (Remember, dear Diary, I'm writing about institutions for adults, not necessarily libraries for adults.) These libraries are to close for re-carpeting for November and December.
  • Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. English Wikipedia says the 2010 census found 1,541 people there. I looked at the wrong location here last time. Its Liberty Northwest Center offers a "Trade-a-Book Program".

Military base whose website doesn't say it has a library

  • Naval Magazine Indian Island.  English Wikipedia says the 2000 census found 44 people there, on the island just east of Port Hadlock, all of which the Navy controls.  It's 32.07 miles from my house by the distance calculator I'm currently using (which is also the source of all distances further on in this page). That distance would put it between Naval Station Everett and Joint Base Lewis-McChord if it were in the above list.  Both the magazine's own site and most sites found by searching for it on Google focus heavily on the place's ecological aspects.

Military base without a public website

  • Camp Murray.  It's owned by the state of Washington, not the US government, and is used by the Washington Air National Guard and Washington Army National Guard (which can be taken over by the US government) as well as the Washington State Guard (which can't).  I'm also ineligible to join these bodies.  I have no idea whether anyone lives there month-round, let alone year-round; I strongly doubt it's a residential military base of the kind this section is mainly about.  It's 40.58 miles from my house by the current distance calculator, which would put it between McChord and Grandstaff libraries in the above list; it's between Steilacoom and DuPont, which means I've walked past its fences.

My conclusion:  The extent of library service the US military offers to the people it stations in western Washington is pretty carefully calibrated to the number of such people in each place.  Library service is obviously taken seriously.  However, an isolated city of 210,000 should probably have more than two libraries, as the example of Tacoma, with about that population, suggests, and as the upcoming re-carpeting crisis will probably vividly demonstrate.

Mental hospitals

Currently, as I understand it, there are at least four ways a person in Washington can be involuntarily committed, which is what it takes to end up in the kind of mental hospital I mean in this part.   First, the person can be found, without the involvement of criminal law, to be a danger to himself (herself) or others, either via violence of some kind or via incapacity to function.  This is "civil commitment".  Second, the person can be charged with something, but there's serious doubt of his (or her) competence to stand trial.  This leads to "competency evaluation" and other mental health activities that aren't optional.  Third, the person can be found not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity.  Both of these are "forensic commitment".  Fourth, the person can have served out a sentence for a crime, but is still being detained for mental health-related reasons.  Washington's Department of Social and Health Services calls this "special commitment" (but also considers it a form of civil commitment, which strikes me as bizarre).  Anyway, although I've now for about fifty years experienced occasionally severe mental illness (depression), I don't think I've come all that close to qualifying for these places.

The state of Washington is under court pressure to do better by the people who do qualify, so this area of Washington's mental health infrastructure has been growing rapidly, and I'm cheating a bit by dinging a location that hasn't quite opened yet.  I'd have been pretty lost if not for a 28-page PDF ("Washington State Legal System Guide to Forensic Mental Health Services", dated 2016) and the link list on the left sides of pages under DSHS's Behavioral Health Administration.  I still don't believe that this section is anywhere near complete.

Mental hospital whose website says it has a library

  • Western State Hospital.  Has a capacity of over 800 beds.  It's the first institution in this part of this page to have a branch of the Washington State Library, and unlike most such institutions, it gives that library its very own Web page, such as the military libraries have.  It serves patients both by "campus mail" and an "on-site library open Monday-Friday".  It's in Lakewood on the way to Steilacoom, 35.98 miles from my house, and yes, dear Diary, I've walked past it too.

