Restore Contact Visits

Summary#

B26-0877, the Contact Visitation Restoration Act of 2026, is an introduced bill that would create new visitation rules and amend the District law governing the Department of Corrections (DOC). Its stated goal is to restore contact between incarcerated District residents and their families; passage is not certain, and the bill is not law.

  • DOC would have to restore and maintain structured contact visits at the Correctional Treatment Facility (CTF) within 120 days after the act takes effect. Contact visits would be the usual form of in-person social visits for eligible residents, subject to individual safety restrictions.
  • DOC would have to start a separate phased contact-visit pilot at the Central Detention Facility (CDF) within 240 days. DOC would set its initial scope based on safety, staffing, space, and operations, and could delay expansion by up to 90 days for significant concerns.
  • The bill sets rules for visitor approval, scheduling, cancellations, restrictions, and emergency suspensions. It also requires accommodations, public reporting, and responses to certain audit findings.
  • The bill would amend the existing law cited in its text, which requires regular afternoon and evening CDF visiting hours at least five days a week, including weekends, to include contact-visitation opportunities as required by District law.

What it means for you#

  • People held at CTF: DOC would have to offer regular contact visits multiple days each week, including at least one evening or weekend period. A resident’s housing status, charge, sentence, security classification, or disciplinary history alone would not justify denial unless directly tied to a current, particularized risk.
  • People held at CDF: Residents included in an operating pilot phase would have access to contact visits. The bill does not guarantee contact visits to every CDF resident; DOC would determine the pilot’s initial scope and method. Residents outside the pilot would keep access to visitation otherwise required by law and DOC policy.
  • Visitors and families: DOC would have to decide complete visitor applications within 15 business days, give written reasons for denials, and offer review by a different official. Visitors with past convictions, probation or parole, or prior incarceration could not be denied on that basis alone. The bill also requires accessible scheduling options and cancellation notices.
  • Residents, visitors, and DOC: Individual restrictions must be supported by specific facts, limited in scope and duration, explained in writing, and reviewed at least every 14 days. DOC could suspend visits facility-wide only for an immediate, substantial emergency threat when a narrower response is not reasonably available; the written determination must be renewed after 72 hours to continue the suspension.
  • DOC: It would have to provide reasonable disability accommodations, make reasonable efforts to accommodate older visitors, long-distance visitors, and families with young children, and publish visitation rules in specified languages and accessible formats.
  • Families and taxpayers: The bill does not directly change release dates, sentences, or general eligibility for visitation. It does not require DOC to appoint or pay for a lawyer to help contest a restriction.

Money#

No cost information is in the supplied material. No publicly available information.

  • The bill would require DOC to maintain sufficient staff, space, and security procedures for CTF visits and to operate the CDF pilot.
  • It requires DOC to keep visitation records and publish quarterly reports. It allows an existing secure system and does not require a particular vendor or software product.
  • The bill adopts a fiscal impact statement in a committee report, but that report and its cost estimate are not included in the supplied material.

What is unclear#

  • The bill does not set a minimum number of CDF residents to include in each pilot phase or a final date by which all CDF residents must be included.
  • It leaves DOC to choose the pilot’s scope and method based on operational factors. The bill does not fully specify how those choices will be made or what standards will guide them.
  • The supplied text quotes the existing CDF visiting-hours requirement, but the full current law and DOC policies were not supplied, so their other requirements and how they interact with this bill could not be verified.
  • The bill requires enough staff and space but does not specify staffing levels, funding, or how DOC would pay for them.

Case for#

  • The bill appears intended to address the loss of contact visits at CTF and the lack of a set restoration timeline, while preserving room for safety measures.
  • Requiring CTF restoration on a deadline, separate from the CDF pilot, could prevent CDF planning from delaying CTF visits.
  • Individualized restrictions and emergency limits could make restrictions more targeted than blanket or indefinite suspensions.
  • Reporting on visits, cancellations, restrictions, staffing, and contraband could give the Council and public information to assess how the rules work.

Case against#

  • DOC would have to restore CTF visits and operate the CDF pilot on fixed timelines, while the bill does not provide a cost estimate or specify the staff and space available.
  • DOC has wide discretion over the CDF pilot’s initial scope and implementation. The bill allows a delay in expansion, and does not set a deadline for full expansion.
  • The required reports could show operational problems, but the bill does not set specific outcome targets for resolving them.
  • Individual reviews, notices, language access, accommodations, and recordkeeping would add duties for DOC; the bill does not estimate the resources needed to meet them.