A Family Matter

I waited at Table 11 for 25 minutes. My knees buckled as I shivered with nerves. My head cocked from side to side. I didn’t know which direction he’d come from. It was my first time visiting him by myself. After eight years, I didn’t know what his reaction would be. What if he didn’t recognize me right away?

Then I saw him.

It’s not like he was placed super far from us. In fact, at one point, he was a 20-minute ride away. Oak Hill Correctional Facility is that close to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, my home for four years. While I prepared to graduate and start a future, my phone would ring. I knew it was him and wouldn’t answer. The ringing phone with calls from prison reminded me of the better life I was fighting to create for myself.

I wasn’t always willing to see him. When I met people throughout high school and college, I never brought up that I had a brother. Many times in those eight years I blocked out of my mind that he was still behind bars.

During my senior prom, as my friend Meg’s parents took us all into their suburban Milwaukee home for pre-prom photos, her mom asked if I had any siblings. I quickly responded, “Just my sister that you’ve met.” Small talk about family shouldn’t be uncomfortable, but for me, a perfectionist, I didn’t want people to think I came from some unruly household, that my parents failed, or that I was a rare, good apple in a barrel of bad seeds.

Source: 2018 Prison Policy Initiative Report

I never served time in a prison, but I have served time on the outside: putting money on the books, answering phone calls at the worst moments, watching a person I love sit in front of me without being able to hug him for more than three seconds. The list seems endless.

I was only 13 when my brother first went to prison for a strong-arm robbery. I just wanted my childhood and to live without dwelling on the depressing subject of my brother being locked away. I shielded myself from details that might’ve changed the way I looked at him.

I wanted to find my own joy. Sometimes I’d feel a pang of guilt that I wasn’t doing more to help him, that I was losing hope of a relationship once he was released. At other times, I’d justify ignoring his phone calls and my lack of visits because I still resented our missing relationship. My childhood didn’t deserve to end because he committed crimes. Yet, I still didn’t want to reduce him to a criminal. He is my brother.

For many years, it felt like my family was the only one facing these struggles. We’re not. Nationwide, more than 2 million people are sitting in prison and jail cells. Yet, the millions behind bars aren't the only people serving time. One in four women in the U.S. have a loved one in prison. Families across the country will at some point endure the loss of a loved one due to incarceration.

This point came without warning for me and my family.

My brother and I never got the chance to make the most of our relationship because he went away when I was so young. I was left trying to piece together our lives from the fragments of time we’d spent together: his dancing to Tupac, his obsession with embodying “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” even the way he buttered his waffles before toasting them. As I grew up, I began to ask the questions I wondered about as a kid: the details of his case, how my mother, sister and grandparents responded to his absence and more so what it means to love someone at their lowest, worst moments.

Now, 10 years later as he prepares to return home, I need to come to terms with one of the most difficult questions facing our family: We aren’t sure we want him to live with us ever again.

For the past four months, I’ve sought out people in Los Angeles who are going through the same painful process. This lingering uncertainty is common for families that anticipate the release of their loved one. Family members and former inmates alike seek solace, sharing their testimonies in support group meetings as well as in counselors’ offices. They find strength in sharing stories, whether in a church or a gymnasium, or an office downtown. These are services my family never sought.

Family members are forced to cope with the separation whether they are inspired to create their own support group or cut off all ties from the inmate. Some may write letters and others end up devoting their lives to trying to rehabilitate families and the formerly incarcerated.

Initially, this story gave me a fresh reason to try to talk to my brother, to really let him in on how I’ve felt all these years. But the deeper I dove through court documents and transcripts and the narratives of loved ones and former inmates going through similar heartaches, the more I came to understand just how damaging extended isolation from a loved one can be, especially if hurtful moments preceded their stint away.

Sept. 20, 2016

Dear Brother,

I always expect the next time that we talk, you’ll be angry with me, that you’ll guilt me, that you’ll remind me that we haven’t seen each other face to face in six years. You don’t. I press 1 to accept the charges, and I immediately hear your voice boom through the phone “Wusss upppp?” I envision the same smile you’d enter the room with when we were younger. I’ll say “Nothing, same ol’ same.” You’ll remember I speak spanish and ask “Como estás?” I’ll answer, “Nada, estudiando como siempre.” You’ll change the subject.

