Why These Bills to Improve Prison Conditions Should Matter to All of Us

The impact of a person’s incarceration reaches far beyond the confines of their cell. Children lose parents. Families lose a breadwinner and struggle to meet their needs on a reduced income. Businesses lose workers.

The number of people impacted by incarceration is larger than most realize. Forty-five percent of the national population has had an immediate family member who was incarcerated. There are over 50,000 incarcerated people in New York State, and their experiences in jail or prison touch the lives of an enormous number of New Yorkers.

Humane and rehabilitative treatment, which respects the rights and dignity of incarcerated individuals and prepares them to re-enter society, benefits both incarcerated people and their communities. Research shows that incarcerated people who maintain contact with supportive family members and loved ones have more success upon release and are less likely to be re-incarcerated. Further, adopting humane policies can build stronger communities, ensure basic needs are met, and help families stay together and prevent them from falling into debt.

When it comes to these kinds of policies, New York is sorely lacking. But several bills passed by state lawmakers this year will assist families in supporting their incarcerated loved ones. This legislation is an investment in our communities. Here’s what the bills will accomplish and why Governor Hochul should sign them into law without delay.

Ending Unfair Commissary Pricing

Imagine being stuck in a small asphalt and cinderblock room with no air conditioning and limited access to the outdoors. You know that to afford even the modest comfort of a dinky clip-on fan, you will have to work more than 58 hours.

This is the real-life situation of a person incarcerated at the Attica Correctional Facility who wrote a letter to the 13th Forward coalition, which works to end exploitation and brutality within the prison labor system. With the 16 cents per hour he earns for his prison job, this same person would have to work 15 hours to purchase a stick of deodorant, about 11 hours for a head of lettuce, and eight hours for a loaf of bread.

Not only are incarcerated people paid abusively low wages (that have remained stagnant since 1993), but they are then price-gouged at the commissary when purchasing food and basic hygiene products.

When you’re incarcerated, there’s no free market. To purchase hygiene products or food to supplement meager and poor-quality prison meals, there’s only one store: the prison commissary. This means there’s only one set of prices, too. And all too often, those prices are artificially inflated, compounding the economic hardship that incarcerated people and their families already face.

For example, New York Focus reported that in while in 2022 the price of food for Americans rose by 11.8 percent, in New York prisons, individuals saw commissary prices on staple goods rise by as much as 333 percent.

The high cost of goods alongside unacceptably low wages means that individuals who are incarcerated cannot save funds for when they are released, much less send money home to support their families. Instead, their loved ones frequently go into debt trying to provide basic supports. On average, people with an incarcerated loved one spend $4,195 per year covering incarceration-related costs – all without the benefit of the incarcerated person’s previous income. Two out of three families have difficulty meeting their basic needs, and 70 percent of those families are caring for children. One in five become unable to afford housing.

The bill passed by the legislature would reduce harm to incarcerated people and their families by limiting the cost of items to no more than three percent over their purchase price. To hold our prison system accountable, the bill also requires that the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) publish commissary prices for all state prisons every year.

Facilitating Vital Visits

In-person visits are a vital component of a person’s rehabilitation. Decades of research show that in-person visits reduce recidivism and improve the mental health and behavior of incarcerated people. The benefits extend to children and families as well.

A 1972 study found that incarcerated people with no visitors were six times more likely to return to prison than those who had three or more visitors. A 2008 study found that every additional visit an incarcerated person receives lowers their odds of returning to prison once they are released.

Visits also reduce depressive symptoms and behavioral issues. Ending in-person visits, on the other hand, causes harm. When a Tennessee jail replaced in-person visits with video calls, assaults between incarcerated people and assaults on staff increased in the months following.

All the benefits of in-person visits extend to people’s families and communities. Visits have been shown to improve the behavior of children with an incarcerated parent and increase the odds that families will remain together after a person is released.

Despite all of these positive impacts on incarcerated people, families, and communities, jails and prisons often make visits burdensome with long wait times, invasive screening procedures, and other obstacles.

The Protect In-Person Visits bill prevents replacing in-person visits with video calls, makes visiting accessible to working families and school-aged children by requiring weekend visits, directs local jails to provide visits that are at least an hour, and requires measures to ensure that visits are available in an equitable manner when facilities are overcrowded.

Lawmakers also passed the Tampons Aren’t Contraband Act in response to women being banned from visiting their loved ones after officers claimed menstrual products or contraceptive devices on their body scans were contraband. The bill prohibits denying visits over menstrual products or contraceptive devices, protecting critical time for women to see their incarcerated loved ones, often after long travel and significant expense.

Together, these bills will improve the well-being of incarcerated people and their loved ones, helping families reunite successfully and stay together. By reducing recidivism, they will also make our communities safer. Improving prison conditions by reining in commissary prices and facilitating in-person visits is a win for all New Yorkers, and Governor Hochul must sign these bills into law today.