Group Assists Visitors to State’s Prison Inmates

Barbara Sianez is one of the thousands of Californians marking time outside prison walls because a relative or friend is serving time inside.

“I’ve always felt we’re serving the sentence right along with the convicted,” said Sianez, who is married to an inmate at Folsom Prison. “In some ways it’s worse. My husband will tell you I have a harder road ahead than he does. He’s got his bills paid. I have to juggle everything else and keep my sanity and my relationship together.”

Hers is not the only prison-strained relationship that Sianez is trying to preserve. She is president of California Visitor Corp., a nonprofit organization supporting the rights of families and friends who visit the state’s nearly 110,000 prisoners.

Visitors often have to cope with lengthy commutes, long lines, jammed visiting rooms, fluctuating dress codes, procedural roadblocks, shortened visiting hours and sometimes disrespectful officials, Sianez said.

They also fear that if they complain about conditions or treatment, their loved one will suffer.

Spokeswoman Christine May said James Gomez, director of the Department of Corrections, strongly supports visiting but was forced to impose a four-day-a-week limit last fall because of budget cuts.

Visitation schedules vary according to demand, May said. At a minimum, prisons must allow visiting on weekends and on five major holidays.

Before the cutback, about half of the state’s 25 prisons allowed visiting five days a week, May said. At least one institution, the California Medical Facility at Vacaville, allowed visiting seven days a week about five years ago, May said.

“Obviously the issue, in terms of cutting back from five to four days, was a cost factor,” May said. “The department took a $138-million cut in the last budget and that meant making some decisions about staffing. We had to shift existing staff into higher-priority positions.”

Although Gov. Pete Wilson is proposing a $157-million increase in the department’s budget, there could be more cuts on the horizon. The state is facing another multibillion-dollar deficit, and a Republican assemblyman, Dean Andal of Stockton, is preparing legislation that would eliminate conjugal visits.

To aid visitors, the CVC testifies at legislative hearings, publishes a newsletter, provides visitor news updates on a telephone answering machine and advises prison visitors of their rights.

“We try to empower the person,” said CVC secretary Karen Stewart. “They are one person up against a tremendous system. They feel . . . they have no rights and they can’t do anything. We let them know this is not true. Their rights are listed in the penal code. They have civil rights.”

Stewart told of a woman who was told by officials that she couldn’t marry a Folsom Prison inmate. The woman contacted the CVC.

“It’s a civil right that prisoners can marry,” Stewart said. “I gave her the information she needed to write her citizen’s complaint. We were happy to report in our next newsletter that the young lady and her lover were married.”

In another case, a CVC volunteer challenged conjugal visiting sign-up restrictions at Mule Creek State Prison and won. “The institution came back and said, ‘You’re right. We don’t know why we have that rule,’ ” Stewart said.

Recently, the CVC was able to overcome a department decision that prevented a paraplegic woman from taking needed medical supplies on a family visit, Stewart said.

Visiting helps the inmate, the visitors, the prison system and society, Sianez and Stewart say.

“Families are the most powerful tool the Department of Corrections has,” Sianez said. “When a prisoner has strong family ties, they are the ones that succeed on the outside.”

The threat of losing visitation rights is a powerful management tool for prison officials, Sianez says.

The CVC was created in 1991 in response to Department of Corrections plans to implement tighter visitation rules. “We just decided that united we stand,” Stewart said.

Sianez struggled through incorporation procedures with the help of a library book.

Sianez and Stewart came to their visitor-rights roles from different directions, although both married men who were already in prison.

Stewart, 43, was a prison guard for seven years. She said she quit in 1985 because of disgust over mistreatment of inmates and staff.

Her husband, Jerry Stewart, is serving 15 years to life at Deuel Vocational Institution near Tracy for second-degree murder.

Sianez, 39, was a bus driver for the city of Folsom who overheard stories about bad prison conditions and decided she wanted to correspond with an inmate.

Her pen pal became her husband, Henry, who is serving life without the possibility of parole at Folsom for first-degree murder.

She sees her husband three, sometimes four, times a week for up to six hours at a time. About once a month, they have a two-day family visit.

Sianez realizes that her husband may never get out.

“Henry made that very clear in the beginning,” Sianez said. “In fact, he did his best to discourage me and I am grateful for that.

“What if he never gets out? That’s a realization that we live with, and in the meantime we have our lives to live and we learn to make the best of that.”