Daphne Sashin

A Hard Trip Made Easier
Inmates’ visitors can now catch an LI bus

By Daphne Sashin
STAFF WRITER

September 16, 2002

Linda Pinckney stared at the 40-foot-high concrete barrier that stood between her son and freedom. In that moment, the wisecracking woman of the last nine hours withered. The glimpse of the fortress brought her back to why she had spent the night in a red van traveling 400 miles from her home in Hempstead.

“Oh my God,” she said. She exhaled. “Look at this wall.” Her eyes filled with tears. She wiped them away with her hand.

That August morning, Pinckney would have to wait three more hours before she saw her son, a prisoner at Attica Correctional Facility.

For the families of the more than 4,500 inmates from Nassau and Suffolk counties serving time in upstate prisons, visiting them is an ordeal. Each month, the state, along with half a dozen private companies, sends dozens of buses to 47 facilities from Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, but none from Long Island, sometimes leaving in the middle of the night to get to the prisons in time for visiting hours.

Sharon Thurmond, of Lakeview, was inspired to start a Long Island service after enduring the trip herself. Nearly every month for five years, she and her husband would travel an hour and a half to get to Columbus Circle in Manhattan, where they would take a private bus to see their son at Watertown Correctional Facility, near the Canadian border.

“We had to travel with packages, drag all this stuff and take the train and subways,” said Thurmond, 50, a teacher’s assistant with Nassau County BOCES. “It’s stressful enough to be seeing your loved one who is incarcerated.”

In June, she and her friend Margo Nevilles of Hempstead wrote to more than 1,000 prisoners from Nassau and Suffolk counties to advertise their service, Bridge the Gap – Prison Rides.

Two weeks later, the letters of thanks began to arrive.

There were sons whose mothers were elderly and could not make the trip into Manhattan.

There were husbands who didn’t want their wives taking the Long Island Rail Road late at night.

And there was the letter from Ronald Martens II, written in pencil on looseleaf paper. He wanted to know if there was a way he could send them bus fare for his wife to visit him at Gouverneur Correctional Facility.

“My wife is in a shelter and has no car, so she would have [to] use what little money she has in order … to get where you are,” he wrote. “I’ve not seen my wife in over 18 months.”

The first trip was in June; six passengers rode in a 33- seat bus, paying $30 to $55 to visit Upstate and Bare Hill prisons. By August, enough riders had signed up to send three vans to state prisons in Attica, Otisville, Malone and Napanoch.

With a few exceptions, the majority of prisons have been built upstate, because of high land costs and local opposition downstate. There was once a state prison on Long Island – a 1,000-inmate, medium-security facility on the grounds of the former Pilgrim State Psychiatric Center in Brentwood – which opened in 1981, despite heavy community opposition. In 1985, Gov. Mario Cuomo closed it to fulfill a campaign pledge.

At 7:30 a.m. that Saturday in August, the red van sat in the Attica parking lot, the destination of a trip that began about 9 o’clock the night before. Pinckney slid her rings off with hand lotion and worried that she would be made to take out the bobby pins keeping her silver hair in place.

“If that’s your family member up there, you have to do what you have to do to show him love. Whatever it is, he’s still your family member. You still love him,” said Pinckney, 52, who traveled with her daughter, daughter- in-law and 2-year-old grandson. Fiercely protective of her son, she does not want the world to know his name or what he is serving time for.

Pinckney’s grandson, D.J., toddled out of the van dressed in red velvet pants, new Air Jordans and a gold medallion around his neck. His mother, Charlene, slid his arms through a matching red velvet jersey.

“You gotta represent! You gotta represent!” Pinckney said. She bent down to kiss him. “Ahh, we representin’ today.”

Down the road inside the visitors’ center, women clutched toothbrushes and carried dresses draped in white garbage bags, waiting their turn to change their clothes in the bathroom.

A sign on the wall warned: “No bare backs. No slits above 13 inches on the knee. No muscle shirts. No sleeveless shirts.”

There was no sign detailing the rules of physical affection, but the women knew what wasn’t written:

“You can’t kiss a long time, you can’t tongue, you can’t hold hands, you can’t rub his leg,” said Fatimah Nadiyah Allen, of Hempstead, her head dressed in a white silk hijab. She was waiting to see her husband, Orlando, in prison for murder. “I tell them I came all the way up here for some affection. I gotta do something.”

Three hours after they arrived, Allen and the Pinckneys heard their numbers called. They walked through the metal detectors. It was 11:30 a.m. when they were finally reunited with their men for four hours.

Inmate advocates say such visits are the only thing connecting prisoners to the society they eventually will return to. Studies show prisoners who receive family visits cope better with the prison experience and are less likely to be repeat offenders.

“It’s like a lifeline for both the family and the person who’s incarcerated,” said Barbara Allan, founder of Prison Families Anonymous in Westbury. “These people are all coming back to Hempstead, to Babylon, wherever they return, and you don’t want them to lose their link to the community.”

By 3:30 p.m., exhausted, the Hempstead passengers had changed back into pajamas and settled in for the ride home. They slouched against their pillows, saying little. It was close to 11 p.m. when the van pulled into the Hempstead police parking lot, more than 24 hours after it left.