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Alaska Black Caucus fights visitation ban at prisons
March 6, 2021
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) A visitation ban at all of Alaska s correctional facilities because of the coronavirus pandemic should be loosened, officials from the Alaska Black Caucus said.
Celeste Hodge Growden, president of the Alaska Black Caucus, said to reporters on Thursday that the organization had reached out to state officials multiple times to request looser restrictions, but the meetings had been repeatedly canceled.
The Alaska Department of Corrections had halted all in-person visitations at prisons and jails last March, when the virus was first detected in the state.
State officials had said that they implemented the safety precautions to prevent an outbreak at the state s crowded jails.
Print article A visitation suspension that was once put in place to protect people within Alaska’s correctional facilities is now doing the opposite, officials from the Alaska Black Caucus said Thursday. The caucus has been pushing for months to have visitation restrictions loosened in the state’s correctional facilities because of the impact it has on attorney-client communications. The Alaska Department of Corrections halted all in-person visitation last March when COVID-19 was first detected in the state. At the time, officials said they implemented safety precautions in hopes of minimizing the risk of virus spread in Alaska’s crowded jails. But by fall and winter, COVID-19 was spreading rampantly in the state’s correctional facilities.