The Innocence Project attorney has helped free 25 unjustly incarcerated prisoners…and counting.

Vanessa Potkin with Alfred Swinton (Credit: Innocence Project Facebook)

November 8, 2017 was a big day for Eric Kelley. On that cloudless, crisp day, he was released from New Jersey’s Northern State Prison after 24 years of incarceration. Holding the door open for his first steps of freedom was a pretty, petite woman in a sharp suit holding his belongings in a white, plastic Marshalls bag. Kelley, wearing a brown long-sleeved shirt and jeans, held up his arms in victory. And when the cheers from friends and family subsided, he turned and wrapped her small frame in his tall one.

Vanessa Potkin is the Innocence Project attorney who successfully overturned Kelley’s 1993 murder and robbery conviction, with the help of DNA evidence from a green-and-purple plaid baseball hat. Kelley and Ralph Lee (who was represented and freed by Centurion Ministries) had been found guilty of the murder of 22-year-old Tito Merino in Paterson, New Jersey, based on statements they gave to police after they were asked to go to the city’s detective bureau. Though police had been looking for one suspect in Merino’s murder, the two were interrogated separately, for hours on end, giving contradictory statements. Kelley, who was involved in a car accident and suffers from intellectual problems that make it difficult for him to process information, allegedly confessed during the questioning.

Detectives later admitted to feeding Ralph Lee information supplied to them by interrogating Kelley. There are no notes or recordings from his police interview. Then, in 2010, when DNA testing was more advanced, Vanessa and Centurion Ministries were granted permission to retest the baseball hat, found beside Merino’s body, for DNA evidence. After searching the convicted felon database, they got a match — the DNA belonged to Eric Dixon, who had been convicted of a similar robbery of a store close to Merino’s. Dixon also matched the age and physical description of someone a witness mentioned being in the store at the time of the crime.

On the day of his exoneration, Eric Kelley was surrounded by loved ones. While being photographed, they all shouted “freedom!” The newly free man smiled and made silly faces as Potkin joined his family photograph, also sporting a wide grin. He put his arm around her and kissed her head, sticking to her side as he absorbed his new surroundings.

A few days later, Potkin met Kelley again in a shopping mall. The prosecution appealed the vacation of his conviction, but he had been able to post a $20,000 bail while the appeal goes through the courts. They would return on December 11, but Kelley was making the most of his new life. At the mall, Potkin, Melissa Sopher (Vanessa’s paralegal), Kelley, and his daughter were having lunch, waiting for Kelley’s brother to join them. They had about half an hour of free time and were looking for something to do when Potkin and Sopher noticed his nails were unkempt, and took him to get his first manicure.

“His nails were so long and ragged,” Potkin says. “Even though it’s frivolous — I don’t mean to trivialize it, a manicure isn’t going to take away two decades of prison — he came from a place where his needs weren’t met. He was just a number, he was never put first. And his nails looked great.”

“She embodies the spirit of the Innocence Project,” says Barry Scheck, one of the cofounders of the Innocence Project. “Exonerees all love her. She really catches their vitality, and she’s got a terrific sense of humor and a fighting spirit. She gets it.”

Potkin met Scheck and Peter Neufeld in 1992 when she interned with their police brutality practice in New York City. Scheck and Neufeld co-founded the Innocence Project, an organization that helps wrongfully convicted inmates regain their freedom. Since its inception in 1992, the Innocence Project has grown to encompass an 80-person New York staff with organizations in over 60 countries. It has freed over 350 wrongfully convicted individuals as a result of DNA evidence, and has identified 150 alternative perpetrators.

Potkin was born in Chicago but, because of her father’s residency as a doctor, her family quickly relocated to Seattle, where they lived until she was 13. They then moved to West Hollywood, and she now considers herself a California native. In her undergraduate studies at Mills College, a grant allowed her to work with Maxine Waters, the Democratic congresswoman. There, she realized her drive to be a part of policy reform. It was a time of highly publicized police brutality, during the infamous “war on drugs,” and Potkin zeroed in on justice system reform as something that interested her. At the time, though, she wanted to be a politician. A law degree was, she thought, a way to pad her resume. “I saw the prison system as one of the most pressing issues of our time. It wasn’t a war on drugs, it was a war on people of color and poor people.”

