When Christine was 12 years old, her dad began serving a sentence of seven to 21 years at Clinton Correctional Facility, eight hours away from their home in Island Park, N.Y. She visited him once every two to three months.
The visits were long and tiresome. Most of all, draining. She remembers sitting at the metal table as her stepmother handed divorce papers and a pen across the visiting room table.
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“He had to sign the papers while we were all there and when you are in a visiting room there really is nowhere else to go, you have to stay with your family, you have to stay at the table. I remember my dad crying and she’s like it’s for the best of them [kids], then I don’t have to put that you are here on all of their paperwork,” Christine recalled.
Now 45 years old, Christine drives two hours every weekend to a different state prison near the Canadian border so she can visit her husband with their 5-year-old son.
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Every Saturday, Christine, who asked that her last name not be used to protect her son, wakes up at 3 a.m., showers, and leaves her house in a small town near Syracuse by 3:30. Her son sleeps in the car as she drives. When they get to the hospitality center at the facility, Christine registers with the correctional officer at the front desk. She dresses her son in the car and waits until 8 a.m. when the officers start calling people in. They go into the prison, get their pictures taken, take off their shoes and go through metal detectors. After they are buzzed through gate after locked gate, they walk into the visiting room, get a table assignment and wait again.
“I watch my son run up and jump into daddy's arms and give him a big hug,” Christine said. “It is the best part of the week. I get kissed hello, and our visit starts.”
After everyone says hi, Christine’s husband and son play in the playroom. They wrestle, make paper airplanes and talk about all things Iron Man--just “normal family stuff,” Christine said. They buy some of their favorite snacks from the vending machine and talk about their week.
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At around 2 p.m., they say their goodbyes, and she and her son start the long drive home.
“We email him when we get home so he knows we made it safely. My son goes to bed knowing in his head that in just a week he will get to go to ‘daddy’s house’ again,” Christine said.
Christine’s story isn’t unique.
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This is just one of the many stories in New York State, where approximately 105,000 children have a parent serving time in prison or jail. And for many of these children, weekly visits with their parents aren’t an option.
Christine's son visiting his dad in prison
(circa 2015 and 2020).
Christine visiting her father at Clinton Correction Facility in 1988.
Dr. Anna Hayward, an associate professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Social Welfare, explained that this lack of visiting can be a detriment to a child’s health and wellbeing, causing anxiety, depression, ADHD, and conduct disorders.
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“We need to start understanding parental incarceration as a trauma that children experience- a trauma on the level of parental death or parental illness,” Hayward said.“We have seen children with incarcerated parents have post-traumatic stress disorder reactions, which can include hyper-vigilance, nightmares, and even flashbacks.”
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“Except if your parent dies, there is an outpouring of support, a lot of resources, and a lot of acknowledgment of that trauma. In the case of parental incarceration it’s the same trauma but with none of the same acknowledgment or resources,” she said.
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The New York Initiative for Children of Incarcerated Parents, a chapter of the Osborne Association, a nonprofit that offers programs for people who have been in conflict with the law and their families, cites distance as one of the main barriers that prevent children from visiting their parents.
In 2011, 70 percent of people in the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision facilities were incarcerated at least 100 miles from their home. Almost half were even farther away.
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The large distances and the high cost of visiting remote prisons make it difficult for children to visit their incarcerated parents. And visiting became even harder in 2011 when New York State ended its free busing program to upstate correctional facilities, leaving tens of thousands who relied on the monthly service without an affordable alternative.
New York State correctional officials said that the contractor buses that once brought visitors to all but two of the state’s prison facilities were underutilized and didn’t justify the $1.25 million annual cost.
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In the first year after the buses were eliminated, the state recorded approximately 13,000 fewer prison visitors. Family members and their advocates say they could not afford private transportation to get them to the facilities.
However, in New York, two bills–A6710, which would mandate incarcerated parents be placed closer to home, and A5942, which would reinstate the visiting bus service--were under deliberation in the 2020 session of the New York State Senate--until the coronavirus pandemic hit.
R. was 8 years old when his mother was sentenced to serve time and transferred from Rikers Correctional Center to the state prison system. The family lived in the New York metropolitan area, and although there is a medium-security women’s prison in Westchester, she was placed 12 hours from home at Albion Correctional near Buffalo. Allison Hollihan, an advocate for prisoners’ families, recounted R.’s story, asking that his name not be used.
R.’s family could not get to Albion because they did not have a car and could not afford to fly and rent a car. The prison is over an hour from the nearest airport.
R. had not seen his mother in over a year when the Osborne Association facilitated a video visit with his mother at Albion.
Hollihan still remembers the conversation she had with R. right after his video visit with his mother ended.
“He asked me if I knew why his mother was in prison and I said no,” recalled Hollihan, the senior policy manager for NY Initiative for Children of Incarcerated Parents, “He told me that it was all his fault, that he had been called down to the principal's office for misbehaving and his mother was called to the school. He said that on the way to the school, the police took her because he was being a bad boy.”
For the entire year that R. erroneously believed that he was the reason his mother was sent to prison, she had no way of telling him how completely wrong that was.
