A group of Colorado children — the youngest barely old enough for kindergarten at just four years old — are suing the Adams County Sheriff and a telecommunications company, HomeWav, over the jail’s ban on in-person visits with their incarcerated parents.
Alongside the three minors, other plaintiffs include two mothers whose 18-year-old sons are currently held in the Adams County Detention Facility.
Filed earlier this week, the lawsuit is the third in a string of cases around the country brought by civil rights groups under what they’re calling the “Right 2 Hug” project. The other two suits, both filed in Michigan, are still ongoing — trial courts dismissed them last year, but both are now on appeal.
While the Adams County jail has prohibited in-person visits for years, lawyers for the plaintiffs note that more than 50 years ago, the state supreme court sided with the ACLU of Colorado when it challenged a similar ban at the same jail.
“So this jail has, for a long time, even before it could profit from the separation, has tried to keep families apart,” Alexandra Jordan, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys with the organization Public Justice, said. “And we just found it particularly egregious that the jail would've returned to this practice after having a previous Colorado Supreme Court decision requiring in-person contact visitation between parents and children at the jail.”
Many other Colorado counties have similar visitation bans, though Denver and Larimer counties are exceptions.
Attorneys are asking the judge to issue emergency orders allowing the plaintiffs to visit their loved ones in person right away and to grant a preliminary injunction restoring in-person contact visits between parents and children while the case proceeds. The plaintiffs are also seeking damages from the Adams County Sheriff’s Office, the jail’s division chief, and HomeWAV — the telecom company the jail contracts with for phone and video calls.
According to Jordan, families spend “hundreds of dollars” every month to stay in touch with their loved ones through HomeWAV’s services. According to the Adams County Sheriff, video calls cost 20 cents a minute, while the rate for phone calls varies based on location.
This summer, Colorado stopped charging for calls to and from prison inmates, but the law does not cover county jails. 9News reported this summer that the cost of calls to the Adams County jail doubled after the Federal Communications Commission lifted caps on what jails and prisons can charge. A representative for the jail said the additional revenue goes toward amenities for inmates.
But the groups suing argue the added costs do real damage to inmates’ families.
“Every dollar [they] spend on HomeWav, is a dollar [they] can't save for bond,” Jordan said. “In the last five years that HomeWav has operated in Adams County, the county has made $3.1 million from families, and HomeWav has taken home over $1.5 million.”
Jordan said that many families with incarcerated relatives go into debt to cover the cost of staying in touch, and that low-income, Black, and brown families disproportionately bear that financial burden. She added that because the county takes a 40 percent cut of every video call, the lawsuit is asking for those profits to be returned to the families who paid them.
The Adams County Sheriff's Office told CPR News it does not comment on pending litigation.