Mental hospitals whose websites don't say they have libraries

  • Olympic Heritage Behavioral Health.  Has a capacity for 137 beds; the first were filled on October 2, 2023, but they're opening gradually, so it won't reach its full capacity until spring.  That said, this used to be a private mental hospital, Cascade Behavioral Health, so it's not a new thing, and there should already have been a place in it where books could be found, ideally also read or discussed.  Maybe there is, but DSHS doesn't think it's worth mentioning online; but then, maybe there used to be, but DSHS found what it thinks a better use for the space.  The residents are civilly committed people, meant to make more room at Western (and Eastern) State Hospitals for forensically committed people.  Since civil commitment is often started by family members, there would seem to be an incentive for DSHS to throw those family members some bones by describing a few better aspects of life there.  The existing page is focused on reassuring neighbours that the residents won't escape.  The place is in northwest Tukwila, on the Burien border, 13.07 miles from my house.
  • Maple Lane.  According to the 2016 book listed above (page 17, numbered 13), this 30-bed cottage northwest of Centralia, 69.54 miles, was being used for competency evaluations.  According to DSHS today, it's about to start being used to house people found not guilty by reason of insanity, specifically to prepare them for release.  For so few people presumably staying only temporarily, anything more than a standing bookshelf or three (or a single shelf in each room) is probably overkill; but then, for all I know, competency evaluations are still going on in some nearby cottage, in which case the population is about to double.

Mental hospitals without public websites

  • In Washington, the state allows itself to hold "sexually violent predators" after their sentences end until it's satisfied that they no longer have whatever impulses drove them to their crimes.  The courts appear to doubt that Washington has this authority, so DSHS is trying to thread the needle partly by changing venues - that is, not changing court venues, but rather, not keeping all the hundreds of men being kept on McNeil Island stuck in that one place forever.  For obvious reasons, neither McNeil Island nor whatever other places DSHS has opened have websites Google could find.

I have no idea how well calibrated library service at mental hospitals in western Washington is to the number of people held in them, because I'm not convinced I've found all the mental hospitals.  (And I'm not just referring here to places holding "sexually violent predators".)  But also because I don't trust that the ones I have found would all have mentioned any libraries.  Hold that thought, dear Diary, or you'll completely misunderstand the next section.

Prisons

I have no experience of prison (or jail) either.  I was homeless for eight and a half years, and it's pretty obvious that many elected officials in King County desperately want to re-criminalise homelessness.  Also, the only occasions on which police have treated me as a suspect were both for trespassing.  But one was hand-cuffing, but not arrest, at a building that had been a tax office I'd worked at, and where I had permission to be; and the other was detention, but not arrest, at an office that was still a tax office, and where I thought I had permission to be.  More importantly, both were while I was still housed.

Anyway, you'll remember, dear Diary, that in western Washington, five levels of government have libraries - municipal, tribal, county, state, and federal.  Unlike the military bases, which are mostly or entirely federal, and the mental hospitals, which (as far as I know) are all state, all five levels have prisons here.  An important distinction here:  Crimes in Washington are classified into two main categories, felonies and misdemeanors.  Misdemeanors in general can be punished by up to one year in prison; felonies in general can be punished by more than a year in prison.  In Washington, convicted felons usually go to state prisons, occasionally to federal ones.  Convicted misdemeanants usually go to county or municipal "jail"s.  (I won't profess to know anything about how tribes' laws work, so am not sure where in this framework tribal jails fall.)  Jails also hold people awaiting trial, who may not have been convicted of anything yet.  But because people are thought of as spending relatively shorter times in jails, we as a society tend to allow worse conditions there than in prisons.  The digression below offers a fairly spectacular example of this.

The websites of western Washington prisons are highly imitative.  Obviously this is true of the state prisons, which all belong to the same state agency, but it's also true of the jails.  Here are some rules that many jails' websites explicitly lay down:

Prisoners may not enter their incarceration with books.  They can be given, or if they have money buy, books "directly from their publishers" (which some jails admit usually actually means from Amazon; the point is, the books have to be new, not used).  However, prisoners are limited to only a few books in their cells at a time, the numbers very comparable to typical limits on homeless people's library cards at the libraries that impose such limits, usually 3 to 5.  Also, they may not own or have access to any hard-cover books.  The limits don't count "religious books"; I infer, but don't know, that by this is meant not random inspirational books, but Bibles, or at the more broad-minded prisons maybe also Torahs, Korans...  Those may also be limited to 1 or 2, but don't count against the limit on other books; they do also have to be soft-covered.

