Ana Maria Toro, a graduate student at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, has joined Lives in Focus as a multimedia reporter for the summer. I would like to thank the school for allowing her to meet the internship requirement by working for the “Family Life Behind Bars” project.

Ana will be reporting and producing pieces using audio, video, photographs and text to help broaden the coverage.

Ana has been a student of mine for the past two semesters and independently of this project has been covering the criminal justice system. She is a determined reporter who has some experience working for the Spanish language press in New York. (Click here for her bio.)

The summer always winds up flying so I plan to keep her very busy. I know she is going to get a lot out of this experience. But more than that, Ana is also actually getting paid by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism (as are other students at non-paying internships) so there is no exploitation involved!

Ana’s first piece will be posted later today.

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Jay Coleman, the man we met in an earlier piece, spent 25 years in prison but tried to stay as involved as he could in raising his children. In addition to monthly family visits, he spent time with his kids on the telephone, trying to give them a sense that they had a father.

In this second interview clip, explains what impact the telephone calls had on him and his children.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: How important was the telephone for your relationship with an incarcerated family member?

[Use the comments feature below or call (646) 867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

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In this week’s column, Makeba Lavan describes her childhood being raised by her godparents. While she says she loved them dearly, she said they often upset her when she was growing up by speaking poorly in front of her about her incarcerated mother. Still, her godparents provided the kind of stability that most children of incarcerated parents severely lacked.

“I feel like I was very blessed to have them,” says Makeba. “A lot of kids, when their parents are incarcerated or are just not there for other issues such as drug issues, a lot of times they don’t have people to look after them.”

In this video column, Makeba also talks about the kind of sense of responsibility young men and woman should have before they consider becoming parents.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: Did someone other than family raise you while a parent was incarcerated? What was your experience in that situation?

[Use the comments feature below or call 646-867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

If you are a child of someone who is incarcerated and you have a question for Makeba, you have three options:

1) Post a question in the comments section below,

2) Send an email to questions@livesinfocus.org,

3) Call (646) 867-1891 to leave a message.

Makeba also welcomes questions from others who might simply be interested in knowing more about how the life of children is affected when a parent is incarcerated.

Lives in Focus is launching a new weekly video column by 23-year-old Makeba Lavan, a young woman whose mother was incarcerated until late 2005.

Makeba is a passionate public speaker and advocate for childrens’ rights. Using her personal experience as a child of an incarcerated parent and the experience of youth that she has come in contact with, she works to expose the current injustices of the legal system while also calling for reforming the U.S. penal system.

If you are a child of someone who is incarcerated and you have a question for Makeba, you have three options:

1) Post a question in the comments section below,

2) Send an email to questions@livesinfocus.org,

3) Call (646) 867-1891 to leave a message.

Makeba also welcomes questions from others who might simply be interested in knowing more about how the life of children is affected when a parent is incarcerated.

While Lives in Focus will produce Makeba’s columns and offer some editorial guidance, she is free to express her thoughts and sentiments unfettered by the bias of those of us who have not experienced what she has since childhood. But please keep in mind that Makeba’s views do not necessarily represent those of Lives in Focus. We have loaned a camera to Makeba bought using the generous funds raised earlier this year from our audience.

In her first column, Makeba introduces us to her mother as the two prepare to spend their first ever Mother’s Day together.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: What was your experience spending Mother’s Day with your mother after she was released?

[Use the comments feature below or call (646) 867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

Help spread the word about this project by linking to it from your site. You just have to copy the code below and paste it into the HTML section of your website or blog. Once you publish the code on your site, you will see the above promotional graphic appear on your Website.

Please let us know if you do place this promotional link on your site by emailing your URL to info@livesinfocus.org.

If you have any trouble getting this to work, just send an email to the same address.

Thanks for helping Lives in Focus inform others about this important topic.

Here is the code (it only looks scary).

Even after his wife gave birth to twins, Jay Coleman, now 51, admits he remained enamored with the high he got from committing crime rather than being a family man.

“I hadn’t had the responsibility of having children long enough to develop that sense that, ‘Okay, I may not think about the future for myself but I have to think about the future for my children,” Coleman said in a recent interview. “I wasn’t there yet. I wasn’t there for many years.”

In 1981, less than a year after the birth of his children, Coleman was arrested for robbery and sentenced to prison in upstate New York for 25 years-to-life. It was during this separation from his family that Coleman evolved from petty criminal to a responsible father and husband.