You haven’t called in three months, and as hypocritical as it may sound, I’m….ambivalent. Not because I missed my chance to talk, not because I can’t pick up the phone and call you, but because you forgot me. The same way you say we forgot you. Mama read me the letter you wrote. My name wasn’t in it.

Your Sister

Paying for the Crime

Relationships do not have to end with prison, but many do.

Twelve-year-old Carlee Santarelli was walking out the door to make her way to the Water Country Water Park in New Hampshire with her family one weekend afternoon. Her best friend was tagging along. Then the phone rang. Her mom went into the next room to take the call as Santarelli impatiently sighed in annoyance that the phone call would hold up their departure.

“It was a scream that I've never heard in my life and that I never want to hear it again,” said Santarelli. Now in her early 30s, she sits at a hotel bar in Koreatown telling the story with intricate details. The story juxtaposes the lighthearted happy-hour taking place. “My heart sank and the first thing that I thought was something happened to my brother.”

Santarelli’s mother became so distraught, she had to hand the phone over to her husband who broke the news to Santarelli.

“I remember my stepdad got off the phone and told us and I just took off from running out of the house.”

Santarelli thought if she could run away fast enough, maybe far enough, the news wouldn’t be true.

Her 19-year-old brother Brian had murdered his wife and was later sentenced to two life sentences and an additional 67 years in prison without parole. Although six years apart in age, the two had a sibling bond, one that rocked her family’s foundation when they got the news of his crime. She still wanted to be there for her brother, while simultaneously mourning the death of her sister-in-law, but the literal cost of doing so became too much, even just for phone calls. At one point their phone bill neared $1,000.

“For a while my mom was letting her call him a lot in the beginning, but then when she started to get the phone bills, they were outrageous,” said Santarelli. “Then that would cause an argument between my step dad and her because he's like, we can't afford this. And she's like, this is my son. How dare you tell me I can't talk to him? And he's like, it's not that I don't want you to talk to him, but we can't financially afford a phone bill every month.”

Maintaining contact with an incarcerated loved one can be demanding and requires an exhaustive amount of intent. Phone calls are no longer priceless; one-minute of conversation will run the inmate 12-cents per minute, adding up to $1.80 for a 15-minute call.

On a smaller scale, less than $2 a call doesn’t seem like a huge dent in the pocket. Yet, families across the country bear the financial burden of picking and choosing when is an appropriate time to answer. For inmates, they’re seeking familiarity and comfort from loved ones. But tension builds once the monthly phone bill comes in.

“I would always have to look at my mom, ‘Mom, it's Brian, can we take it?’” said Santarelli. “It's really hard for me to talk about this because I didn't realize how much it hurt me then. But now I do. But to have to hang up the phone on your brother ... I mean I can't imagine that rejection from your own family.””

These phone calls are the most relied upon way inmates connect with their families back home; sometimes they’re the only feasible option. In any given week 70 percent of inmates will make a phone call, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. Fewer than half will receive a personal visit. For a lot of families, the distance alone is a barrier. More than half of inmates are placed somewhere between 101 and 500 miles away from their families. Planning visits requires reliable, long-distance transportation and childcare as well as a clean background check to make it to the visiting room.

Visits are one form of emotional support, but funds available to the inmate can truly make or break how comfortably they can serve their time. Although prison is 24/7 monitoring with little room for individuality or decision-making, nothing is free: snacks, toiletries, under garments, laundry, even a photo with your family.

More often than not, inmates become reliant on support from their families, emotionally as well as financially. Sometimes to the point that they develop tunnel vision.

Jade Green remembers becoming a primary provider for her mother as soon as she could legally work. Green was 15 years old when her mother was sent to prison for 22 years for conspiracy of being involved in a drug ring.

“It was like having a pen pal, you know? There was no relationship. It was me working; me sending her money, putting money on her books,” said Green.

This responsibility didn’t let up even when Green had her first child at 16. Despite being a teen mother trying her best to provide a life for her and her child, her mother still relied on Green. And sometimes she just wanted her mom to help her through life-changing moments –– like when she gave birth three months early.

“I had to stay in the hospital for like 30 days, and she was still calling me in the hospital. I'm sitting in a hospital on bedrest, and she still wanted me to put money on her books,” said Green. “I was all she had and nobody else wanted to talk to her so I didn't make it a big deal, but deep down inside I was hella’ resentful.”