The state's (9-page PDF) restrictions on publications are much less onerous than the jails'.  Regular publications kept in an inmate's cell are limited to a space 18" x 12" x 10".  (I pulled the top five mass market paperbacks off a stack in my house and found them 7" x 5" x 5".  So this is clearly a better deal.)  There's a separate, smaller, space allotment for religious items, including but not limited to books.  Also, I was unable to find any exclusion of hardcover books (despite looking in a bunch of places both directly and through site-specific Google searches), and non-profits approved by the state can send used books.  Because prisoners normally arrive at state prisons from local jails, what to bring on arrival isn't as much of a focus.

Prisons are legally required to provide certain inmates - apparently, ones acting as their own lawyers - with legal references.  A few jails still page books from the county law libraries when necessary, but nowadays the vast majority instead offer terminals equipped with legal references.  These terminals are referred to as the jail's "law library", but I didn't take them as evidence of a more general library.  Near as I can tell, state prisons still use books, the larger ones having their own physical law libraries.

Prisons whose websites say they have libraries

Libraries at prisons have more things in common.  Seven of the eleven county or municipal jails whose websites say that they have libraries, also the one federal prison that says so, say it in one specific place.  This is in PDF versions of "inmate manual"s (the title varies, but below, I call them all inmate manuals), books inmates are expected to read and live by, and are penalised for damaging.

The state prisons famously have "branches" of the Washington State Library, and do mention those.  Except the ones that don't have them, which, it turns out, are about half of those in western Washington.  People in minimum security prisons are restricted to getting books by inter-library loan through the Washington State Library's catalogue.  I link to the available-online federal and local inmate manuals below, so here's a link to the state inmate manual, 81-page PDF, library reference on page 47.  It's much more lawyerly- and much less practically-oriented than the jail manuals; for a notable example, it doesn't include any of the state's actual restrictions on books.

Most references to prison or jail libraries don't go into detail about how they work, but two do, and it's radically different from what most of us understand by "library".  The Federal Detention Center SeaTac and the Island County Jail both explain that what they really have are book carts that are wheeled by staff from cell to cell.  Not a place outside the cells where even minimum security inmates can sit and read, let alone discuss, books.  Because prisons appear to me to be so imitative, I find it entirely plausible that this is how it works at every one of these prisons, but because the Washington State Library's Institutional Library Services home page emphasises the word "place" a lot, the Washington State Library branches are where I'd look for exceptions first.

Finally, a few of the libraries mentioned below do come up in random parts of the websites.  This suggests to me that "inmate library" or "jail library" is a common term, and (again because of imitation) probably most or all of the prisons listed further below whose websites don't happen to mention libraries actually do have them anyway, for whatever those carts are worth.