Prison Rape Jokes Are The Furthest Thing From Funny

Just ask Anthony Wright. When he was only 20, the young black man with an infant son found himself arrested for the 1991 rape and murder of an elderly Philadelphia woman. After serving 25 years for the crime he didn’t commit, his retrial jury acquitted him after less than an hour of deliberations. Wright had a solid alibi, police had illegally obtained a questionable confession, and new DNA evidence proved the guilt of another man, Ronnie Byrd.

“Our criminal justice system needs to be revised. There are situations that should not be,” said Grace Greco, a juror in Wright’s retrial. “How many people have been unjustly incarcerated based on false evidence? It is really a problem, especially when you’re poor and you are black and you have no one to vouch for you.”

Potkin’s work with Rep. Waters also exposed her to another force: legendary lawyer Johnnie Cochran. At the time, he was working on the case of Geronimo Pratt, the Black Panther leader on trial for the murder of Caroline Olsen. Cochran lost the case, but Pratt’s conviction was vacated. Cochran would go on to be a co-founder of Cochran, Neufeld and Scheck LLP, the police brutality litigation company that preceded the Innocence Project.

Now, in Potkin’s office — a room the size of a prison cell filled with case files, blown-up newspaper articles recounting her successful exonerations, and photos of her daughter — she proudly houses a photo of her and Rep. Waters from the early ’90s. It sits on a wooden table, framed by a light green piece of construction paper. She shows it off with a beaming smile: “She’s one of my inspirations.”

In 2000, Potkin became the Innocence Project’s first staff attorney after the organization received a grant to hire one lawyer. She planned to stay for a year, but has spent the last 17 years fighting for the unjustly incarcerated. She is a champion of post-conviction DNA litigation, and has represented and exonerated over 25 people. As one of an eight-person group from various disciplines, she helped publish a 2012 report by the National Institute of Justice called “DNA for the Defense Bar” that serves to increase understanding of DNA science and its place in court. Because of her work, efforts to change policy, and research, she is also a nationally recognized expert on both wrongful convictions and innocence proven by DNA evidence.

“Vanessa doesn’t back down to anybody,” chuckles Gina Papera-Ewing, a former paralegal for the Innocence Project. From 2012 to 2015, she worked with Potkin closely. “Inevitably, she will always find her way around any sort of road block.” Papera-Ewing was 20 years old and trying what she wanted to do post-college. “I got to have a mentor who was such a strong woman, and a strong woman attorney. In a male-dominated profession, it can kind of be daunting sometimes. To have her as a mentor really taught me how to be fearless in very specific ways.”

In addition to fighting for individuals, the Innocence Project seeks to reform the justice system through education, in order to prevent future injustices and wrongful convictions. They focus on incentivized informants (often, prisoners who are given reduced sentences in exchange for incriminating testimony against the accused), inadequate defense, misapplication of forensic science (bite mark science, for example, was heavily relied upon for decades and has since been deemed inadequate), government misconduct, false confessions, and eyewitness misidentification as the main causes of unjust incarcerations. Potkin is also looking to expand the Innocence Project’s case load to include non-DNA cases, where innocence can be proven with other sciences. She recently partnered with a Canadian entomologist (someone who studies bugs) to submit maggot growth and decomposition evidence to prove that the victim was murdered at a time when the accused (and later convicted) was identified to be two hours away.

In addition to fighting for individuals, the Innocence Project seeks to reform the justice system through education.

In that case, 18-year old Kirstin Blaise Lobato was accused of a violent Nevada murder after a troubled life. She had been abused growing up, and was involved in an assault prior to the murder she was convicted of. The prior assault, though, was an act of self-defense, and Lobato boasted about her ability to escape an attack. That same pride, Potkin says, gave the police ammunition to zero in on her client as the perpetrator. “It was tunnel vision, and they saw no other possibility,” she says. As the Innocence Project’s 200th client, Lobato was released from jail on January 3.

The men and women Potkin has exonerated also remain in contact with their one-time attorney. Barry Gibbs had been framed for the 1986 murder of an African American sex worker in Brooklyn. The killing, it turned out, was tied to retired NYPD detective Louis Eppolito, who was later convicted of eight murders and other charges — he and another detective had plotted and carried out killings on behalf of the Mafia.

Gibbs was released from jail in 2005. The night before he was set to be released, Potkin and a coworker ran frantically through K-Mart searching for clothes and other comforts for their client. After his release, they remained friends, and Potkin gave Gibbs another honor — he was her daughter’s godfather. When Gibbs passed away on March 23, The Innocence Project posted an article recounting Vanessa and Barry’s friendship.

