Melissa: This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. A few numbers for you to consider. 2.7 million children. This is how many kids have an incarcerated parent. In most circumstances, these children benefit tremendously from maintaining strong bonds with that parent, but $15 to $50 is how much a phone call can cost for just a brief chat to reconnect. The burden of this expense falls overwhelmingly on black women because 44% of black women have a friend or loved one who is imprisoned.

All this is very big business, which is how the correctional telecom sector generates $1.4 billion annually. Now, the state of Connecticut has decided to do something about. In June, Connecticut Governor, Ned Lamont signed legislation to make it the first state to provide free outgoing calls for state prisons and youth detention centers. The law will go into full effect on July 1st, 2022. Joining me now to discuss this important move and the fight for criminal justice reform is Connecticut State Representative, Josh Elliott, who was a key supporter of the legislation. Josh, welcome.

Josh: Thanks for having me.

Melissa: And Diane Lewis, who is the mom of a formerly incarcerated son and a member of voices of women of color, a social justice organization based in Hartford, Connecticut. Welcome, Diane.

Diane: Thank you for having me.

Melissa: Josh, I want to start with you. What led to this set of decisions by the state of Connecticut to move towards a policy of reducing and then making free the cost of outgoing calls?

Josh: Connecticut had to actually consider this a number of times over the last couple of decades. I heard about three or four different times, but for whatever reason, it had never gained traction. What I found during the few years of really pushing this legislation forward is that while people were generally accepting of the idea that these calls should be cheaper, not everybody agreed that they should be free, which was a priority of Diane's and myself and the advocates that were working on this bill. Then the other really difficult hurdle to overcome was the fact that there was a fiscal cost to this bill and that there was about somewhere between $7 to $8 million worth of correctional officer's salaries that we would have to fill in. That was very difficult for a lot of people to manage in terms of how we would fill in those holes.

Melissa: It could also incarcerate fewer people?

Josh: Connecticut has actually been doing a pretty good job of that. Under Malloy, we enacted some pretty strong second chance society policies. Over the last decade or so, we've actually gone from a high-water mark of around 18,000 or so incarcerated people down to around 9,000 or so, but the industry has stayed pretty strong. When I say that, I mean that we have not closed nearly as many prisons as we should be, and we have nearly the same amount of correctional officers. There's still a lot of executive work to be done to right-size our ship when it comes to the prison industrial complex.

Melissa: That's such helpful context there, Josh. Hold for me one second, but I want to come to you, Diane. I started by talking about children of incarcerated parents. In part, because I feel like they often don't get heard enough, but the other side of that is also parents of incarcerated children. I have a brother who's been incarcerated in much of his adult life and the expense of phone calls is something I think for those who don't have incarcerated family members, they just can't imagine what a size of your budget this is. Can you talk to us about what it cost to just talk to your son?

Diane: The thing about it is that when we started this fight and we started to talk to legislators, I was totally amazed at how many legislators didn't even know that there was a cost to making these phone calls from prison. For someone who lives paycheck to paycheck, it really crippled my household. I had to make the decision on paying for phone calls and eating lunch, paying a light bill, paying a gas bill, putting gas in the car, everything came down to the telephone or this bill. For me, there was never a question, I needed to speak to my son who was 17 years old when he was first incarcerated and I needed to speak to him every day. The choice always was pay the phone bill.

Melissa: Help people understand why it was important to talk to your 17-year-old son every day.

Diane: This was his first time being incarcerated. It was my first time experiencing having someone so close to me being incarcerated, but it was important for me for him to have constant contact with his family because I believed that if we did this now, when he got out, it would be much easier for him to integrate back into society and become a member of our family again.

Melissa: Have you found that to be true?

Diane: That is absolutely true and I've seen the difference. I'm also a case manager for re-entry program and I've been doing this for the past 15 years, and I can always tell, always tell when someone is coming home had family support and those that didn't. The ones that had family support are more eager to learn, more eager to reintegrate back into society. It's easier for them because they had that contact and they know their families. They know everything that happened in the family, as opposed to someone coming home that had no family contact, no one to visit, no one to call. They don't trust as much, it's harder to get them to reintegrate back into society.

Melissa: Josh, as I'm listening to Diane speak her testimony and her experience here both as a parent and as a caseworker is so powerful. I'm wondering if it was these kinds of first person stories that helped to sway legislators in Connecticut.

Josh: Without a question. What we found really worked for us in Connecticut was having this team decide strategically how we were going to push this bill forward. The role that I played was very specific. I had the relationships inside the Capitol Building in Hartford. I could connect Diane to people, although I will say that Diane certainly did a good job of that herself and didn't really need me too much.

There were advocates that we worked with from New York, Worth Rises, and Bianca Tylek whose organization was very instrumental in this and I was able to connect her with a number of people as well because it's people that are impacted personally that can make the argument far better than I ever could. I can ensure that people understand the process. I can ensure that those relationships are made and connections are built, but when it comes down to it, it is the emotional appeal that I think ultimately is what got this into law.

Melissa: Diane, I want to come back to you for a moment. It's my understanding that your son actually didn't realize the extent of the cost of these bills, and that it was only later that he learned of them.

