Imagine being found to be wrongly convicted after serving three months of your sentence. That’s what happened to Bill Baroni. In this podcast, Bill discusses what he was charged with in the Bridgegate scandal, what he learned about incarceration, and the importance of communication and visitation to keep the prison family together – those behind bars and those on the outside. He has seen the law from all sides now and talks about what he is doing to help these families.
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Bill Baroni – From Bridge To Bars And Back To Helping Others
I’m here with Bill Baroni, who has had many positions in the government. He’s a partner and advisor to Dutchess Management, a Professor at Seton Hall University Law School, a member of the Board of Interrogating Justice, a Board Member of the National Chorale, Cofounder of the Prison Visitation Fund and a leader in the area of health and fighting obesity.
We are going to learn more about his journey through wrongfully being convicted of a conspiracy that brought him to where he is now. This show is filled with so much information that we aren’t going to be able to provide Bill’s full journey. Bill and I met through the Prison Visitation Fund Organization. It’s a wonderful organization that’s helping families stay connected.
Sometimes a loved one may be incarcerated far away from the family, and it may be a financial burden for the family to visit. Prison Visitation Fund provides a way for families to visit and stay connected, and we will learn more about it from Bill in the show. First of all, Bill, thank you so much for taking the time to be here.
Julia, Thanks for having me.
I’m looking forward to speaking with you. Let’s start with your backstory and why you are interested in helping families with incarcerated loved ones, and then we will go into what you are doing to help families with incarcerated loved ones.
My journey in the criminal justice system essentially began in 2015, when the United States Attorney for New Jersey indicted me and a woman named Bridget Kelly for what he accused us of breaking nine Federal Laws involving the Bridgegate case, which was the realignment of lanes on the George Washington Bridge. It was a major political scandal. Bridget and I were the only two people prosecuted. We were convicted in November 2016, and in November 2018, the Court of Appeals throughout half of our conviction kept half conviction.
At that point, I had to make a tough decision. I have older parents, and I’m going to be one of their caregivers. I had to decide, “Did I want to keep the appeal going to the Supreme Court? Do I want to go in and start serving my eighteen-month prison sentence?” I decided to do both and that I would start serving because the biggest thing for me is what would happen if I waited another 6 months to 1 year on the Supreme Court to decide whether they would even take the case and if something happened to my dad and stepmom.
I remember sitting at the Outback Steakhouse in Hamilton, New Jersey, that night and talking to dad in June. I decided to go in and start serving my sentence at the same time, keeping my appeal and the Supreme Court going but the odds of the Supreme Court taking any particular case are 1 in 10,000, even worse if you are a criminal defendant like I was.
I began serving on April 9th, 2019. I walked into Loretto Federal Prison in Western Pennsylvania and began serving what I thought would be an eighteen-month prison sentence. To my and probably everybody else’s surprise, three months later, the United States Supreme Court did grant that they were going to hear our case and I was ordered released a couple of days later. In 2020, right before the start of the COVID pandemic, we were one of the last cases heard by the Supreme Court in person.
A few months after that, the Supreme Court said that we were wrongly convicted but the three months that I did spend in prison gave me an education and insight that I never had before. In all my time serving in government, I was elected to the legislature, both the New Jersey General Assembly and the New Jersey State Senate. I ran the Port Authority the largest transportation agency in the country, overseeing bridges, tunnels, rails, the port, the World Trade Center, and buses but nothing educated me as much in the area of criminal justice as the three months that I spent in Loretto Federal Prison. I was surrounded by some of the most important people that I ever got to know in my life.
It has brought me to chat with you but it’s also brought me to advocate on behalf of people who are about to go into prison, who are in prison, and who have now come out of prison. As you know, and your readers surely know, 1/3 of the people in the United States are either close family members or have a friend who is in the criminal justice incarceration system. That’s 100-something million people. One of the things that I believe is that I have been given the opportunity because when the Supreme Court ruled in our favor, I was able to get my law license back.
I’ve started teaching Law. I taught Law for fifteen years before Bridgegate, and now I’m teaching Law again. I have a great group of students who are studying Prison Law that I wrote that is going to go out there, whether they be defense attorneys, prosecutors, people in the nonprofit sector, judges or clerks. Teaching them and learning from them about the law with people who are incarcerated. Something comes up every day, and I’m grateful to be here to be able to continue the mission that you and I both share and a lot of your audience share, which is, how do we help people who are in this incarceration system?