In this series of interview clips, Coleman, who completed his 25 years and rejoined his family on October 28, 2005, talks about his first crime, his eventual incarceration and how he worked to strengthen his family ties from behind bars. This is the first clip of the series.

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Lives in Focus recently filmed a monthly support group meeting in Albany, New York, at which the mothers, sisters and wives of incarcerated family members sought support from among their peers.

They shared their daily tribulations and discussed long-terms concerns about their lives and relationships.

We will post short segments of the meeting over the next few months. This week, we meet Devon who describes how having two imprisoned family members has both drawn her kin closer while also stirring tensions.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: What tensions have emerged between you and your friends and family during a relative’s incarceration? How have you soothed this strain or are you still seething?

[Use the comments feature below or call (646) 867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

Lives in Focus plans to cover an event at Rutgers that has a similar ring to it: “Behind Bars: The Impact of Incarceration on Women and Their Families”

While our work is based on journalism-style interviews, photographs, audio and video, this conference convenes a group of academics and practitioners to explore the impact and legal implications of incarceration on women and their families at the 2007 symposium of the Women’s Rights Law Reporter at Rutgers School of Law–Newark.

I urge those interested in the topic to attend. The conference will take place from 12:30 – 4 pm on Wednesday, March 7, in the law school’s Baker Trial Courtroom. More info on their website.

Professor Brenda V. Smith of Washington College of Law, American University, will be the keynote speaker for the first panel, which will focus on women’s issues while incarcerated.

Professor Philip Genty of Columbia Law School will keynote the second panel. This panel will consider the impact of a woman’s imprisonment on her family.

Alison Coleman struggled to support her two children while her husband served a 25-years to life sentence in a New York state prison for armed robbery.

click image for video

She grappled with social and emotional isolation, with illness and financial hardship, and she faced the tensions at home that are common between parents and teenagers…but she did so single handedly.

While statistics and political attitudes about incarceration rates in America are closely tracked, the human stories of prisoner families—like Ms. Coleman’s—are virtually unknown because this exploding yet unaccounted-for population is viewed with suspicion and rejected as guilty by association.

I request you–the public–to support this project as it tries to create an online video community for prisoner families even as social stigma and iron bars conspire to keep them fragmented and fearful.

Your support will fund the purchase of four entry-level consumer video cameras and tapes. Lives in Focus will train prisoner families to use these loaned cameras on their visits to prisons and around their homes to document their lives and struggles.

Lives in Focus has already arranged to conduct workshops around New York State to show prisoner families how to capture compelling video and audio. Many families have expressed their enthusiasm in participating.

The project will show Americans and the world the social cost of imprisonment in the United States beyond the political or “get tough on crime” perspective.

Here is an excerpt of an interview with Ms. Coleman, now 56, shortly after Jay was released from prison after 25 years. She talks about how “little lies” told by children of prisoners is a survival strategy and not incompatible with being good people.

But with your support, prisoner family members will instead interview each other and capture shots of their personal lives without strangers in their midst.

For more information on supporting Lives in Focus, please click here.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: What coping mechanisms have your children used while a parent was incarcerated?

[Use the comments feature below or call (646) 867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

This project examines the impact on family relations and dynamics when one or more member of a family is incarcerated. How do some families overcome the separation, financial strain, social stigma and guilt while others crumble? Why is there a greater likelihood that a child of someone who is in prison will also end up in jail at some point? How do society, politics or special interests help or hinder family relations?

For example, many states currently allow telephone companies to penalize inmates and their families by charging a staggering connection surcharge (about $3) and higher per minute rates (upto 16 cents) for collect phone calls–—a regressive toll in an age of unlimited local and long distance calling. This at a time when research and experience shows that inmates who stay in touch with their families are likelier to have a smooth transition back to civil society when released.How do such obstacles impact the relationship between a parent and child (both the parent who remains at home and the one in prison)? Between husband and wife? Between siblings? How are family relations re-established when a prisoner is released? What are the unforeseen consequences of being released? What efforts do inmates make to stay in touch from within prison walls?

Lives in Focus is NOT questioning the guilty verdict that sent people to prison. We also recognize that many crimes upset the lives of others–in extreme cases even depriving families of their own loved ones. We do believe, however, that it is important to document and be aware of the repercussions that imprisonment has on an inmate’s family, a large and growing population in America.