I would argue most "very liberal people" would argue that both should be free. Granted, I'm not in the US, but free college is quite favourable nation-wide in the US in polls over the past few years -- let alone among progressive circles.
The answer to this is always, "...to keep his knife away from your throat."
Video-only options are inhumane, but the family gets screwed either way.
Prisons are built way out in the country and not easily accessible. These same poor families can end up commuting for four hours, burning through a tank of gas and hours of their time just to see a loved one for 30 minutes.
It takes its toll on them and eventually they stop coming to see you anyway. Video should have solved that problem as an alternative but of course, human nature being what it is...
It also means someone with a competing product, that is better, and cheaper, won't be looked at seriously, if it doesn't include kickbacks.. (or do we call it something else now?)
"incentive schemes" to "encourage prisoners to use video visits over personal visits".
I disagree. Even if only 10% of prisoners are held in privately run prisons, the corporate leadership of those prisons has a disproportionate effect on policy-making for all people. CCA and GeoGroup are the largest recipients of federal contract award grants (for ICE), and they collectively make over 1bn / year from these contracts. They also sponsor legislation that _increases recidivism_ and makes it easier to put undocumented immigrants in their own jails. Just because a small % of the population is housed in private prisons, doesn't mean that private prison's have no impact on our society's relationship between profit and punishment.
IIRC only ~10% of prisoners are held in privately run prisons. It's kind of a red herring.
The bigger (and much harder to solve issue) is that all prisons, public or private, work with a slew of private companies in order to run (think food, phones, etc.) who have big incentives to keep the prison population high. And they can easily prey on prisoners, who are generally much poorer than the general population, because of America's concept of "justice".
But these huge costs of, say, video calls, are borne by the families of the incarcerated, who, like the prisoners that they're supporting, skew poor. As you pointed out, it's a vicious cycle.