Connecticut went first. On July 1, 2022, it became the first state in the country to make all phone calls from its state prisons free. Not reduced. Free. The fight to get there did not happen in a legislature starting from principle. It happened because mothers in Hartford's Upper Albany neighborhood, women like Diane Lewis, who watched her son's incarceration drain the family financially while she tried to stay connected to him, spent years making the case that corporations should not be allowed to profit from the love between a parent and a child. Connecticut listened. The rest of the country has been catching up since.
I went into the federal system, not the Connecticut DOC. But I know what the phone call meant from the other direction. I went in when my kids were 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, and 20, and I know what it cost my family, not just in money but in the moments that did not happen because the cost of calling was too high or the budget was already gone. Connecticut eliminated that particular form of punishment in 2022. What remains, and what this article is about, is the harder thing: what both parents choose to do with the access they now have.
What Connecticut did and why it matters
Senate Bill 972, signed in 2022, did more than make calls free. It guaranteed incarcerated people in Connecticut at least 90 minutes of phone time per day. It protected in-person visits from being replaced by video visits. It made electronic messaging free as well. The state funds the system at roughly $30 per person per month for calls and $15 per person per month for email, through a contract with Securus Technologies.
Connecticut is a small state. No facility sits more than about 90 minutes from any other part of the state. MacDougall-Walker, the largest correctional institution in New England, is in Suffield in the northern part of the state. Cheshire is in New Haven County. Osborn is in Somers. York, the only women's facility, is in Niantic on the shoreline. A family in Bridgeport can reach Somers in under two hours. A family in New Haven can reach Suffield in about 90 minutes.
The combination of free calls, free electronic messaging, guaranteed phone time, protected in-person visits, and a state small enough that those visits are geographically possible is something that does not exist anywhere else in this series. Connecticut families have more tools for maintaining contact with an incarcerated loved one than families in almost any other state in the country.
What Connecticut does not have, and what no legislature can mandate, is the willingness of both adults to use those tools in the service of the children rather than against each other.
The fight that got here
It is worth pausing on how Connecticut arrived at this. The activists who won free calls were not primarily policy professionals. They were mothers. They were the people who had been paying $0.50 a minute to hear their son's voice, who had been choosing between the phone bill and the electric bill, who understood firsthand that the price of the call was not really about the cost of the connection but about who profited from it. Diane Lewis organized on Albany Avenue in Hartford. She spent years building the coalition that put enough pressure on the legislature to pass SB 972.
I think about this when I think about the parent reading this from inside a Connecticut facility. The people who fought for your right to free phone calls were not fighting for a policy position. They were fighting for a child's right to hear their parent's voice without the family going broke in the process. Use what they won with the respect that fight deserves.
The decision both parents make in Connecticut
My wife never said a word against me to our six children during 66 months of incarceration. She had every reason to. She had six kids in a situation I had created, a financial life I had disrupted, a community that knew exactly what had happened. She chose to keep it from them. She let them love me without penalty. And every relationship I have with my adult children is the direct consequence of that choice.
The parent inside a Connecticut facility now has 90 minutes of free phone time per day and electronic messaging available at no charge. That is more access than most incarcerated parents in American history have ever had. What the parent does with it determines everything.
A 90-minute phone budget used well is something extraordinary. It is the chance to be genuinely present in a child's daily life, to know what happened at school, to hear about the friend who upset them, to ask about the thing they mentioned three days ago and whether it worked out. A parent who uses those 90 minutes this way is parenting. A parent who uses them to complain about the facility, to pressure the outside caregiver, to instruct and correct from a distance, is spending the most valuable resource the relationship has on things that damage it.
Neither parent can afford to use the children as the space where the adult conflict lives. Connecticut gave these families something rare. Both parents have an obligation to use it for the children.
What the ages mean in Connecticut
My children were 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, and 20 when I went in. Connecticut's particular geography and resources shape what those ages look like.
The 9-year-old has something in Connecticut that a 9-year-old in Alaska does not: the realistic possibility of regular in-person visits. No parent at a Connecticut facility is more than 90 minutes from any family in the state. That visit, when it happens, is the physical proof the child needs that the parent is still real. The 9-year-old who gets to sit with a parent in a visiting room once a month is building a different kind of connection than one who only hears a voice through a phone. Use the visit. It matters in ways that calls and letters cannot fully replicate.