  • Federal Detention Center SeaTac, in southern SeaTac south of the airport, 17.55 miles from my house.  Inmate manual, 71-page PDF, see page 42.  This prison holds primarily inmates involved in trials in Seattle, 787 as of evening, October 19.
  • Monroe Correctional Complex (state), in southwestern Monroe, 19.52 miles.  Washington State Library branches in the Twin Rivers Unit, with 800 capacity (per English Wikipedia), and the Washington State Reformatory, with 720.  Inter-library loan for the Minimum Security Unit, with 470.  These numbers and two more below add up to more than the prison's stated total capacity of 2400.  At that capacity, MCC would be the third biggest prison in Washington; at the total of its units' Wikipedia sizes, 2590, it would be the biggest.
  • Snohomish County Jail, in downtown Everett, 21.63 miles.  Comforts future inmates reading that they mayn't bring books by saying "inmates may use the inmate library."  Did not report its average daily population for 2022 to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, whose 2022 data (link is directly to a spreadsheet) I'm using below.  (I also used that spreadsheet to identify the municipal and tribal jails, about which I hadn't previously heard.)
  • Washington Corrections Center for Women, just west of Gig Harbor, 26.56 miles.  Washington State Library branch.  738 capacity.
  • Marysville Municipal Jail, southwest Marysville, 27.03 miles.  Inmate manual, not a PDF, mentions "Jail Library".  Average daily population, 2022, was 22.
  • Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women (state), a few miles northwest of unincorporated Belfair, Mason County, 28.13 miles.  Minimum security prison with inter-library loan available from Washington State Library.  321 capacity.
  • Pierce County Jail, downtown Tacoma, 29.65 miles.  A 2016 Request For Proposals, 232-page PDF, contains a 2015 organisation chart for the jail in Appendix D, unnumbered page 216, which identifies someone as responsible for the "Inmate Library".  That person isn't findable through Pierce County's website now, but their title, "Program Coordinator", is still in charge of other programs, so maybe also still the inmate library.  Average daily population, 2022, was 748.
  • Jefferson County Jail, unincorporated Port Hadlock, 31.51 miles.  Jail policy manual, 584-page PDF; library discussed pp. 547-548.  Average daily population, 2022, was 22.
  • Island County Jail, Coupeville, 40.86 miles.  Inmate manual, 31-page PDF; library described p. 13.  Average daily population, 2022, was 42.
  • Mason County Jail, downtown Shelton, 48.29 miles.  Inmate manual, 19-page PDF; library mentioned p. 11.  Average daily population, 2022, was 81.
  • Washington Corrections Center, northwest of Shelton, 50.01 miles.  Branch of Washington State Library.  Capacity 1,268.
  • Clallam County Corrections Facility, downtown Port Angeles, 59.62 miles.  Inmate manual, 49-page PDF; see pp. 21-22.  Average daily population, 2022, was 94.
  • Cedar Creek Corrections Center (state), unincorporated Littlerock, Thurston County, 66.77 miles.  Minimum security prison with inter-library loan available from Washington State Library.  Capacity 480.
  • Whatcom County Jail, downtown Bellingham, 74.79 miles.  2020 Request For Proposals, 19-page PDF; see p. 11.  Average daily population, 2022, was 302.
  • Olympic Corrections Center (state), quite a few miles east of unincorporated Oil City, Jefferson County, 84.24 miles.  Minimum security prison with inter-library loan available from Washington State Library.  Capacity 272.
  • Stafford Creek Corrections Center (state), south across Grays Harbor from Hoquiam, 90.85 miles.  Branch of the Washington State Library.  Capacity 1,936.
  • Clallam Bay Corrections Center (state), unincorporated Clallam Bay, Clallam County, 97.88 miles.  Branch of the Washington State Library.  Capacity 858.
  • Skamania County Jail, Stevenson, 138.43 miles.  Inmate manual, 42-page PDF, see p. 27.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Clark County Jail, downtown Vancouver, 142.23 miles.  Inmate manual, 52-page PDF, p. 37 (numbered 28) mentions the library.  Average daily population, 2022, was 440.

Two places you might have thought to see listed there, dear Diary, are no longer operating as prisons:  Olympia Municipal Jail and Larch Corrections Center.

Prisons whose websites don't say they have libraries

  • King County Correctional Facility, downtown Seattle, 4.97 miles from my house.  Average daily population, 2022, was 1,491, but that probably includes both this location and another listed further below.
  • Kirkland City Jail, near Totem Lake, 6.91 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 16.
  • Lynnwood Jail (municipal), downtown Lynnwood, 10.34 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Issaquah City Jail, downtown Issaquah, 16.89 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 46.
  • Kitsap County Jail, near the coast of Port Orchard, 17.40 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 313.
  • South Correctional Entity (the contiguous cities of Burien, Des Moines, SeaTac and Tukwila, plus Auburn and Renton), about a mile north of downtown Des Moines, 19.33 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Monroe Correctional Complex (state), in southwestern Monroe, 19.52 miles.   Special Offender Unit, capacity 400, and Intensive Management Unit, capacity over 200.
  • Maleng Regional Justice Center (King County), downtown Kent, 20.45 miles.  Average daily population for 2022 probably included with the other King County Jail listed above.
  • City of Kent Jail, southeast Kent, 21.67 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 67.
  • Northwest Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Center (federal, rented private prison), east of downtown Tacoma, 29.74 miles.  Washington's attorney general says its capacity is 1,575.
  • Puyallup City Jail, downtown Puyallup, 33.51 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 32.
  • Enumclaw City Jail, downtown Enumclaw, 36.12 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 14.
  • Skagit County Jail, southern Mount Vernon, 49.68 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 247.
  • Thurston County Corrections Facility, half a mile southeast of the Capitol Mall, 52.44 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 244.
  • Nisqually Corrections Center (tribal), a mile south of the Nisqually village, 53.12 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • San Juan County holding facility, Friday Harbor, about 67 miles.  It sends all the inmates it knows will be longer term to the SCORE (South Correctional Entity) jail listed above.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Chehalis Tribal Corrections Department, Chehalis village, 71.47 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Lewis County Jail, downtown Chehalis (the city, this time), 76.33 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 168.
  • Grays Harbor County Jail, central Montesano, 76.57 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Aberdeen City Jail, central Aberdeen, 84.92 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Hoquiam City Jail, central Hoquiam (the G.M. Johnson map of Grays Harbor County lacks the symbols that other G.M. Johnson maps use to indicate things like city halls and libraries), 87.37 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 15.
  • Forks Correctional Facility (municipal), central Forks (yep, same map), 97.13 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Pacific County Jail, South Bend, 98.78 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.
  • Cowlitz County Jail, Longview near the bridges to Kelso, 109.44 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 186.
  • Wahkiakum County Jail, Cathlamet, 113.35 miles.  Average daily population, 2022, was 5.

