They met as children. Now married, she’s been visiting him in prison for nearly 20 years.

Saturday, 5:00 a.m. — Kaywonda Banks sits in an unmarked olive green van parked near Barclays Center, two full bags of food and house supplies between her legs and her 8-year-old son in the seat next to her.

This is the starting point for her four-hour, roughly 100-mile trip into the mountains of New York, where her husband, Javon, is incarcerated at the Otisville Correctional Facility.

Maintaining her marriage and providing a father figure for her children means regularly skipping sleep and traveling upstate — without owning a car. For the single-income mother of three, it’s a $500-a-month toll.

Banks tries to visit Javon at least every other weekend. “There’s nothing I feel like I won’t do for him,” she said on a recent evening in her East New York home. “I want him to feel like he’s always still connected to the outside world. He still has somebody that does love him unconditionally.”

She will reintroduce the bill, which is sponsored by State Sen. Velmanette Montgomery in the Senate, this January. The difficulty in getting it passed, De La Rosa believes, is the recurring expense on the state. She is asking for $3 million annually out of DOCCS’ roughly $3 billion budget.

Advocates are also pushing another piece of legislation that would place incarcerated parents into the facility closest to where their children live. Versions of that bill have been kicked around Albany for nearly a decade.

“The importance of [the bills] goes beyond basic human decency … it works to preserve families and family bonds,” said Montgomery. 

To read the full story, visit https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2019/10/11/family-visitation-bus/