But the 9-year-old also needs to hear the thing that children under 10 need to hear most: this is not your fault. Children at this age build private explanations for things they cannot understand. The explanation they build for a parent's absence is almost always the worst available one. They decide they caused it. That belief settles in silently while adults around them assume everything is fine. Say it directly, every time: this is not about you. You did nothing wrong. I love you and I am coming home.
The 11 and 12-year-old in Connecticut is navigating middle school in a state where the gap between wealthy suburban communities and urban centers like Hartford and New Haven is one of the starker contrasts in the Northeast. A child from Hartford navigating middle school with an incarcerated parent is doing so against a backdrop of genuine economic stress and community disruption. The incarcerated parent who uses the free messaging to stay in daily contact with a 12-year-old, who asks specific questions about their day and follows up on what they mentioned yesterday, is doing something that the free access makes possible in Connecticut in a way it simply was not possible before 2022. Use it.
The 15-year-old will test the authenticity of every contact. A teenager in Connecticut whose parent uses the free phone time to lecture them about their choices will make a quiet decision about whether to keep answering. The parent who calls to ask and listen, who can acknowledge honestly what happened without making every call about it, will keep the teenager in the conversation. The 15-year-old who feels genuinely seen by the incarcerated parent is the one who stays. Ask more than you tell.
The 18 and 20-year-old is deciding what to carry forward. Show up in a way that makes their answer easy.
What the outside parent carries in Connecticut
Connecticut is an expensive state to live in. The outside parent managing a household in Hartford or Bridgeport or New Haven while someone they love is inside a Connecticut facility is managing real financial pressure in a high-cost environment. They are making the visits happen, keeping the communication channels open, and keeping the children insulated from the worst of their own grief and anger.
What they need from the incarcerated parent is not direction. It is acknowledgment. One message, one sentence in a call, that names what you see the outside parent doing and says thank you specifically for it, is worth more than any instruction delivered from inside a facility. It is also what sustains the outside parent through the years of it. My wife deserved that acknowledgment every day. I gave it as often as the access allowed, and it mattered.
For the outside parent: the children will carry what they hear you say about the incarcerated parent. Connecticut gave these families the tools to stay connected. Whether the children come through the incarceration with their relationship to the incarcerated parent intact or severed depends almost entirely on the choices the adults make with those tools. Do not use the free access to fight. Use it to parent.
How communication works in Connecticut
Phone calls from Connecticut DOC facilities have been free since July 1, 2022, under SB 972. Securus Technologies is the provider. Incarcerated people are guaranteed at least 90 minutes of phone time per day. Electronic messaging is also free. Calls are recorded and monitored except for verified legal calls. In-person visits are protected by law from being replaced by video visits.
Connecticut abolished county government, so the DOC runs everything including intake and pretrial facilities statewide. Major facilities include MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield (largest in New England, high and maximum security); Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers (medium); Cheshire Correctional Institution in New Haven County; Robinson Correctional Institution; York Correctional Institution in Niantic (women's); Northern Correctional Institution (high security); Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown; Corrigan-Radgowski in Uncasville; Hartford Correctional Center; and New Haven Correctional Center.
For visitation, contact the specific facility directly or visit portal.ct.gov/doc for visiting schedules and procedures. CT DOC general number: (860) 692-7480.
Federal inmates in Connecticut are held in federal facilities under BOP jurisdiction. BOP communication uses TRULINCS for email via CORRLINKS and TRUFONE for phone; the same FCC rate caps apply. Inmates enrolled in First Step Act programming may receive 300 free minutes per month.
Where this leaves you
Connecticut families have more tools for staying connected than almost any other state in this series. Free calls. Free messaging. Ninety minutes a day guaranteed. In-person visits protected by law. Facilities within reach of every corner of the state. The fight to get here was real and it was won by mothers who refused to let the cost of love be a profit center.
Use what they won. Call every day the schedule allows. Send the message that is addressed to the specific child about the specific thing happening in their specific life. Make the visit when it is possible, because in Connecticut it is almost always possible. Do not use any of those contacts to fight the battle between the adults. The children of Connecticut families who come through a parent's incarceration with both parents refusing to damage them come through it intact. What Connecticut did in 2022 made the tools available. What both parents do with them is still the whole story.