Potkin’s 7-year old daughter also makes frequent appearances in the Innocence Project offices. She knows everyone as friends of her mother’s, and she is given a look into the organization’s dynamic — though the legal profession is largely male-dominated, the Innocence Project’s male to female ratio doesn’t reflect that. Only 24% of the staff is male. In fact, Potkin’s daughter offers an entirely new insight — her cousin, a boy, wants to be a lawyer, and Potkin and her daughter were having a conversation about it. “She turned to me and said: ‘Mom, he can’t be a lawyer, he’s a boy. Only women can be lawyers!’” Potkin recalls. “It was an interesting moment for me.”

The subject of Potkin’s Columbia Law School thesis focussed specifically on guilty pleas. Today, 97% of federal cases are resolved with them — in some cases prosecutors are incentivized to resolve cases without a trial — and an overcrowded docket is relieved. But, many of these pleas are coerced, not truthful, or submitted to avoid trial. “Because sentences are so excessive, prosecutors wield power to coerce guilty pleas,” she says. Essentially, a person’s right to a trial is exchanged for a less chaotic courthouse, and for prosecutor rewards. “If you have a system that would shut down if everyone exercised their constitutional right, you have a problem.”

The Innocence Project still has a lot of work to do. One in four American people have a loved one who is incarcerated, but how many are wrongful convictions? A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that 1 in 25 death row inmates is later proven innocent. According to Time Magazine, 166 people were declared innocent in 2016 — and some of them were convicted as far back as 1964. Nineteen were exonerated after they died. This made for an average of three exonerations per week. At the time of writing, the Innocence Project has 200 on the docket for exoneration, and a staggering 6,000 cases in evaluation.

On December 11, Potkin returned to court in Paterson, New Jersey. It was a hearing to update the courts about Ralph Lee and Eric Kelley’s lives while on bail. Lee’s father and Kelley’s younger brother sat in the back of the five-row room, listening as Potkin petitioned for, and was eventually given, permission for Kelley to leave the state of New Jersey to visit the Innocence Project office in Manhattan (both of their current bail statuses require that they stay in their home state). The judge heard that Kelley has a job as a dishwasher at IHOP and that he is doing well with his freedom.

The hearing concludes with an appeal hearing and another update hearing set for February 2018, and the small crowd files out of the courtroom. They hug and catch up for a few minutes, chatting in a circle about the next steps of the case and about holiday plans. After a few minutes, both Lee’s father and his lawyer leave, but the rest of the group piles into two cars — Kelley’s brother Troy and Ralph Lee into Troy’s Mercedes and everyone else into Potkin’s Prius — and head to lunch in Newark. On the way, Kelley and Potkin, both sitting in the front, talk about families and their children, peppered with legal talk.

Lunch, at Newark’s Dinosaur BBQ, is a friendly affair as well. Troy Kelley, the jester of the group, teases Potkin about her taste in music, guessing her favorite band is Hall & Oates. She’s typing out the motion to allow Eric Kelley into Manhattan as she surprises Kelley with her list of favorite musicians — Mary J. Blige, Beyonce, and Whitney Houston. They FaceTime Gina Papera-Ewing as the quiet, observant Ralph Lee and outgoing Eric Kelley take turns sharing their stories of freedom. This behavior, Papera-Ewing says, is what makes Potkin stand out as a lawyer — her clients are also her friends. “I see our clients as people first. It shouldn’t be a revolutionary idea,” Potkin says. “Even if our clients had done what they were convicted of, they’re still humans. People make mistakes.”

“She does this work, and it comes from such a pure place,” Papera-Ewing says. “Vanessa is more than an attorney. She becomes like a friend, like family.” Proof lies in her ongoing relationship with Archie Williams, an inmate at Angola Prison. His was one of Potkin’s first cases as an Innocence Project attorney, and one of the reasons she chose to stay on all of those years ago.

“I told him: I won’t leave the Innocence Project until you’re exonerated. And he’s still in jail.”

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/life-after-life-documentary-takes-aims-at-america-s-racist-criminal-justice-system-c729459fb8e/ Sat, 26 Aug 2017 00:46:03 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=4564 Read more]]> ‘America places people into poverty and then criminalizes them. We’ve got to ask ourselves, what kind of force do we want to be as a country?’

Harrison celebrating at his graduation.