Digression:  Visiting prisoners in autumn 2023, according to prisons' websites

Because I was looking at all the prisons' home pages, I saw a lot of visiting rules.  And then I was also looking for prisons' addresses, to work out how far away they are, and saw some visiting-specific pages due to that.  And let me tell you, dear Diary.  The prisons of western Washington have made great strides toward more perfect ways of visiting prisoners than hitherto, thanks to the wonderful gifts of technology.

(I should clarify.  Many prisons distinguish between "family" or "social" visits, which is what I'm talking about here, and "professional" visits, which are ones they're more or less legally required to allow:  with lawyers, doctors, and clergy, the kinds of people many parents want their children to marry.  Some have thrown hoops in the way of professional visits that strike me as inspired by COVID-19, and I think some have made no reference online to in-person professional visits, but anyway, those aren't my topic here.)

You see, dear Diary, during the COVID-19 pandemic into which you were born, it was important to keep people distanced, to reduce our human bodies' vulnerability to the virus.  Well, distance is precisely what in-person visitors to prisons don't want, so in-person visits weren't allowed, and in their wisdom most western Washington prisons implemented video visiting instead.  They didn't get into the streaming video industry themselves, oh no; rather they hired a panoply of amazing private companies that have only people's best interests at heart.

Now that the pandemic is officially over, there are five ways western Washington prisons are offering visits.  First are the fence-sitters, who've chosen video vendors and set up the systems, but have also re-opened their in-person visiting rooms.  As we know from the Bible, such pusillanimous behaviour will get its reward.

Second, many prisons remain stuck in the past, offering only in-person visits, as if anyone could tolerate not using the latest technology for such an important event as meeting with their nearest and dearest:

I bet people in those places still get married in person, too.

So none of the state or federal prisons have fully embraced the cutting edge of future prison technology, but a solid majority of the local jails have.

Now I have to explain some things about the video visiting business.  The way most of the jails have set it up, video visiting has two modalities.  One is visiting from the comfort of one's own home.  This has a number of genuine advantages.  While it doesn't get rid of the huge sets of rules that surround visits to prisoners (many of which, seems to me, amount to demanding middle-class behaviour of both prisoners and visitors), it does pretty much eliminate the competition for scarce physical space in the visiting room.  So in principle, prisoners could spend much of their time on visits, except that most jails wisely limit them to a certain number of visits per week or month.  It also eliminates the need to travel to the jail (albeit many jails are pretty close to home).

But what about people who actually prefer making a travel event out of their visits?  Or, hypothetically of course, are too poor to pay the costs - $7.50 for 30 minutes, $9 for 20, whatever.  (Of course no real people are that poor.  For example, dear Diary, I, right now, must be imaginary.)  Or lack video-capable Internet access?  Or just want to imagine being in the same building as their loved ones?  In their munificence, many jails have installed video visiting kiosks in their own lobbies; this is the other modality, the alternative to visiting from home.  Some of these kiosks also charge, but most offer free connections.  Of course, they're even scarcer than in-person visit windows, and really have to have limits again, but all these backward emotional needs, for novelty, money, or proximity, show that visitors who express them are behind the times and don't deserve any better.

