Each week we will provide you with a rundown of top news stories and must-read articles.

Headlines

Trump Administration ends DACA

The Trump Administration announced that it will end DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) in six months. Congress is now scrambling to come up with a solution before then. The end to DACA will make 800,000 young people who arrived in the U.S. as children subject to deportation. This decision by the Trump administration is a heartless attack on so many immigrants who have made this country their home. 

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Injustice at the Justice Department

Trump Administration agencies have been quickly unraveling policies that promote equality and justice. Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department has been particularly damaging. The Attorney General doesn’t get as much attention as Trump, but his actions on criminal justice and immigration are cause for alarm.

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Kentucky may lose last abortion clinic

The state of Kentucky could become the first state without an abortion clinic if the EMW Women’s Surgical Center loses a legal battle with their governor. The constitutional right to an abortion was established decades ago in Roe v. Wade. Legal challenges and excessive regulations are part of the perpetual conservative attack on a women’s right to choose.  

STAFF PICKS: Here’s what ACLU of Maine staff are reading and watching this week.

Portland play on panhandling

A Portland studio is staging a production of a play that tells the story the ACLU’s case to overturn a ban on panhandling (or otherwise standing) in city medians. The play, entitled “Anything Helps, God Bless”, looks at the 2012-14 battle that resulted in a federal judge finding the ban unconstitutional.

Maine Corrections Commissioner Joseph Fitzpatrick knows that prisoners in jail have a better chance of being productive members of society when they are released if they stay connected with their families while they are locked up. Even those without Fitzpatrick’s background in clinical psychology know from common sense that cutting someone off from in-person contact with their loved ones can be psychologically troubling.

Yet the Department of Corrections (DOC) is now proposing new visitation rules that would apply to all jails in the state and, unfortunately, they have little to do with common sense.

Under the new rules, jails could offer video visitation between prisoners and their family members and friends. Taken alone, that might not be a bad thing – as jails’ video technology advances, it could provide a way for those who might not otherwise be able to visit to do so.

The problem with video visitation technology, though, is that the private firms that provide the equipment to jails often “make a condition of their services that video visitation become the only form of visiting available,” David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, recently told The Daily Dot. “Adding video visitation as an optional supplement would be fine. Making it the only option available to people and charging for it is not fine,” Fathi said. “That stinks to high heaven. That’s not about security – that’s about maximizing your profit.”

Unfortunately, some Maine jails are moving toward banning in-person visitation in favor of video-only visits. And the new rues being proposed by DOC don’t come anywhere near close to ensuring that in-person visits will continue.

In the draft proposal, the DOC has so far penned only tepid language regarding access to meaningful visitation by family and loved ones. One rule, J.11, states: “Facilities should make provisions for contact visits when warranted.” Using the word “should” and the phrase “when warranted” make the rule so weak it is almost meaningless. Another rule, J.18, allows for video visitation in jails but makes no guarantee that jails cannot use video visitation technology to eliminate in-person visitation.

Studies have shown that prisoners who have in-person family visits while in jail are less likely to misbehave while in custody and are less likely to convicted of crimes after being released. Even the American Correctional Association, the 146-year-old organization that provides accreditation for Maine’s correctional facilities, supports in-person family visitations for prisoners.

The DOC can do better, and the ACLU of Maine told it so in both written testimony and at public hearing at the Department’s headquarters in Augusta on August 15. The Department will continue accepting written comment on the proposed changes until August 30.