Video Calls Help Jailed New Yorkers Stay Connected With Families

NEW YORK, NY — Nancy Nicholas has lived with her two grandsons in a homeless shelter on Manhattan’s West Side since their parents were jailed on Rikers Island about a year and a half ago. She tries to go visit them every other week, she said. But it's not easy – going to the remote island can take a good chunk of a day.

Instead, Nicholas has found another way to stay in touch with her children, Tony and Rosie, and her daughter-in-law, Teresa, who’s also incarcerated on Rikers.

Nicholas and her grandkids are among hundreds of families who have “televisited” their jailed loved ones through a video-call service offered by the Social Service Board at the New York Society for Ethical Culture.

Established in 2012, the Social Service Board’s “supportive televisiting” program runs out of a small room painted in pastel colors at the Society for Ethical Culture’s Midtown headquarters that’s become a haven for families of incarcerated New Yorkers.

“It’s closer to me and it’s better for the children,” Nicholas, 61, said.

Dr. Frank J. Corigliano, the program’s director, helps schedule several calls each week between people in city jails and their children, parents and other relatives.

Those calls, which work similarly to video-chat services like Skype, help incarcerated people stay involved in their loved ones’ lives, he said. They can talk about how things are going at school or at home, see how much their kids have grown, draw pictures together or even read books through the camera, Corigliano said.

One boy, Isaiah, got to hear his mom sing to him on a video call when he turned 9, and she got to see him blow out a candle and make a wish.

“Another kid on the same day — or even the same kid on the same day — who did not have this program, who did not have access to his mother, would not have heard, ‘I love you,’ would not have heard, ‘You are special,’ would wonder if his mother was even thinking about him,” Corigliano said.

The Social Service Board is one of three organizations — along with the New York Public Library system and the Queens-based Child Center of NY — that currently offer televisits linking incarcerated people to their families, according to the city Department of Correction, which has 46 televisiting booths in 15 facilities.

The service has seen a huge expansion recently. The DOC conducted over 1,800 televisits last year, more than 10 times the 144 conducted in 2016. There have been 391 visits this year as of April 2.

The expansion will continue, as the city’s Administration for Children’s Services and two other nonprofits, the Fortune Society and the Osborne Association, are set to start offering televisits in “the near future,” the DOC said.

The DOC said it isn’t obligated to offer the calls, but they’re an alternative to in-person visits for inmates who follow the rules.

Televists are an important supplement to physical visits for families of folks in jails such as Rikers Island, Corigliano said. Visitors to the aging Rikers complex, which the city plans to close within the next decade, face laborious trips to the isolated island and have reported abuse at the hands of correction officers.

Nicholas said the three- to four-hour process of visiting Tony, Rosie and Teresa usually involves a search and an encounter with guard dogs. One time she made the trip just to find out she couldn't see her children because there was a jail lockdown, she said.

“That’s a lot of headache,” she said.

Making it easier for kids and parents to see each other’s faces can have profound impacts on families separated by incarceration, Corigliano said.

Jailed parents can continue learning how to raise their children and keep up with their lives before coming home, he said. And regular virtual contact can help kids deal with the “potential trauma” of separation from an incarcerated parent, which studies have shown makes children more vulnerable to bullying and other dangers, Corigliano said.

“It’s so simple, but it’s game-changing, and we need more of it,” Corigliano said.

Each family comes to the Social Service Board’s televisting program through a referral from someone in their community, another nonprofit or even the Department of Correction itself, Corigliano said.

He first asks the incarcerated person and their relatives about their relationship and what kind of contact they have. That information helps him guide the calls with exercises that help families bond and cope with incarceration, he said.

Corigliano has helped teach incarcerated folks anger management, meditation and other skills over video calls in addition to leading parents and kids in activities such as arts and crafts, he said.

Some calls lead to in-person visits that strengthen family bonds even further, Corigliano said. One 16-year-old girl was upset with her mom who was jailed on Rikers and refused to see her in person, he said. But they grew closer after a few months of televisits and the girl eventually went to visit her mom on the island.

“She was able to express her anger at (her) mom and society and everything else, and mom was able to support that and understand that and validate that and still love her,” Corigliano said.

City officials plan to replace the 10 Rikers jails with a smaller jail in each borough except Staten Island. The Department of Correction says there are no plans to stop the televisits after Rikers closes.

The city has included efforts to improve visits as part of its plan to close Rikers, noting that access to them makes people less likely to commit more crimes. Televisiting in particular helps make jails more secure and efficient and trims costs associated with in-person visits, the DOC said.

While smaller local jails will likely make it easier for families to visit incarcerated loved ones in person, Corigliano said, televisits will become even more important and relevant after Rikers closes. They fit in well with the city's goal of creating more "modern" jails that are better equipped to support people and repair relationships, he said.

“The symbolism of closing Rikers does not necessarily change any of the functional things,” Corigliano said. “We still need to change the functional things, which is access to support when people are incarcerated. And televisiting does that.”

As hard as going to Rikers is, Nicholas said nothing can replace an in-person visit. She can’t bring her grown children newspapers or clothes over a video call — or hold them to remind them of her love.

“My kids need my love, to see me in person, too,” she said. “And I hope one day they’ll come home and be good dads and good moms to their children.”

The video chats are sometimes painful, she said, but they’re an opportunity for her grandsons laugh and talk with their parents.

The calls let Tony give the boys reassurances: “I’m sorry for what I did, I’ll be home soon, forgive me,” she said he tells them.

“They say, ‘Grandma, there’s nothing we can do,” Nicholas said of her grandkids. “‘We just pray for them to come home.’”

(Lead image: Dr. Frank J. Corigliano, the director of the supportive televisiting program sponsored by the Social Service Board of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, sits in his Midtown office where families of people in New York City jails make video calls to their incarcerated loved ones. Photo by Noah Manskar/Patch)