Circles are deceptively simple. A smooth ring with no edges or sides, circles are often made synonymous with the bittersweet cycles that govern our lives.

But their simple structure belies their more sinister nature. And perhaps there is no circle more sinister than the one we call our justice system.

Life After Life traces the journey of three men of color returning home from San Quentin State Prison in California, painfully illustrating the systemic racism that dominates American incarceration and the glaring lack of restorative justice for the 2.3 million people living in varying stages of captivity. According to the U.S. Census, Blacks are incarcerated five times more than Whites, and Hispanics are nearly twice as likely to be incarcerated as Whites.

Filmed over 10 years by Tamara Perkins — who began her journey in 2006 while teaching yoga at San Quentin — Life After Life was crafted from more than 250 hours of footage and aims to complicate the dialogue around those who’ve committed violent crimes; the film is a touching — if harrowing — portrayal of the complicated societal forces that prey on our most vulnerable communities.

Trauma, addiction, violence, poverty, and racism intersect in a twisted kaleidoscope that has rendered these men — like millions of others — “murderers and monsters” in the eyes of society, when in reality they were mere children suffering under extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

“America places people into poverty and then criminalizes them,” says Perkins matter of factly. “Our current system does not help the victim. It’s all about punishment with no care for cost. We’ve got to ask ourselves, what kind of force do we want to be as a country? Do we want people to thrive? What is our end goal as a society?”

Perkins, who has worked in grief and trauma for the past 17 years, also watched her Nephew — who is half black — get “the book thrown at him.” Although Perkins worked closely with the superintendent of the juvenile hall and the chief probation officer — and knew many of the judges when he was first arrested — she could do nothing to stop the process of mass-criminalization that actively feeds on young black boys.

She vowed to take aim at the system that took a child and nearly broke him.

Life After Life is taking that aim.

Harrison Suega, 45, and Noel Valdivia, 55, had both been serving life sentences at San Quentin for murders they committed at 17 and 18, respectively. Chris Shurn, 35, was first arrested for armed robbery at 16 and then sentenced to life when he was convicted of drug possession at 22.

Collectively they’d spent 61 years behind bars. All three men are on parole for four years; they must stay within a 50 miles radius and operate under a 10 p.m. curfew.

Seems simple enough, but when you’ve been stripped of your agency, your identity, your very adulthood, and face a devastating lack of support and understanding of a world without cement walls, creating a new life can feel nearly impossible.

And it nearly is.

According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, more than 65% of those released from California’s prison system return within three years. Nationally, 650,000 people are released from prison every year and 2 out of 3 will reoffend in 3 years.

And while it feels exponentially easier to relegate these staggering recidivism rates to moral corruption, depravity, laziness, or some such belief that tidily places the blame on the prisoners’ obvious deficiencies, Life After Life illustrates how deeply flawed and problematic these narratives are.

Harrison has had a long time to consider what feels like personal failure when it’s actually the dizzying cycle of poverty and violence that follows families for generations.

“I was raised the way my father was raised, “ he says in the film. “Discipline. Punish. You can get used to getting beat up.” Harrison says his father used to mercilessly beat his mother as well. He says his inability to protect her haunts him. “I wanted to defend her but I was too afraid. I felt so weak.”

Harrison’s abusive father eventually absconded with him to Los Angeles, where he fell in with a gang “who became his new family.” He began selling drugs to try and get back to his mother in Hawaii, but fired a gun in a deal gone wrong — frantic, frightened, and drunk — and found himself in prison instead. He was 17.

“Everything was violence,” says Noel, the son of farm laborers in Stockton, California. “I was a scary kid. At 18 I tried to rob someone, the guy reached for the gun and before I knew it, my hands were on the trigger and he was falling to the ground.” He was denied parole 11 times and finally litigated his own case to achieve parole.

“Every child is innocent,” says Chris. “Until something breaks and you become a survivor.” At age 5, Chris witnessed his mother get stabbed in the chest by her husband. She escaped death, but recognizes her children weren’t able to escape the trauma. Her eyes haunted and brimming with tears, she says, “They never got the counseling they needed.”

Perkins believes the intersecting roles of race and implicit bias cannot be underestimated. “Black children are almost four times as likely to be suspended than white preschoolers,” she says. “You have to unpack that. We are starting this punitive action in kindergarten.”

She points to a chilling study conducted by Yale last year which revealed the incredible discrimination that plague black and brown children; this racism underpins our industrial prison complex and destroys millions of black families across America.

