Family visits are supposed to be a lifeline; the fragile thread keeping incarcerated people connected to their children, partners, and communities. But Michigan DOC, and most recently, G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility, families are being punished for operating rules that do not even exist on paper.
This isn’t just about one bad day at the prison gates. It’s about a system that invents and enforces unwritten policies, wastes scarce staff time, and inflicts needless trauma on families who are already carrying the burden of incarceration.
The Situation: A Policy That Doesn’t Exist
Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) Visiting Standards Memo, last updated in May 2025, are unwieldy; 15 pages of poorly written babble discussing the behaviors that can result in termination of a visit inappropriate touching, contraband, loud disruptions, etc.
In the world of policy, policy directives are supposed to supersede memorandums. Yet Heidi Washington and Jeremy Bush are requiring facilities to enforce the conflicting visiting memo that intentionally discourages back-to-back visits, and the policy that doesn’t address it, another 12 pages.
And all without requiring them to be posted.
That’s a combined 27 pages to memorize and read each time you visit a loved one if the facility can’t be bothered to post it.
However, as a result of the non-posted and already poorly written and wordy memo, families at G. Robert Cotton are being told otherwise. To make matters worse, it’s not even being applied uniformly; for months, several families were not held to the new memorandum standards and were allowed to go to their vehicles. Some are still allowed to go outside to their cars, as one woman was allowed to change her infant even with changing stations available.
Staff cite another policy that supposedly covers this restriction, yet neither are posted anywhere in the facility. Families can’t access it in real time, because phones are prohibited inside. That means visitors are expected to follow a rule they can’t read, confirm, or even find until long after they’ve already been punished.
This isn’t policy. It’s entrapment.
Not to mention that Michigan DOC does a terrible job enforcing the policies that do not benefit them directly, such as not allowing people to stand outside for medicine lines in overly cold or hot weather. It’s selective enforcement all the way around. When human rights are involved, policies aren’t taken as seriously.
Human Cost: Children in Tears
For families, these visits aren’t just bureaucratic check-ins. They are emotional anchors.
That’s why it was devastating when one child broke down in tears in the waiting room after staff mishandled the situation. They had already faced a delay because a guard was not at his post on time, robbing them of nearly 30 minutes of a visit. Instead of compassion and clarity, this family faced confusion, hostility, and a sense of being treated like criminals for following the rules as they knew them.
And their trust was further eroded in the system.
Wasting Resources, Hurting Families
This practice doesn’t even make sense from a security or staffing standpoint. Visitors are always re-searched when reentering, whether they’ve gone to the bathroom, a locker, or simply stepped outside. By pretending a rule exists when it doesn’t, staff are adding unnecessary stress, slowing down visitation operations, and wasting the time of an already understaffed workforce.
Michigan DOC will tell you this is because they’re trying to keep out drugs, but what they fail to tell you is their own staff and attorneys are the biggest offenders.
At a time when MDOC complains about staffing shortages, this is policy failure in its purest form; wasting time on enforcement that would be unnecessary if they communicated policy changes.
This is Why Michigan Needs an Ombudsman
This case is just one example of why Michigan urgently needs a prison ombudsman.
Right now, no one is sanity-checking DOC policies. There’s no independent oversight to question whether rules are fair, consistent, or even real. Families have no recourse when they’re told they’ve broken a rule that isn’t clearly posted, and can’t be verified because phones are banned.
An ombudsman could provide the accountability and transparency that’s sorely lacking, ensuring that children aren’t left in tears because of arbitrary enforcement, and that families aren’t retraumatized in the very spaces meant to keep them connected.
Pulling It All Together
When MDOC invents rules on the fly, it isn’t just bureaucracy. It’s cruelty disguised as “policy.”
Families deserve better. Children deserve better. And incarcerated people deserve a system where their human connections aren’t severed by arbitrary enforcement by bureaucrats who will never see the real-world impact of their actions.
Until Michigan steps up and creates independent oversight, families will keep paying the price for DOC’s unchecked power.
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