An unknown number of those 500-plus facilities have also adopted “remote” video visitation, something akin to Skype, in which a “visitor” can communicate with an inmate via a computer, from any location. Unlike the in-facility video visitation systems, these remote setups come with charges of up to a dollar per minute, not counting account-deposit fees and set-up charges—expenses that can be quite burdensome for the often-poor families of inmates.

Such systems make jailers—whether local governments or private corporations—the de-facto business partners of the companies, while enriching private-equity firms (which own many video-visitation providers) and their investors. “Video visitation is a link in the whole system that sees inmates as a revenue opportunity,” says Daniel Hatcher, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and the author of The Poverty Industry: The Exploitation of America’s Most Vulnerable Citizens. “It’s part of a larger system that sees the broader vulnerable family as a revenue opportunity, too.”

Fairfield County has followed a typical pattern. I used an old-style version of video visitation while reporting my book about Lancaster, Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town. When I wanted to “see” one of my sources for an interview, for example, I appeared at one of the jail buildings during regular visiting hours, showed my driver’s license, and was then directed to a small, semi-enclosed booth. The quality of the video and the sound resembled the transmission of Neil Armstrong’s first walk on the moon. Sometimes I could hear my interviewee, sometimes not. The line crackled; the picture was grainy. I spent several conversations mostly shouting. Family members of inmates frequently complained about having experiences like mine.

Marc Churchill, who runs the Fairfield County jail, says the county does not own the new video-visitation system, which he especially appreciates because he and his staff aren’t responsible for maintaining it. It was installed by a company called ICSolutions, or ICS. ICS supplied the hardware (handsets, screens, cameras, wiring), the software, and the maintenance and troubleshooting, all free of charge. ICS made the process so easy, Churchill says, he didn’t even know how much the installed equipment and services were worth. “I never got a bill. I have no clue,” he says.

This operational smoothness seems to be something ICS uses to unseat existing inmate telecommunications providers. Fairfield County, for example, previously had an inmate-phone-service contract with another company, Securus. ICS offered a phone-and-video-visitation package, with the video system as an enticement. So Churchill terminated the contract with Securus early, he says. (ICS and its parent company, Keefe Group, did not respond to interview requests.) His jail hasn’t implemented a remote video-visitation system yet, meaning those currently using the facility’s in-jail video system aren’t paying a thing; Churchill told me that per the terms of the county’s deal with ICS, he has until the first day of next year to decide whether to enable remote videochatting. He says he’ll make that determination based on how the new system is working and on ICS’s rate structure.