From Vera Institute of Justice:
Most people have somewhere they go that makes them feel good, a place to relax and recharge. Most people have moments to look forward to and make time for. For some, it could be a garden, a quiet room, a park, or maybe just a front porch and favorite chair. For my grandson, he enjoys sitting in a storage bin while watching television. Even children need a break.
For the incarcerated, our moments of peace and comfort are spent with our families and friends. However, since the start of the New York State corrections officers’ strike this past February, programs that offered us such opportunities remain suspended or limited in many correctional facilities. For example, the Family Reunion Program (FRP), also known as trailer visits, is designed to provide approved incarcerated people and their families the opportunity to meet in privacy for an extended period of time. The goal of the program is to preserve, enhance, and strengthen family ties that have been disrupted by incarceration. This program was suspended after the strike and was only recently reinstated. Sadly, the times available for these visits are one-third of what they were before the strike, and visits are only available on Mondays to Wednesdays. This means that families who can only do weekend visits because of work schedules are left out. And regular in-person visits are limited to just weekends in most facilities—making it difficult for families and friends to adjust their schedules and causing extremely long waiting times to enter the facility. These current policies are placing burdens on families and friends.
Before the strike began, I had been scheduled for a trailer visit on February 24. My neighbor and close friend had also been scheduled for a visit with his family on February 19. Needless to say, after the strike began on February 17, both of our visits were cancelled. I saw the negative impact it had on him, but it also affected his wife, 10-year-old twins, and six-month-old daughter. His twins couldn’t process what was going on. “Why doesn’t daddy want to see us?” they asked. He told me how difficult it was to comfort and explain the situation to them. Continue reading >>>
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