Welcome from PFNY's Director

Thanks for visiting our site. PFNY is a loose statewide network of families and friends of NYS prisoners, formerly incarcerated people and their families, people of conscience who have approached us with the desire to improve the quality of life for prison families, educators who want to work better with children of prisoners, agencies and communities of faith that contact us to get more involved and state and county agencies that rely on us for accurate information about the population we represent and serve.

We are available to travel statewide to help develop resources for prison families and re-entry. We run support groups, testify at hearings, provide talks, trainings, dinners, retreats and other special events that focus on prison families. We develop the prison family collective voice and also speak for those who cannot. We have long been intrigued by what can happen when prison families are provided with the support, information, and other resources needed to become full participants at the state "decision-making table".

Welcome!
Alison Coleman
Director

Alison and Jay, 18 Months after his home-coming
photo by Alison Nelson
PFM Field Director/Eastern NY

PFNY - A Brief History

I became a NYS prison family member in 1981, when my husband was sentenced to 25 years to life for robbery 3 (no weapon and no injury). We had small children who missed their dad, and I was determined to keep our family together. It was stunning to find that there was no support group, no community of prison families to join, no accurate and complete information about prisons, visiting or resources in other communities that I would have to travel to.

Someone high in state government told me 2 important things--that I would have to create what I needed and that I could, because I was an EXPERT. So, I did. During the 1980's PFNY did local work, through a weekly group for families and one for children; case management for people coming home from prison and their families; community building and marshalling resources from churches, agencies and concerned individuals. For years, at holiday time, state agencies such as DOCS, Parole and the NYS Commission of Correction "adopted" our prison families for the holidays--and we found help from them around the year as well.

PFNY took a hiatus of some years and returned in 2000 to find that while the numbers of NYS prisons and prisoners had multiplied shockingly, almost nothing had been created locally or statewide for prison families. State agencies often treated us as criminals ourselves. We realized that our work would have to be around changes in rules, regulations, laws, policies and practice and that we would have to organize statewide.

The Center for Constitutional Rights invited us to work with them on the Campaign for Telephone Justice, which has recently seen success through the NYS Court of Appeals and Governor Spitzer's decision to end the 57% kickback to NYS on prison collect telephone calls. Prison families who get strong naturally want to help each other. The "each one teach one" model has worked well for us over 25+ years and we now number in the tens of thousands.

My husband came home from prison after 25 years, almost to the day. He is now a working, tax-paying, productive citizen who takes care of us and works with youth who have parents in prison. Our children are young adults who missed life with dad at home, but our family stayed strong through the friends and allies I found over the decades. We invite you to get involved by talking to us about your vision, your resources and your concern for our communities.

Alison
March, 2007