While we’d like to believe that the particulars of a child’s home life are often unknowns to their teachers and thus they’re punishing them for acting out like they would punish any student — what the study discovered is precisely the opposite.

According to Gilliam’s study, black preschoolers in America are more than three times as likely to be suspended than their white classmates. “Implicit biases do not begin with black men and police,” says Walter S. Gilliam, lead researcher and Yale child psychology professor. “It begins with black preschoolers and their teachers, if not earlier.”

“If a teacher knew more about the child’s situation — they were hungry, dealing with abuse, uncertainty and trauma in the home, and they were the same race, empathy went up, but if they weren’t the same race…the punitive reaction was actually higher,” Perkins explains. “We expect little black boys — just as we expect grown black men — to behave badly, despite all the evidence that runs contrary to that belief.”

While Life After Life is equal parts heartbreaking and infuriating, it’s also designed to spurn a dialogue around restorative justice. It’s designed to offer a solution and a way forward.

“For most of the men and women who I’ve worked with in trying to transition home, they’re amazing allies in supporting youth. We should be leaning into them,” she says. “Once someone has a felony it closes so many doors for the rest of their life. So this to me is both the pathway to employment and a way to reach youth.”

Perkins explains that another piece of the puzzle is the way we treat these crimes and the people who commit them as though they’re operating in a vacuum. When you start tracing the effects of a life sentence on a family, the fallout becomes exponentially more complicated. When you jail someone for 25 years, you are not only harming the individual, but every single person that cares about them.

“Look at Noel and his family. Every one of those 45 people were impacted by him being incarcerated for 30 years,” says Perkins.

“We need spaces in which we can heal communities. And I’m not saying there’s no room for punitive actions but in restorative justice, it’s about offering support instead of compounded harm. We could spend a fraction of what we do on incarceration if the focus instead was on seeing the whole child and providing whatever that family needs support for addiction or substance abuse. Simply making sure they have food.”

And let’s be clear: White privilege is potent, ubiquitous, and undeniable. Treating every individual identically — ignoring the “whole child,” the child with absent parents, daily violence or exposure to addiction — is as ridiculous as it is dangerous.

“If you already have incredible resources and a legacy of success behind you then your baseline reality is in a total different realm,” says Perkins. “And the irony is, as a society we don’t want you to be able to understand this horrible trauma. But hopefully this film allows you to know someone who’s served life in prison. Walk a mile in someone’s shoes. You never hear anyone say ‘PTSD,’ but the entire film is dealing with under-addressed trauma. It underlies everything.”

When I ask Perkins what exactly she hopes the film will accomplish, she falls silent for a moment and shakes her head. I think she’s worked on it for so long, her hopes are massive — and complex. But then she speaks. “If the audience just came out of the film and said to themselves, ‘This is a public health issue! Oh my god, we need healing and mental health-care for young people! In the prison! For everyone transitioning home! And we should provide resources for communities to provide this care!’ That would go a long way.”

But as Harrison reminds us, his eyes scanning the horizon, “There is an expectation that for children of color, that prison is unavoidable at some point in their life. It’s ridiculous.”

But if we don’t address the racism and systemic oppression that comprises the very foundation of our society, if we don’t address the racism that continues to prey on those who most need our protection, this expectation feels less ludicrous than it does logical.

Want to get involved?

August 29 Screening, Panel and Resource Fair
Sacramento, CA

Please join us for the Sacramento debut of Life After Life, followed by a panel discussion featuring Noel Valdivia Sr. and Harrison Seuga from the film, along with the filmmaker and local community leaders. This event is co-presented by The California Endowment, Anti-Recidivism Coalition, and Sierra Health Foundation.

REGISTER — FOR FREE — RIGHT HERE!

September 15–17, Justice on Trial Film Festival
Loyola Marymount University | Los Angeles, CA

The Justice on Trial Film Festival speaks to the challenges of people caught up in the judicial system. But their voices are often unheard beyond their own communities. The film festival creates an opportunity to project their voices to a world deafened by the negative images and stereotypes presented by the media.The Justice On Trial film festival grew out of a conversation between award-winning author Michelle Alexander and Susan Burton, founder of A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project.

BUY FESTIVAL TICKETS HERE!

Interested in hosting a screening? Contact the filmmakers at tamara@lifeafterlifemovie.com.

For every sentence read out in court, there’s a family serving time for a crime that they didn’t commit.

