Bill Text: NY S03318 | 2023-2024 | General Assembly | Introduced

NOTE: There are more recent revisions of this legislation. Read Latest Draft

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Bill Title: Establishes visiting policies for incarcerated people, to provide 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) 2024-05-30 - referred to ways and means [S03318 Detail]

Download: New_York-2023-S03318-Introduced.html

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                STATE OF NEW YORK
        ________________________________________________________________________

                                          3318

                               2023-2024 Regular Sessions

                    IN SENATE

                                    January 30, 2023
                                       ___________

        Introduced   by   Sens.  SEPULVEDA,  BAILEY,  BRISPORT,  BROUK,  CLEARE,
          GOUNARDES, HOYLMAN-SIGAL, JACKSON,  KAVANAGH,  MYRIE,  RAMOS,  RIVERA,
          SALAZAR,  SANDERS  -- read twice and ordered printed, and when printed
          to  be  committed  to  the  Committee  on  Crime  Victims,  Crime  and
          Correction

        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.
                                                                   LBD00238-01-3