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Chaplains are available from all major faiths. Incarcerated people in New York get three meals a day, recreational time, and many have jobs within the prison - in laundry, food services, cleaning, and the like, earning an average of $1.50 a day. The counts take place throughout the day, including during visiting hours. incarcerated people must stand up inside their cells - and the last is at night. It’s like, ‘You have to stand over there don’t move don’t look at me put your hands on the wall.’”įor incarcerated people, the day is marked by counts, a basic security measure in which the population is literally counted by correction officers. You aren’t allowed to speak up for yourself. “It’s like you’re a newborn baby all over again,” she says.

Payne says what struck her most about going to prison was no longer being recognized as an individual. The center is also meant to prepare people for life on the inside. Sometimes, they don’t know which facility they are going to until they arrive. Step One for someone sentenced to prison in New York is processing at a state reception center.įrom the reception centers, people are taken to whatever prison they are assigned to, usually by bus.

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Jails, usually run by a locality, hold those who are newly arrested and awaiting trial and sentencing, as well as those sentenced to serve one year or less. Prisons are under the jurisdiction of the state or federal government and house people convicted of crimes with longer sentences. Prisons and jails are not the same thing. Before he “made the one poor decision that landed me in prison for 17 years,” all Moore knew about Sing Sing was what he’d seen in the movies. “People have these institutions in their backyards, and they know nothing about them,” says Charles Moore, who was formerly incarcerated at Sing Sing and is now director of operations for Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), a nonprofit program that teaches people in prison life skills through the arts. The surrounding world is most everyone else, who go about their days with no interaction and little consciousness of their imprisoned neighbors. The enclosed world is made up of the people who live, work, visit, and volunteer in state prisons and the county jail. In fact, incarceration in Westchester is a story of one world locked inside another. The prisons and jail remain largely invisible to most residents. Jermaine Archer (left) currently works with the Legal Aid Society, and Charles Moore is now the director of operations for Rehabilitation Through the Arts. Additionally, Westchester County runs a jail, in Valhalla, which houses men and women. Both women’s prisons are in Bedford Hills. New York State’s Department of Corrections & Community Supervision (DOCCS) houses three prisons here: Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison for men in Ossining Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum-security facility for women and Taconic Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison for women. Under the law, they are considered county residents. Now released, Payne, 30, is reunited with her daughter, who started junior high school this fall.Īt any given time, roughly 2,600 people are locked up in Westchester. Payne, who was convicted of manslaughter, now works as a teaching artist for The Drama Club, a nonprofit organization providing theater programming to incarcerated young people. Maybe they’re incarcerated for something that happened to them, like domestic violence, or they were being molested or abused, and they acted out.” “They don’t know that a lot of people locked up are just like me. “People think that everyone incarcerated is a monster,” she says.

But Payne does want people on the outside to understand something about the people who live hidden in their midst. She doesn’t deny the crime that led her to a sentence of seven years in a maximum-security prison. At the time of her arrest, she was a 21-year-old college student, an airline ticket agent, and the mother of a toddler. For those who are imprisoned, have loved ones locked up, or work or volunteer in one, the prison industry is a harsh reality of life.ĭunasha Payne’s first visit to Westchester was in shackles, when she was transported to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Photo by Stefan Radtke Most Westchesterites are oblivious of the prison complexes in the county.