Giant tacky teddy bears are in every shop window, heart-shaped boxes are being sold in phenomenal numbers, rose petals are being scattered on beds, and candle-lit bubble baths are being run. If you walk up and down your street, you might even hear the sultry crooning of Marvin Gaye as “Let’s Get It On” is blasted from a bedroom window. Gas stations are about to become a hotspot for those who have fucked up and forgotten a gift again.

Which is to say: Valentine’s Day is upon us. But while you’re booking tables for romantic dinners and spending hours in the changing rooms of lingerie stores, there are millions for whom February 14 isn’t just uncelebrated, but impossible to celebrate.

As of February 3, 2017, there are about 85,000 people incarcerated in the UK. In the U.S., the country with the highest prison population in the world, more than 2.1 million people are behind bars. It is estimated that there around 9 million incarcerated people worldwide.

There are millions for whom February 14 isn’t just uncelebrated, but impossible to celebrate.
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For every sentence read out in court, there’s a family serving time for a crime that they didn’t commit. And as Valentine’s Day rolls around, it can be particularly difficult to handle the emotional stress of a partner behind bars.

“As with any holiday, visits get requested and snapped up super fast,” says Lauren, a prison officer from the UK. “That leads inmates who haven’t been lucky enough to get some time with their loved one to become even more agitated. Sometimes I think it’d be best to get rid of visits on days like Valentine’s Day altogether.”

That said, Lauren notes that there are often attempts to try to make the day special; in some prisons she’s worked in, officers have decorated the visiting hall for the holiday. But, she notes, “making a thing of it like that can highlight the loss for anyone who doesn’t have their loved one with them, so we try to keep it modest.”

As Valentine’s Day rolls around, it can be particularly difficult to handle the emotional stress of a partner behind bars.
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Those lucky enough to get visits on Valentine’s Day won’t get any special treatment, however. Lauren says the set-up remains the same, and while some officers — herself included — might allow a discretionary extra kiss at the end of the visit, Valentine’s Day is treated like any other visiting day, except perhaps for some paper hearts here and there.

As stuffed bears and candlelit baths mark another Valentine’s Day for those not incarcerated, it’s important to consider that not every couple has the opportunity to celebrate — and that not every love story fits the narrative the holiday exalts.

“The dynamic of the relationship shifts instantly,” says Hetty, 38, a job-seeking mother of three from the Midlands, England, whose husband has been in jail for four and a half years for his part in an organized crime unit found responsible for money laundering and attempted murder. “Everything changed the minute the police knocked on our door. After that moment, it was never the same again.

“I went from being a financially stable full-time mum with a committed partner, to a single mum living on state handouts with an inmate for a husband in literally three seconds — two sharp knocks on the door. That was all it took.”

For Hetty, the months following her husband’s arrest only unearthed deeper, more complicated emotions. Haunted by the idea that her husband had committed a violent crime without her knowing, she became fixated on remembering the quirks in his behavior in the time leading up to his arrest.

“I was thinking back to all the times I was chatting to him over dinner about holidays, school trips, a new washing machine — all these things that were so normal, when all that time he knew what he’d done.”

It’s estimated that there are around 9 million people worldwide behind bars.
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The thing about having a relationship with someone in jail, Hetty says, is that you are never given that time to talk it over.

“People always think that visits are going to be these joyous occasions where you jump into each other’s arms and tell each other how much you miss each other, but to be honest, by the time you’ve gotten there and been searched, you only have time to talk about the necessities — usually the trial or whether there’ll be a visit for Father’s Day, that kind of thing. There’s no room for romance anymore.

“We let Valentine’s Day pass us by — it doesn’t seem as important as the other special occasions that the kids are involved in. It’s kind of a selfish holiday for us.”

Keeping the romance alive with one half of a couple in prison is no easy feat. In the UK, conjugal visits are non-existent, despite calls from European Prison Observatory to “allow prisoners to maintain and develop relationships in as normal a manner as possible” and petitions from the public to change policy. In the U.S., conjugal visits are only allowed in four states — California, Connecticut, New York, and Washington — with New Mexico and Mississippi canceling their programs within the past three years due to budget cuts.

Securing a conjugal visit in the states where it is allowed is a victory in itself, with only medium to low security prisons opening it up it as an option. The regulations vary vastly from state to state, with some making it easier than others. But as a general rule, to qualify for a conjugal visit, inmates must have a clean record of good behavior and must not have been convicted of a sexual assault.

