Let quarantine guide us to rethink incarceration

By Lucy Lang

August 19, 2020

In March I moved in with my parents. My strong, yogaobsessed, weight-lifting, motorcycle-riding father complained of aches and fever, then was unable to get out of bed. It is strange, but it was from this unanticipated vantage point — sheltering in place with my parents, sister, our partners, and my kids — that I watched an opportunity emerge to transform criminal justice.

We need leaders to focus on the value of cross-generation family ties, which are so often severed by the prison system and the misguided economic impetus to rely on rural prisons to fuel local economies while undermining community connection.

This spring, many New Yorkers experienced the discomfort of separation for the first time. Families made varying decisions about with whom to quarantine, many involuntary. The ways in which families — biological and otherwise — configured confirms the shortsightedness in the failure to consider family bonds in policy.

Activists rightly shone a light on prison conditions that exacerbated the spread of COVID, but the practice of social distancing should also remind us that the devastating reality of excessive imprisonment separates families. More than 1.5 million American children have a parent in prison, and the racial injustice baked into this reality cannot be ignored.

For decades, rural areas across the country and here in New York have looked to prisons as an economic development engine, but the data prove this to be a fallacy, revealing that prison construction actually impedes economic growth in rural counties.

In my years teaching in New York’s prisons, I have been inspired by photographs of babies, by the parents and grown children of my students, who would give anything to nurse their loved ones through an illness, or to homeschool them during a crisis. In New York, 80,000 children have an incarcerated parent, and are raised by extended families or others while their parents live in upstate prisons on which local industry relies. Although contact with a parent who is incarcerated is a protective factor for most children, physical closeness to children is not considered in prison assignment decisions in New York. Maintaining family ties reduces recidivism, and a parent’s re-entry success is critical for children’s long-term health.

In this collective trauma, we can rethink the impact of isolation. Decarceration during COVID-19 can be met with renewed understanding of the importance of connection. Programs like Nassau County’s Closer to the Crib keep justice-involved women at home and offer services to develop a healthy environment. Heroic organizations like the Osborne Association transport children many hours to visit an incarcerated parent. All criminal justice decisions should consider the consequences of a sentence to a charged person’s family.

Some nights while he was sick I looked in on my dad, asleep. Tests weren’t available, and doctors advised that if he could breathe, we risked more by bringing him to the hospital than by keeping him home.

One by one, the other adults in the house fell sick. I never let myself think that we would not get better. Whoever was able got the kids dressed each morning, and sat down for dinner each night. My little sister turned 30. I obsessively gave thanks, gratitude a talisman against disaster.

My dad emerged from the fog of fever. He is strong again, did his part of the homeschooling, and is now back to work. The deaths peaked in our city and state. I think daily about our luck, and the fact that no obstacles prevent us from being together.

Those of us fortunate enough to choose either gathered our loved ones close or consciously remained apart. Now let’s reconsider policies that separate families. This terrible time should teach us that the powerful bonds across generations make us all healthier and more safe.