So I have to make two lists of video-visit-only prisons. One shows prisons that do have working free terminals, and the other, the more heroically avant-garde prisons that don't.  First, those who still harbour doubts in their hearts:

Now, the ones that have fully committed to the new wave in prison technology:

  • Snohomish County Jail - Free terminal "temporarily closed until further notice".  That note was put up before September 24, 2022.
  • South Correctional Entity - "LOBBY VISITS SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE".  That note was put up before June 4, 2023.
  • Thurston County Jail - "The public visitation stations at the Thurston County Corrections Facility have been closed until further notice."  They've been that way since the Internet Archive's first capture of the page, on St Patrick's Day of this year.  To be fair, however, the quoted paragraph continues:  "[Company] has provided 60 minutes of free remote (from home) visitation per inmate, per week."  Which works fine for those who can do that, which is surely everyone contemporary enough to bother with.
  • Grays Harbor County Jail doesn't report that its free stations are closed, it doesn't mention any at all; it specifically indicates that payment is part of setting a visit up.  On its home page, it still claims COVID-19 prevents in-person visiting.
  • Hoquiam City Jail also doesn't mention any free stations.  However, it's the only prison in western Washington to have chosen the video company it did, despite that company's prominence in many non-prisoners' lives during COVID-19.  Since, unlike Grays Harbor County, it doesn't talk about money, perhaps it's paying the bills itself.

One prison remains, that has done better than any of these.  We know from Buddhism that perfection lies in nullity.  Well, according to the Pierce County Jail, no visiting, be it video or in-person, is allowed.  Because of COVID-19, which is apparently much fiercer these days in Pierce, Grays Harbor and Pacific counties than in the rest of the area, Pierce County Jail has evidently barred all visits since April 17, 2020.  So surely, with all visits to prisoners banned for three and a half years, Pierce County has fully attained nirvana, don't you think, dear Diary?

Prisons without public websites

  • Puyallup Tribal Jail, Tacoma near the Emerald Queen Casino, 30.56 miles.  (I got all these prisons' addresses from Google.)  Average daily population, 2022, was 32.
  • Northwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, Fort Lewis near DuPont, 34.26 miles.  This is where soldiers, airmen, sailors, etc. who went absent without leave might be sent.  A dubious site claims its capacity is 219.
  • Neah Bay Public Safety Detention Center (Makah Tribe), west around Neah Bay from the museum, 116.52 miles.  Didn't report its average daily population for 2022.

I think it's very probable that inmate libraries are widespread.  The only reason I can think of for the posting of inmate manuals online is deterrent.  They aren't fun to read at all.  So mentioning libraries in them would defeat the rhetorical purpose, unless those libraries actually existed.  And basically, I found libraries in every single inmate manual I found online (even the weird state of Washington one), so I'm very skeptical indeed that the jails that haven't put their manuals online are any different.

I trust, dear Diary, that you're immensely comforted by the fact that we have a lot more military people in western Washington than psychiatrists, and a lot more prisons than mental hospitals.  Doesn't that encourage you to sleep well at night?

Anyway, until people come up with a whole new category of institution that limits physical movement, I think I'm about done.  Saying that, I thought "Hmm, better check", and found the English Wikipedia category "Total institutions".  I considered at the last minute adding monasteries, but too many of the monasteries in Washington seem to encourage visitors, and I'm not convinced any use force to return errant residents.  That said, none of my sources list any monastic libraries, and there turn out to be too many monasteries here for that to be right, so I'll look again when I get to private libraries.  More concretely but more distantly, if I do this again, I certainly hope to have a better grasp of mental hospitals by then.

In the meantime, part II of this page, this year, will focus on institutions for "minors", which are those people aged 17 or fewer years who aren't yet "adults".  It's a lot more work than this part has been, so I won't complete part II, and with it this page, for a while yet, and I'll probably finish something else first.  Happy days and nights until I write in you again, dear Diary!


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