Katie Kuhnhausen scrolled frantically. Seated in a parked car while her son’s soccer team practiced under the receding spring sun, she scoured the Washington Department of Corrections website for contact information.

She had tried to visit her husband the day before at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, where he had nearly completed his 17-month sentence for a felony gun possession charge and a traffic misdemeanor. But prison staff turned her away.

And she called. And called. But no one at the prison would give her a straight answer.

From her car, she fired off an email to the prison’s superintendent with the subject line: “HELP ME!!! HELP ME!!!”

“I have called the Penitentiary over the last week 16 times trying to get help and/or answers about my husband,” she typed tha

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