I appreciate you sharing your story because it takes being involved with the system to understand how it affects everyone. We especially focus on the families on the outside or the whole prison family. It’s so important to keep the family on the outside and the person that’s incarcerated together because it’s still a family member. There’s still love in that family, whether the person is guilty or not, we don’t know.
A lot of times, there are a lot of people that are incarcerated that are innocent, we are learning but for you to be able to have experienced it, I know it must have been a horrible experience. However, to have that insight of both being on the outside, the law, and the legislature. Working with so many people on the outside and never having been exposed to it, and then meeting people inside that you said were some of the most wonderful people that you’ve met. It gives insight to people, especially people that haven’t been affected, that is reading, that people are people and there are good people everywhere. Just because somebody is incarcerated doesn’t mean that they are a horrible person.
I believe that to be true.
It can happen to anybody. That’s something that I want to bring awareness to is that it can happen to anybody, and this show is to raise awareness and also to help people get through different things. It’s because of what you have been through that you are giving back. You are being an advocate and giving back. Let’s talk about what you are doing to give back.
To go back to the point you made about families on the outside and people who are on the inside. First of all, there are a lot of data that support this. When people go into the incarceration system, they are in prison. Their families are on the outside. Keeping people in touch with their families as much as possible benefits three different groups. First, I think it benefits the person who’s incarcerated. Knowing that your family is out there, 90% something of the people is going to go home at some point. Keeping that close tie, maybe it’s keeping close to your kids, your spouse or your partner.
Second, it’s also good for the family on the outside. For many families, their idea of prison is some movie or something they’ve seen on television. They are worried sick about their husband, their wife or their kid who’s locked up behind bars. The third group I think benefits is everybody who’s not a person in prison or their family. Again, the vast majority of people who are incarcerated are going to come home. When somebody comes home, the data is clear. The closer relationships they have had with their family while they have been incarcerated, the better chance they have of economic success, getting a job, rebuilding their lives, not committing crime again, and not being a recidivist. That benefits all of us.
The closer relationships prisoners have had with their families while incarcerated, the better chance they have of economic success, getting a job, rebuilding their lives, and not committing crime again. Share on XThe idea that some people should have, people separated from their families, is crazy. It’s bad for the person who’s incarcerated. It’s bad and wrong for families but it’s also bad public policy. Now having been on all sides of the public policy issue, I was a policy maker and someone who is incarcerated. You learn that we need to do something when you do a lot to keep people together with their families.
That has meant a variety of things. Congress has taken some positive steps, and this was one of the few bipartisan things that came out of President Trump’s administration both Democrats, Congress, and President Trump and his administration passed the First Step Act, which has a lot of flaws and needs a lot of fixing. We could do many episodes on that but one of the things that were important is that it told the Bureau of Prisons to try and keep people closer to home, especially in the Federal system or in large states like California or Texas, where you could be sending a loved one 6, 7 or 8 hours away from their home.
I believe we need to do everything we can to build a system where people are kept as close to home as safely reasonable. That’s one of the things. There is a great organization I’m involved with called Interrogating Justice that does some wonderful work in this space, and it’s a terrific group of people. I, along with my dear friend and colleague Gordon Caplan, who also lived in the criminal justice system, founded the Prison Visitation Fund to help families and help people who are incarcerated stay together and in touch with each other.
Staying in touch in a variety of ways. The most common we think of is visits, telephone, the state or federal CorrLinks email system, and writing letters. Everything, as policymakers, we should be doing is to encourage that communication when I hear stories as a measure of discipline in prison that the phones and email are turned off. One of the places I heard from was that something happened. Disciplinary infraction took place, and the decision was to turn the phones and emails off for 3 or 4 weeks, including over Valentine’s Day.
It’s a cruel thing to do but it’s also terrible public policy. Infractions are going to happen in a prison setting. I understand that. I lived it when I was away, but that’s bad public policy. We are saying, “We are not letting you talk to your loved ones.” Not only does it prevent you from talking to your loved ones but also prevents your loved ones from hearing from you and making sure you are okay.
When we charge an extraordinary amount of money for paper or envelopes, that’s a terrible public policy. When we make it as hard as possible for people to visit, that’s terrible public policy. Not only is it morally right to have people be able to spend more time with their families, even when they are incarcerated but it’s also good public policy to have people spend more time with their families. Your organization is doing so much great work when it comes to keeping families together.
When you get convicted, the Federal system calls it the PSR. Every state’s got a little bit different system but it’s a series of interviews that you do with a probation officer who then reports to the judge about the recommendation for sentence, your background, and your life. They also interview your family. They also put your family in the PSR, and that list in the PSR becomes essentially your initial visitation list.