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As the prime sponsor of the Proximity Bill (A6710), Assemblywoman Nily Rozic hopes that the bill will mandate the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to place incarcerated parents at correctional institutions closest to their children instead of the current placement policy, which transfers incarcerated people closer to home as they reach their release date.
Most important, the bill will allow more children to have personal contact and communication with their parents.
However, visiting isn’t always a positive experience.
Hayward believes that visitations that occur in facilities that are not “kid-friendly” have the possibility to re-traumatize a child.
“There has been a lot of effort by more progressive and forward-thinking prisons like Bedford Hills and other facilities that have very kid-friendly visiting areas. But most jails and facilities do not have that so it can definitely be re-traumatizing if they have to come in through the regular entrance and they have to see all sorts of things,” explained Hayward.
“Prisons have to balance safety, their policies, and the needs of the children,” she said.
And Christine agrees.
When her husband got punished with 60 days in “the box” he was not allowed to have his normal visiting privileges and instead had to be restrained, behind a glass window.
“I will not allow my son to see my husband handcuffed and shackled behind glass because he can’t do with daddy, what he normally does- that whole play thing, where they wrestle and do silly stuff together. That kind of visit I think is detrimental to children because all you have is that image of him shackled and handcuffed and you can’t even really talk,” Christine said.
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Not being able to see her mother took a huge toll on Bradley, who was 4 when her mother was incarcerated.
“No one compares to your mother. Not having someone who understands me made me shut down to a lot of things in life growing up,” Bradley said. She’s now 25, and her mother remains incarcerated. “It creates an anger inside that’s hard to explain or even get through everyday life.”
In the absence of the free Family Visiting Bus, organizations like Hour Children came up with ways to fill the void by offering their own buses, paid for through fundraising. In some cases, certain children stay with a local host family and visit their mothers at Bedford Hills Correctional and Taconic Correctional for days at a time.
After 38 years, New York State eliminated the Family Visiting Bus program, which had provided bus transportation to all New York State prisons at no cost to family members. Following its elimination, children like Laquintae Bradley had no way of visiting their incarcerated parents.
“In the summer, when there is no school, we take the kids up and they stay up in Westchester for two weeks with their host family,” Kellie Phelan, the program coordinator at Hour Children, said. “Every night, they are going to the lake, they are barbecuing, and then every day they are going to the prison and they get to say ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ to their mom.
“They don’t get to say that all year,” Phelan added, “and those words alone are so powerful.”
Bradley said the Hour Children's visiting program was beneficial.
“It is great for families who are far away from the prison – especially for children because it is safe to get on [the bus] and trust that they will return,” she said. “Also the fact that it is free, because with the Metro-North or taking a cab is not cheap and sometimes won’t even take you where you need to go.”
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A supporter holds a sign at The Osborne Association's "Visiting is a Lifeline" rally in Albany, N.Y. on Feb. 26, 2020.
Children of the Osborne Association Youth Council demonstrated at a rally in Albany, N.Y.
Private transportation services like Prison Gap and Flamboyant Bus also sprouted up in the absence of the free Family Visiting Bus. But since their inception, there have been media reports of unsafe conditions on the buses and breakdowns.
A representative for Prison Gap, who only wished to be identified as Henry, said that those media reports are false as Prison Gap has not been bringing people to the upstate facilities for years.
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"People keep thinking that is us but it's not. We actually stopped doing rides altogether for a few years and reopened on Oct. 11, 2019, as Prison Gap 2.0 with all new management. We don't even go upstate anymore just the Clinton Hub," continued Henry.
Advocates and politicians alike argue that reinstating the Family Visiting Bus Program is the best way to provide free family transportation to all New York State prisons. The buses would leave from five major cities: New York City, Buffalo, Albany, Rochester, and Syracuse.
Bill A5942, sponsored by Assemblywoman Carmen De La Rosa of northern Manhattan, aims to do just that.
State records show that in 2011, 72% of women and 62% of men in prison were parents. “This suggests the impact of their incarceration is felt by a significant number of children,” De La Rosa’s bill states. “For children, visits with their incarcerated parents are associated with higher self-esteem, improved non-verbal IQ scores, better adjustment to school, and foster care and fewer behavior problems.”
The bill is currently under consideration in a Senate committee.
However, the Osborne Association, one of the biggest proponents of the bills, will no longer be pushing for the buses to be restored.
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“Given that the [COVID-19] pandemic will significantly reduce incoming money, and funds are needed to address the pandemic, there is such a huge budget shortfall that we are no longer pushing for the buses to be restored,” Hollihan explained. “And we would rather corrections spend money on ensuring the safety and wellbeing of those in state prisons.”
After nine long years, Christine’s husband will stand before the parole board in August. She is hopeful that its decision will allow her family and home to be whole again.
“I want to be able to hang out by the fire and joke and laugh. I want to watch him roughhouse with my son. I want to watch my son curl up with daddy and read a story together,” Christine said.
“I hope your project opens people’s eyes to the fact that our kids are innocent. We are still a family. He can be a criminal and still love his family and be a good person.”
A stack of letters for Christine's son from his father.