Bill Text: NY S02841 | 2021-2022 | General Assembly | Amended

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Bill Title: Establishes a visiting program for incarcerated people, which gives incarcerated people opportunities for personal contact with relatives, friends, clergy, volunteers and other persons to promote better institutional adjustment and better community adjustment upon release.

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 16-0)

Status: (Engrossed - Dead) 2022-05-31 - referred to ways and means [S02841 Detail]

Download: New_York-2021-S02841-Amended.html

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                STATE OF NEW YORK
        ________________________________________________________________________

                                         2841--A

                               2021-2022 Regular Sessions

                    IN SENATE

                                    January 26, 2021
                                       ___________

        Introduced by Sens. SEPULVEDA, BAILEY, RAMOS, RIVERA, SANDERS, SAVINO --
          read  twice  and  ordered printed, and when printed to be committed to
          the Committee on Crime Victims,  Crime  and  Correction  --  committee
          discharged, bill amended, ordered reprinted as amended and recommitted
          to said committee

        AN  ACT to amend the correction law, in relation to the establishment of
          a visiting program for incarcerated people

          The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and  Assem-
        bly, do enact as follows:

     1    Section 1. The correction law is amended by adding a new section 138-b
     2  to read as follows:
     3    §  138-b.  Visiting  program for the incarcerated. 1.  State and local
     4  correctional facilities  shall  provide  visiting  programs  which  give
     5  incarcerated  people opportunities for personal contact with their rela-
     6  tives, children,  friends,  clergy,  volunteers  and  other  persons  to
     7  promote  individual  transformation, better institutional adjustment and
     8  better community adjustment upon release. Such  program  shall  include,
     9  but  not be limited to, (a) visiting hours that are reasonably likely to
    10  accommodate persons traveling from within the state,  including  evening
    11  and/or  weekend  hours,  (b)  visits of sufficient duration, including a
    12  minimum of one hour at local correctional facilities  so  that  visitors
    13  and incarcerated people will be able to maintain relationship bonds, and
    14  (c) a published overcrowding policy that is equitable with due consider-
    15  ation  to  the  distance  traveled  by the visitor, the frequency of the
    16  visitor's  visits,  the  most  recent  occasion  that  the  incarcerated
    17  person's  visit  was terminated due to overcrowding, and any other indi-
    18  vidual circumstances that limit in-person visits between the incarcerat-
    19  ed person and the visitor.
    20    2. Video conferencing may supplement, but shall not take the place of,
    21  in-person visits.
    22    3. No incarcerated person is to be visited against his or her will  by
    23  any person.
    24    § 2. This act shall take effect on the one hundred twentieth day after
    25  it shall have become a law.

         EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
                              [ ] is old law to be omitted.
                                                                   LBD04355-02-1