Other conditions fall onto the visitors themselves. Their relationship to the inmate, their background, and their criminal history will be closely scrutinized before any conjugal visitation order is granted.

Without the physical intimacy, couples must rely solely on verbal and written communication to maintain a romantic relationship.

“We’re really struggling to keep the spark in our relationship,” says Nina*, a 33-year-old mother of two from London. Her husband is serving seven years for fraud and has been in prison and away from the family for nearly two years.

“Telephone calls and letters are monitored, so we never have phone sex or anything like that. Even kissing in visits is hard for us — some couples need to be hosed down! We’re both very wary of Big Brother watching.”

‘We’re both very wary of Big Brother watching.’
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When I speak to Nina, she tells me that she was “just thinking about Valentine’s Day.” Her husband is currently serving his sentence in a category D prison — otherwise known as an open prison in the UK — and will be eligible for home visits once it’s been signed off on by a parole officer. The couple had hoped to have their first real date in over three years for Valentine’s Day, but Nina says their plans had been dashed when the open visits weren’t granted:

“We’d hoped to go out for a meal with the kids somewhere local to the prison. I tried to get a visiting order for Valentine’s Day or the weekend before, but because of the time of year, the visits get snapped up. I snoozed, so I lose. I’m not very good at sentimentality, so I find Valentine’s Day extra hard. I’m not good at writing love letters or sending pictures — he’s always complaining about it.

He sent me a card last year and I’m sure he’ll do the same again, but I’d rather wait until he’s out to celebrate. This situation is so surreal — I would never have thought I would be here. I don’t want any memories of this period in our relationship.”

Nina explained that once home visits are allowed, her husband will be able to come home for 12 hours at a time, offering them the first chance to have sex since he was incarcerated. When her husband went to jail, Nina was heavily pregnant, meaning they haven’t shared a bed in over three years.

“Most people choose to get a hotel room when the open visits begin,” she says. “I feel like it’ll make sex feel dirty, as we’ll essentially be paying by the hour. The local hoteliers must recognize the couples of prison visits, and it’ll just heighten my feelings of shame. I’d much rather wait to have sex in the comfort of my own home.”

Nina says that she’s never had a particularly high sex drive, which helps to take the edge of this period of enforced celibacy and to stay loyal to her husband, despite him not being around.

‘I’d much rather wait to have sex in the comfort of my own home.’
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Jendella, 27, from London, says that it’s weird how quickly you adapt to a sex-free relationship. “That doesn’t mean it’s easy,” she says, “it just means you get used to it.”

“Staying loyal would probably be a lot harder if I didn’t have a child. Being a mother takes up most of my time, and then having a husband in prison is like having another child — constantly sorting out their affairs, dealing with their solicitors, being the main point of contact for their friends and people who want to get in touch.

“It takes up so much emotional energy that having an affair sounds more exhausting than tempting.”

For Valentine’s Day this year, Jendella and her husband have agreed to let the day go by uncelebrated:

“Last year we sent cards and I did see him on the day, but it felt a bit forced given the circumstances.

It’s easier to allow days like Valentine’s, anniversaries, birthdays to pass than to try and makes them feel special because that can feel worse sometimes. I guess for others it might be a comfort, but for us it just highlights the absence.”

Since Jendella’s husband went to prison, she says that the emotional dynamic of their relationship has shifted. “You find yourself holding back from telling them what’s happening on the outside because you don’t want to worry them, and you know that they do the same regarding what’s happening on the inside. Most of the time you find yourself talking about what’s happening in other people’s lives, or reminiscing about memories that you share rather than talking about the present.”

“Sometimes he asks me if I miss him,” says Nina. “I do miss him, but I think it’s easier not to let the emotion come to the surface.” Nina explains the emotional toll of the situation on her and her family:

“I’m a volcano waiting to erupt. I think that anger holds me back — I’m fucking angry he put me and the kids in this situation. I feel like he gets all the support and as the family we’re left to fend for ourselves.

We have to face the daggers from people who know what he did. The questions about where the dad of my children is from strangers; the feeling of living as a single mother but having a partner who still wants control over your life; having to struggle financially whilst finding money to send them money.

I’m looking forward to when this is all over and we can celebrate Valentine’s Day like any other couple. Not stealing kisses in a cold visiting hall with other horny couples with guards and kids watching.

It’s a lot to cope with, having him inside. I wouldn’t wish this sentence on my worst enemy.”