Establishes visiting policies for incarcerated people, to provide incarcerated people opportunities for personal contact with relatives, friends, clergy, volunteers and other persons to promote better institutional adjustment and better community adjustment upon release.
STATE OF NEW YORK
________________________________________________________________________
5037
2025-2026 Regular Sessions
IN SENATE
February 18, 2025
___________
Introduced by Sens. SEPULVEDA, BAILEY, BRISPORT, BROUK, CLEARE, GIANAR-
IS, GOUNARDES, HARCKHAM, HOYLMAN-SIGAL, JACKSON, KAVANAGH, MYRIE,
RAMOS, RIVERA, SALAZAR, SANDERS -- read twice and ordered printed, and
when printed to be committed to the Committee on Crime Victims, Crime
and Correction
AN ACT to amend the correction law, in relation to the establishment of
visiting policies for incarcerated individuals
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assem-bly, do enact as follows:
1 Section 1. The correction law is amended by adding a new section 138-b
2 to read as follows:
3 § 138-b. Visiting policies for the incarcerated. 1. State and local
4 correctional facilities shall establish visiting policies which give
5 incarcerated individuals opportunities for in-person contact with their
6 relatives, children, friends, clergy, volunteers and other persons to
7 promote individual transformation, better institutional adjustment and
8 better community adjustment upon release. Such program shall include,
9 but not be limited to, (a) visiting hours that are reasonably likely to
10 accommodate persons traveling from within the state, including evening
11 hours starting at six o'clock p.m. and/or weekend hours, (b) visits of
12 sufficient duration, including a minimum of one hour at local correc-
13 tional facilities so that visitors and incarcerated individuals will be
14 able to maintain relationship bonds, and (c) a published overcrowding
15 policy that is equitable with due consideration to the distance traveled
16 by the visitor, the frequency of the visitor's visits, the most recent
17 occasion that the incarcerated individual's visit was terminated due to
18 overcrowding, and any other individual circumstances that limit in-per-
19 son visits between the incarcerated individuals and the visitor.
20 2. Video conferencing may supplement, but shall not take the place of,
21 in-person visits. For the purposes of this section, video conferencing
22 or other technologies that enable remote visitation shall not count
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[] is old law to be omitted.
LBD07456-01-5
S. 5037 2
1 toward the required number of visits or duration of visitation that any
2 facility must offer to incarcerated individuals by law or regulation.
3 3. No incarcerated individual is to be visited against such incarcer-
4 ated individual's will by any person.
5 § 2. This act shall take effect on the one hundred twentieth day after
6 it shall have become a law.