Locked Away

The day the judge sentenced Cartel to 10 years in prison for armed robbery, my mother shrank into herself. Shock, pain and resentment filled her heart all at once.

“I was devastated. I just went into a shell actually. I secluded myself like from everybody from the world,” she said.

Initially, family members visited Cartel monthly, bringing cash to load him up on comfort food snacks from vending machines. Families passed through the lobby, locking up possessions, making sure to avoid wearing underwire bras, belts or jewelry that would set off metal detectors or revealing clothing that “may distract inmates.” After receiving clearance, we’d sit in the visitors’ lounge waiting for his smile to emerge.

The first time my sister and I made the two-hour drive with our mother to the Redgranite Correctional Institution, tears formed in my sister’s eyes when she saw him. Somehow, it wasn’t real until he stood there in green scrubs. It was as if we’d kind of imagined him being away at bootcamp, or living with our aunt or his dad like he’d done in the past. This time as he approached us with that timeless look of youth in his face, it felt real.

“I used to go visit him a lot. I'm just not a prison type of woman...Visiting a man and visiting kids in prison and that's just not me. I started off that way, but I can't do that. That's not how I can live my life,” my mother said.

It wasn’t the first time she had to visit someone she loved in prison. Cartel’s dad went to prison on drug charges when Cartel was just six months old. He wasn’t released until just before Cartel turned 10.

“The teacher or somebody, might have asked [the students]...to raise your hand if you have a dad or have somebody in prison. And for some reason I'm thinking that it was a quite a few people that raised their hand,” my mother said.

According to a 2012 report by the Sentencing Project (a nonprofit that specializes in criminal justice reform), of those incarcerated between 1991 and 2007, over half were parents. Fathers are 11 times more likely to be incarcerated than mothers. Black families are hit hardest by incarceration. Black children are 7.5 times more likely and Hispanic children are 2.6 times more likely than are white children to have a parent in prison. One in three black men will be incarcerated at some point in their lifetime compared to one in 17 white men.

My mother and Cartel visiting his father in prison in Michigan in around 1990

When incarceration strikes a household, financial foundations are rocked: Nearly 65 percent of families are suddenly unable to pay for basic needs such as food and housing, a 2015 report by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (an Oakland-based nonprofit centered around criminal justice and economic reform) found.

The incarceration of Cartel’s dad meant that my mother’s financial stability would instantly be snatched away.

“His dad paid the deals and everything and I went to school and worked part-time. All of a sudden he got arrested and never came home,” she said.

She pinched pennies by moving back in with my grandparents and budgeting every last cent to her name, but sometimes she still came up short. At the time she didn’t know of any resources available for low-income mothers.

“It was a struggle. Life would have been so much easier if I had just that assistance. Just WIC (Women, Infants and Children) and maybe even a little food stamps or something, I would've been fine. But I was struggling and I wasn't the type of person to just always have my hand out,” she said.

Money goes a long way in the criminal justice system.

Ninety-percent of criminal defendants in the U.S. qualify as indigent, leaving their futures in the hands of overworked and underpaid public defenders. Many times low-income defendants are shuffled in and out of courtrooms accepting plea deals, even if they feel they have a strong case. But as families are left to foot the bill, an inmate's freedom has a price.

Although public defenders are seen as a solution for exorbitant attorney fees, across 43 states defendants are billed anywhere between $10 and $480 for the low-cost attorneys.

Watching someone you love sit behind bars can be heartbreaking, even consuming.

“Even as a 12-year-old girl I was very involved in my brother's case,” Santarelli said. “That became my priority at that moment in my life. My grades fell and I didn't care about the things that I should be caring about. I was so just emotionally and mentally fixated on my brother's situation.”

When most teens are going through puberty and growing up and into themselves, Santarelli listened as her brother vented squirmish stories that reflected his crumbling mental state. After five years in prison, her brother Brian was diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar and other personality disorders. Santarelli estimates he underwent over 10 surgeries on his abdomen alone because of repeated acts of self-mutilation.

She thought, maybe if she were just closer to him.

