Book ahead, no walk-ins, no refunds: the rules for family visits at the Marion County jail

The Sheriff's Office posts the rules families must follow to see someone in the Adult Detention Center. Read in order, they leave very little room for a person in a mental health crisis.

Tonight at 7 p.m., the City-County Council holds its public hearing on the 2027 budget. The final vote is October 19. Tomorrow, October 6, early voting for sheriff opens at the City-County Building.

Before those dates pass, it is worth reading the rules families live under now. They are posted on the Sheriff's Office visitation page on indy.gov. Here is what that page said when I read it on September 25.

What the rules say

• Families visit by screen. "The Marion County Sheriff's Office allows inmates remote visitation privileges utilizing a video visitation system for friends and family." The system is GettingOut, run by ViaPath.
• No walk-ins. "The Marion County Sheriff's Office will no longer conduct 'walk-in' visits."
• In person is for professionals. The page lists in-person visits only for attorneys and professionals: defense lawyers, prosecutor and public defender staff, and law enforcement.
• Book one to four days ahead. Family video visits must be scheduled in advance.
• Every visit is recorded. Family video visits are recorded and monitored.
• Late cancellations are lost. A visit canceled less than 24 hours ahead counts as completed, with no refund. The page does not list a price.
• No-shows can end visiting. Repeated no-shows can lead to a suspension.

Family visits have been video only since the jail opened in 2022.

Read them as a family would

Picture a family whose son is in one of the jail's mental health units. To see him, they book a time days ahead. Then they hope that on that day he is well enough to come to a screen, sit, and talk to a camera, knowing the call is recorded.

If he is not well enough, the visit still counts as used. If the family has to cancel the night before, the visit counts as used. If it happens again, the family can lose visiting altogether.

I have not found any public count of how many family video visits happen at the jail, or how many are lost. What the rules show is where the risk sits: on the family, and on the person who is ill.

The state does it differently

Once a person is sentenced and moved to state prison, the Indiana Department of Correction describes its approach this way: "In addition to traditional forms of visitation (contact and non-contact), alternative video visitation may be made available to help facilitate persons unable to travel to facilities."

In state prison, video is the extra option for families who cannot make the trip. In the county jail, video is the only way in.

Some people live under both sets of rules in a single year. At the September 28 Criminal Justice Planning Council meeting, the Sheriff's Office reported 2,635 people in custody, including 221 people already sentenced to state prison and still waiting for transfer, 186 of them in the Adult Detention Center.

My family

My son lives with serious mental illness and spent nine months in the Adult Detention Center. In those nine months our family never had a single visit with him, in person or by video. I saw him only in brief glimpses across a courtroom at his few hearings. When he moved to state prison, we could visit him in person again.

Where the candidates stand

A new sheriff takes office January 1. Both candidates, Tom Vaughn and Kelvis Williams, have said people sentenced to state prison should be moved out of the jail faster. Neither has said in public whether families will be able to visit in person again. Both have been asked in writing, and their own words are side by side on our candidate tracker. On September 25, I also asked the Sheriff's Office for its ViaPath contract and the decision that made visits video only. I will publish what comes back.

What should change

1. Add an in-person option alongside video, starting with the jail's mental health units. Families who prefer video should keep it.
2. Until then, allow an in-person family visit whenever a person's clinician documents that video visits are not workable for them.
3. Stop counting a visit as used, and stop suspending families, when a visit fails because the person was too unwell to come to the screen.
4. Publish monthly counts of family visits scheduled, completed, canceled and forfeited.
5. Before October 19, a councilor should ask the Sheriff's Office in writing what it would take to restore in-person family visits, starting with the mental health units, and what it would cost. Here is why that question matters now.
6. Before Election Day, November 3, both candidates should say whether they will restore in-person visits, and by when.

Sources

1. Marion County Sheriff's Office, Visit with a person in jail (read Sept. 25, 2026)
2. Indiana Department of Correction, Visitation
3. City of Indianapolis, Criminal Justice Planning Council meeting video, Sept. 28, 2026 (Granicus archive, clip 26290)
4. WISH-TV, Indianapolis City-County Council to hold final public hearing on 2027 budget (Oct. 4, 2026)
5. Mirror Indy, 2027 city-county budget calendar (Aug. 28, 2026)
6. Mirror Indy, 2026 Indianapolis Election Guide
7. Unheard Indy, "Where the candidates for sheriff stand on family visits, five weeks out" (Sept. 30, 2026)
8. Unheard Indy, "Monday's budget hearing, and the jail question the Council has not asked" (Oct. 2, 2026)

Kate Vale, a mother in the gallery