They do all this work before you go in to highlight your family and community ties. When you get there, they want to cut them off. Not is it morally wrong. It’s just dumb. It’s bad public policy. We want people to come out of prison. One of the things I talked to my great students at Seton Hall Law School about is the concept of the history of incarceration.
For a long time in the history of incarceration, both in this country and in other parts of the world, where the idea of incarceration is you put someone where they can’t speak to anyone and never see people from the outside world other than maybe a person from a chaplain or something. That was the concept for a long time, and we realize that it is a terrible concept to cut people off from the outside world and not have those links.
Now, it’s even worse but yet we continue to have these legacy issues of making it difficult for people to visit or inmates to write and call. One of the things I try and do is in everything I can, including staying in touch with people who are incarcerated, who have gotten out, and staying in touch with their families. It’s one of the things we are all committed to.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Everything that you said was so eloquently and truthfully. I appreciate that because there are many things that people don’t understand about the system. We will talk about the Prison Visitation Fund a little bit but I wanted to go back to a lot of things that you were saying about the system on the outside. Do you have any suggestions for family members or for people that are reading about what we can do to help the system or advocate?
There are a couple of answers. One, we will start in the biggest sense. In the sense of the public policy thing that I talked about. If you break the numbers down that, we talked about and let’s use the number that is 1/3 of the people in the country who have for themselves a loved one, a family member or a close friend who has been incarcerated. Let’s say it’s 100 million people.
I want to say too that it also affects people that are totally in the system, whether they are in jail, in a prison, on parole or on probation. That all affects the family, too. I wanted to put all of them into that too.
You put all that number, let’s say it’s about 100 million people. That is more than any presidential candidate in the history of the country votes they’ve ever gotten. There are people in every congressional district, there are people in every legislative district all over the country that are truly touched by personally having a loved one or themselves in the prison system. One of the things to be able to do, and I wish this had happened when I was in the legislature, is to reach out to your members of Congress and the members of your state legislature.
You talk about what’s happening in the prison system. People often don’t know. They often don’t know legislators, and Congress people don’t know what’s happening in prisons in their own district. I can tell you that nothing gets responded to more in the prison system than a call, a letter, or a visit from a member of Congress or the legislature.
There are two things that I wanted to address. A lot of family members are afraid to talk about it. 1) They are afraid that it’s going to affect their loved ones, and number 2) People that live in a different state have families that have a loved one that’s in a different state. It’s not their legislature, so they don’t know who to go to.
It is a concern. It’s always a worry that if Bill Baroni Sr calls a congressman and says, “My son is at Loretto Prison, and this has happened.” You worry about what’s going to happen to Bill Baroni Jr What it does is it causes us to have to focus on continuing to be involved when our loved one gets out and continue to advocate for people who are on the inside, which is one of the things you and I are doing but it is a real concern. Also, being involved in organizations like yours, Interrogating Justice, and others that when you say it and your organization says that, it gets to take away a little bit of that sting.
If you are advocating on Bill Baroni’s behalf, who’s in Loretto Prison, it doesn’t come back to blame me because they don’t know that I’m the person that you are trying to advocate for. For example, I had a very specific conversation with a loved one of someone incarcerated that they had stopped doing the RDAP program with no explanation.
What is the RDAP program?
The Federal system and a lot of states have as well. RDAP is the Residential Drug and Alcohol Program. It’s a terrific program. It’s an example of getting people home quicker and also helping people battle addiction. It can do a program for people back to their homes and their communities earlier than their sentence. It actually gives a sentence reduction. I was able to advocate on their behalf without saying who I was advocating for.
Therefore, the person is not going to be targeted, and that’s a real concern. Also another thing that families can do is continue to stay in touch. I know some families are very active but because of life happening and economic challenges, feeling that they are lost and not being supported. That’s the time, more than ever, to reach out to those folks. A case in my hometown. A young person is going to be going away for a bit, and I reached out to his family. I know that my dad does that. It’s important that when you hear of another family going through what we and our families have been through, you reach out.
I remember when I was going through Bridgegate and going through my case, first of all, 90% something of the people in my life disappeared. For a lot of people and families, when they have a loved one go through this, a significant number of their “friends,” neighbors, people in their life, and maybe even other relatives disappear like they have some dread disease. Your next-door neighbors got jammed up in something or we don’t want to talk to them. Your cousin’s son got jammed up in something and, “We don’t want to be seen with that person.”
What a terrible thing to do, and I lived it 90% something or maybe more of the people in my life disappeared. They are just gone. That not only hurts a person but it makes the loneliness start even earlier. My friend Jeff Grant, who runs a great group called the White Collar Support Group says, “Loneliness is part of it.” You are used to going about your life, and then you get prosecuted.