“He said to me, ‘It's like if somebody would move to South Carolina and I have like weekly visits, I think that would really help me a lot.’ So I was like I'll put my school on hold, I'll put my life on hold. I'll leave LA to South Carolina and be there for you.”

Shortly after Santarelli made up her mind to put off school and relocate, her brother was gone. Ten years into his sentence, Brian killed himself. She felt like she didn’t do enough for him, even if her resources were limited.

“I went through a major depression,” she said. “I did all that I could, but I felt like my hands were constantly tied behind my back. I wanted to do things, but I felt like I couldn't for financial reasons.”

Post-Incarceration

It’s a Monday evening and a group is gathering on the second floor of Christ the Good Shepherd Church near Leimert Park. Metal chairs press into the discolored red carpet as men and women gather in a circle. This is not a Bible study, though people are sharing their testimonies.

Data provided by Prison Policy Initiative

“When you sit down with them and you hear their stories, when you actually get to know them, you can understand that they're not bad people, they just made bad decisions,” Santarelli said. “But if they were given different tools in life and support, they could have made different choices situations. So that's why I do what I do.”

After Carlee Santarelli’s brother took his life, she felt like she had hit rock bottom. A darkness swallowed her. But after a few years, she was ready to help others confront and solve the same problems she and her family endured for years. In 2012, Santarelli founded the nonprofit Sister Inmate, a support group for those affected by incarceration. Former inmates and their family members or relatives of current inmates attend the sessions.

Sister Inmate is just one example of ways families can cope with the challenges incarceration can bring: while someone is locked up or even once they’re free. Sometimes people drop by for the weekly sessions just hoping to help someone. Even outside the meetings Santarelli uses her own experiences and what she’s learned from her grief to help others –– including me.

What started as an interview in a hotel cafe in Koreatown blossomed into one sister helping another. Santarelli and I come from different walks of life: different races, nearly a decade apart in age and even raised in different parts of the country, but our stories about our brothers’ crimes and their impacts on our families helped me see things in a new light. Our conversations showed me incarceration within families is an invisible issue. No one knows who your family is, and it takes an active choice to share the hardships your loved one has brought to your family and other families affected by their crime.

Welcome Home

It’s the second Saturday of the month. People file into a gym at Chuco’s Youth Justice Center, located in Inglewood, for a welcome home celebration. There are no balloons or cake. Tables are filled with service providers: ID cards, bus passes, and fliers from organizations that assist in housing and employment for recently released inmates. Jade Green stands at the front of the room welcoming former inmates one by one to go up to the mic to share how recently they were released. Some have been out as long as two years, some as fresh as a week, still under the supervision of a chaperone. While she’s never served time in prison, she lets guests know why life post-incarceration is a subject that hits close to home: her mother, her brother and ex-boyfriend all went to prison.

“I was concerned with looking for resources to help them get on their feet because I didn't have any resources,” Green said. “I didn't have any money to send them shopping to get clothes, none of that. I don't even have a car.”

She questioned what resources were available for former inmates re-entering society when the head of her ex-boyfriend’s transitional house recommended she head over to a re-entry resource fair at Chuco’s Youth Justice Center. She’s been working with the organization, and leading the fair, since. Green had such a personal connection to the incarcerated community that she worked without pay for four months.

Although a family member’s return can be a warm celebration of reunion and new beginnings, many times the transition can be riddled with newly created traumas.

In a 2015 study, psychology researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found that Americans who spent time in prison were twice as likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I think typical behavior for former inmates is isolating and withdrawing, especially from social situations where there's large crowds,” said Susan Blair, a mental health therapist with Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC).

Blair began working with former inmates because she knew it was an underserved population. She became more passionate in the cause when her own son was sentenced to six years in prison for voluntary manslaughter in 2011.

“I think as a mom it's hard to see your child sitting in court shackled with an orange suit on and not knowing what the destiny is going to be,” Blair said. “I think when we felt the effects of it the most as a family was during the holidays and birthdays. Even on Sunday dinner, his feet weren’t underneath the dining room table with the rest of the family.”

Transitioning back into family life can be difficult. Triggers can manifest at any time in ways inmates may not know how to control, even in their sleep.

Nearly three years after his release, 49-year-old Michael Lucas can’t listen to rapper Tupac’s song “Me Against the World” without feeling fits of anger and anxiety. For him, the song brings back the 27 years of memories he’s trying to leave back in the penitentiary.

