The Miami Correctional Facility in Indiana has given people incarcerated there notice that they will no longer be able to have contact visits with their loved ones starting May 1. The facility administration claims the ban is intended to help stop drug trafficking. The notice came after a percentage of the prison population failed drug tests, and the administration is using that as justification for banning all contact visitation.

We know that drugs are a problem throughout prisons in the IDOC, but contact visits are not to blame. Staff can make inflated profits from trafficking drugs into facilities, and often do. Additionally, medical staff in IDOC facilities are notorious for over-medicating incarcerated people in order to subdue them. If the MCF administration actually cared about drug trafficking, they would address these issues, and provide meaningful opportunities for people imprisoned there. Instead, they seek to further deprive prisoners of meaningful care and communication with their loved ones.

Sign this petition to demand that MCF revokes the notice immediately and does not implement non-contact visits for the entire facility.