A plea to bring back free bus to prisons

ALBANY -- Advocates for nearly 56,000 New York inmates and their families have urged the state to resume free bus service to its prisons, saying visits have dropped since it was discontinued last year and the saving of $1.5 million doesn't justify the social cost.

"Upwards of 25,000 people were using this program. It operated very much as a lifeline for children," said Tamar Kraft-Stolar of the Correctional Association of New York.

About 80,000 children have a parent in state prison, including more than 5,000 with an incarcerated mother, most of them more than 100 miles away, she said.

State correction officials said the buses often were half-filled and visitor totals have declined only modestly since the program ended. As an alternative to in-person visits, officials have launched "televisiting" between Albion prison in western New York and a Brooklyn site, with plans to expand the program to other prisons.

"We recognize that visitation is an extremely important part of an inmate's rehabilitation and preparation for re-entry, and we're going to do everything we can to facilitate that," said corrections spokesman Peter Cutler.

State data show visitors at the 60 correctional facilities declined more than 13,000 from 229,011 in 2010, the final year of the bus service, to 215,812 last year. The bus program, started in 1973 and funded by prison phone surcharges, used contractors to operate monthly buses from New York City, Buffalo, Albany, Rochester and Syracuse to all but two prison facilities.

-- AP