Diane: Yes. See, his job was to just come home basically the way I sent him and that wasn't his job to worry about just like when he was home. It's not my children's job to worry about how I'm paying a bail or what bills needs to be paid. We made a promise to each other, you do your time and you bring me home a high school diploma and I'll take care of the rest. He did that and I did my part, too. He didn't really know anything until I got involved in this fight. The news media started to call me and ask some questions, and so that's how he found out.

Melissa: What was his reaction when he found out?

Diane: It was what I knew it would be and I felt sad at the same time because I didn't want him to not call because it was too much. I needed him to stay on track. It was important that he kept in contact with all our family members, his grandmother, myself, his sisters. There was a period of time where he was like, ''Well, I just won't call.'' No, no, that's not what we're going to do here. You're going to keep calling and I'm going to keep figuring out a way to make it work. We had a little rough spot there, but we kept it going.

Melissa: I so appreciate the realities of your parenting and the spirit of your parenting. Josh, it feels to me like supporting parents like Diane who are supporting incarcerated children, also supporting parents who are themselves incarcerated, who want to call and help with homework every night so that their sons and daughters know that even in the context of imprisonment, they're still there, they still love them, they still care. What do the statistics tell us that might back up some of what Diane is telling us about recidivism rates and that capacity to call home?

Josh: There's a lot of statistics out there, and I know the Vera Institute has done a bunch of research on this. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if someone stays in contact with their family while they're incarcerated, they're significantly less likely to re-offend. What was really important for me during my own journey through this process was shifting my thinking a bit, and so the goal is not necessarily just reducing recidivism; the goal really ought to be ensuring successful re-entry and making sure that people who end up with their families, again, or end up outside of the prison system, I really should say, have a chance of securing a job and securing housing and being taken in by their family. That's really hard to do if they don't maintain contact. While that is what was the strongest argument for me, I had to find as many possible arguments as possible.

Quite frankly, the emotional appeal didn't necessarily work for a lot of people. There is a significant cost to our criminal justice system, and I think it's something upwards of $50,000 a person is what the cost is to the state. For some people, this was simply a matter of dollars and cents that there's not just a moral cost and ethical cost as pertains to me and Diane, but there's an actual true fiscal cost that doesn't get us anything because when it comes down to it, 95% of people who become incarcerated are going to end up being outside of the system and we need to ensure that they just don't get recycled back through.

Melissa: What is the cost when there are high recidivism rates and maybe even as you point out beyond recidivism, what is the cost, again, for those who aren't like catching the emotional piece, but they want to know, well, wait a minute in dollars and cents? Someone has broken the law, they've offended, why should they get to talk on the phone every day? What is the cost to the state of Connecticut, for example, if someone doesn't have that successful re-entry that includes housing, a job, and familial connections?

Josh: I think there's a significant cost. What I've seen happen is as you're walking the halls of the Capitol, you'll get to thinking, ''How do I change this behavior? How do I ensure that this certain thing doesn't happen?'' The government, unfortunately, in a lot of ways is a blunt instrument. For a lot of people that aren't well-versed in criminology just think let's make this a crime, let's send somebody to prison. The problem is that a lot of what we see in our criminal justice system is not actually deterrent, so it actually does nothing there. We know our prison system is not necessarily all that rehabilitative, so people aren't coming out with additional skills necessarily.

What ends up happening is it just becomes a machine of punishment. I think that if you talk to most people, they will not view the prison system purely through the lens of punishment, but that is what we've created. I think it dehumanizes people. I think it says that you ought to be judged by your worst action, and I don't think that is what a criminal justice system should do. I think we should have a system that is based more on a sense of rehabilitation, and we should be investing in people, not just, again, because of the fiscal cost which is immense, but because of the moral cost to our society. That we should be just as we invest in transportation, just as we invest in education, we should be investing in our people and that includes even people who have broken a law.

Melissa: Diane, I'm wondering, for you, if you've seen, and you've mentioned this a bit here, but the other side. For sons and daughters whose families weren't able to maintain that daily contact by phone. I understand you picked up another son during this process.

Diane: Yes, I have a close friend, and her son also went to prison about maybe four years after my son and she just couldn't afford it. I respect her decision not to juggle her bills and make a way. She did her best. My son after he had been in prison a few years was like, "Mom, just let's share some of the calls with him and let him call sometimes." That's what we did. When he came home, and it was sad for me to watch because she really is a very close friend of mine and I had known her children before they were born. It was just natural for me to try to help take care of him while he was incarcerated.

When he came home, he came directly to me. It was just a natural thing for him to come and see me and talk to me on Mother's Day, and this is really sad. On Mother's Day, he called me and forgot to call her. That's the true testament of what being connected to someone who is at their lowest point probably in their whole life does. I was there for him at one of his lowest points, so it just really made sense to him that when Mother's Day comes that he would call me.

Melissa: Right. Yet, I hear your sorrow and distress about the fact that dollars and cents kept another family apart in that way. I am so appreciative, Diane Louis, of your work, of your parenting, of your advocacy. I'm so appreciative of you, Connecticut State Representative, Josh Elliott for joining us. Thank you both for joining The Takeaway today.

Diane: Thank you for having me.

Josh: Thanks for having us.

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