“I was fighting in my sleep. My girl said I was grunting and making a lot of noises. Then she woke me up,” Lucas said. “All I remember when I woke up is I just felt this intense, like I was in a war or in a battle. I’ve been in two riots on the yard where that song was playing.”

Carlee Santarelli teaching courses within prisons

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee psychology professor Shawn Cahill says PTSD can manifest in former prisoners the same way it hits war veterans: nightmares, flashbacks, emotional numbness or outbursts of anger or irritability. Following release, as former inmates make their way back to their family, in many ways they’re a new person, for better or worse.

“Imagine having just made love with your partner and the two of you are lying together, and instead of feeling love and closeness with your partner, you feel empty and alone,” said Cahill. “Now, imagine that instead of being the person with PTSD, you imagine yourself being the spouse of that person. The loss of an emotional connection with the person who has PTSD is a common complaint of family members, producing stress on a marriage or making it difficult to be an effective parent.”

Blair says a key recommendation she offers clients going through the reunification process is communicating with their families about the struggles of their transition back into society.

“When they come home, there’s going to be a lot of triggers, but your family will have no idea what you’ve been through, the environment [you’re] returning from,” said Blair. “Part of their job is helping their families understand their triggers, whether it be why they avoid large crowds or why they prefer to sit facing the door.”

Lucas seeks counseling through ARC, and attends group meetings. Each Wednesday the organization holds “Healthy Relationships,” a 90-minute session for former inmates to vent about struggles they have in building relationships, especially after living years, maybe decades in an institution where vulnerability was preyed upon.

Across Los Angeles, there are dozens of organizations with a mission to rehabilitate former inmates. But who’s helping families prepare for their loved ones return?

Centerforce is a organization in San Francisco that offers re-entry services to inmates and families. The organization offers free, 12-week family reunification courses both in prisons, such as San Quentin State Prison, and in the community. The workshop includes lessons on parenting and communication. Participants can invite their partners or other family members to join them for the eight-hour training.

“It’s life changing and opens barriers,” said Centerforce Director Dolores Lyles. “We’ve taught participants speaker-listener techniques, avoiding the blame game and victimization and the impact. Partners are able to respond explaining, ‘This is what you’ve done to your family by you not being around,’” said Lyles.

Participants in prison as well as in the community can enroll in the course as many times as they want, allowing a preliminary transition to reunification.

Community Works, an organization also based in the San Francisco area, serves incarcerated parents and their children. According to a 2016 study of Alameda and San Francisco County jails, just over 40 percent of children in the area with an incarcerated parent witnessed their parent’s arrest and nearly one-third of children had to change homes because their parent went to jail.

Community Works’ program offers one-on-one therapy for inmates, in-depth parenting classes and visits. The organization works with inmates on facing past traumas in order to improve their current and future relationships.

“We invite clients to take a deep dive into their own story, and the trauma, hurt and abandonment that often defines it,” said Jo Bauen, executive director of the “Parenting from Prison” program. “It enables participants to surface the unexamined pain underneath their history, and begin to realize they can choose a healthier course for their own families.”

In addition, the program uses restorative justice principles that allow clients to recognize, own and make amends for harm to their family members.

“Maintaining healthy family ties during incarceration is linked to post-release success and an increased likelihood of successful reintegration,” said Bauen. Parenting from Prison empowers clients to release unhealthy patterns and move forward with pride and confidence as more skillful mothers and fathers.”

Waiting on the Outside

I cannot remember the last time I saw my brother as a free man.

I know it was just before winter of 2007. I had just turned 13 and learned how to french braid, but I can’t visualize his final moments in our home, mainly because I didn’t know they would be so momentous.

When a family member goes to prison, there’s no way of knowing who will be there waiting for them on the other side of their release. In a perfect world, family members can mark down the days until their loved one is home. But the reality is neither the family nor the inmate is the same after prison. New normals and expectations are created, while others are discarded.

Loved ones must fathom the fate of moving forward with relationships that may have been stunted for extended periods of time, running the risk of new barriers and struggles post-incarceration.

Navigating this relationship is almost like starting over, forcing families, including my own, to either jump ship or dive into the journey of creating a new beginning.