As you mentioned before, there’s a great book called Three Felonies A Day. The average American commits three felonies a day, not knowing it. Some people get prosecuted, and some people don’t. Reach out. I didn’t need people to fix my problems. I didn’t think there was a magic wand that somebody could wave and make go away but it would be nice to hear from people. Not only as someone who was the defendant or person being prosecuted but also as my family.
I was lucky. My dad and stepmom had a great support network in my hometown. My hometown, where I was elected to the legislature, was very supportive of them and me. That made it easier for me to go away knowing that people were looking after my dad and stepmom but there’s another thing that families can do, and it is to look out for each other. When you see someone going through this, reaching out to them and being a support network for them matters. If you are somebody whose, next-door neighbor’s kid gets jammed up in something, realize their whole life has been turned upside down.
Everything they thought about their life is no longer. I sat there every day in a Federal courtroom in Newark, New Jersey, day in and day out, for 6 or 7 weeks. My father and stepmother sat behind me every day. They were there when the foreman of the jury stood up and said guilty nine times. They were there when the judge gave me an initial sentence of 24 months and then another sentence of 18 months when they had to resentence me.
They watched their son stand there as the judge read the verdict. They watched that morning of April 9th at 3:30 in the morning when I walked out of their house. I stayed in their house the night before I went to prison. They watched me walk down the front lawn of the house that I grew up in and get into my dear friend John Hollands’ car. He drove me for four hours to prison. Your family lives it with you but when you go in, at least I knew I was okay. There’s dad in June at home, and they didn’t know that.
Reach out to people who are going through it. Support organizations like yours and others who are helping family members because it can be darn lonely. We’ve all heard those stories of people whose loved ones are gone. Maybe it’s becoming an economic crisis. People lose their homes. One thing you can do is help families who are going through the prosecution system and then when their loved one goes away. When I was in Loretto, people looked at me for what I thought was eighteen months and were like, “You are a short-timer.” There were people in there who had ten years and who had been in longer than ten years.
My dear friend Bear, the next bunk over has been for 30 years. It goes to the point that there are people who are in prison whose family members pass away, and for no reason, the prison system denies them the ability to go to the funeral. There are always going to be people who are a flight risk, a security risk or they are very violent, and you wouldn’t want that person out being allowed to go to somebody’s funeral.
People lose children, and we don’t let them go to their kid’s funerals. We need a system that is more flexible to life. It’s not only because it’s the right moral thing to do, which it is. It’s the right thing to do, as people know that the person inside Loretto, Montgomery, Fort Dix or anywhere else is coming home. That person is coming back to the community. They are going to come back to the neighborhood they were from. They are going to come back to their hometown.
We need a system that is more flexible to life, and it's not just because it's the moral thing to do, but because it's the right thing to do. Share on XDo we want Bill, Julia, Mary, Bob or anybody coming back to a community that’s stayed in touch with their family or not? The answer is, of course, we do. Part of that is families utilizing organizations like yours and others that will advocate on their behalf. That advocacy sometimes works like the reduction of the amount of distance that the Bureau of Prison should send an inmate.
Part of it is advocating for organizations like yours advocating for better and more flexible visiting hours. Part of it is advocating for what I believe is the next step in technology in the prison system. For those of you who are reading, you don’t realize that Julia and I are looking at each other. We are not in the same place. We are three time zones apart as we record this but we are looking at each other through Zoom.
We need to build technology in the prison systems, both the state and that there are some small amounts of this around the country. We need to build this in the Federal and other systems to allow people who are incarcerated to utilize technology that is now not cutting edge like Zoom and others, to see each other. Imagine a world where as opposed to my fifteen-minute call on the prison phone system, which I did every night to my dad, if we had the chance for 5 or 10 minutes to do a Zoom and see each other, dad would realize that I was doing okay and I could see him. This is not a security risk.
This is not a flight risk. This is not a risk of contraband coming into a prison, which is always the answer to why we don’t do things. It is a very reasonable thing for the Bureau of Prisons to investigate and for Congress to consider funding and the use of the outside world. We’ve got many great organizations out there that raise lots of money in the criminal justice space. You want to do something that’s going to help people stay in touch, advocate for and help fund a system.
The Bureau Prisons doesn’t want to have people who are on the internet. You are never going to change that view but you can technologically build a system for the people who created Zoom and people who work for Apple and Microsoft. There’s some twelve-year-old somewhere who’s a genius who could figure this out in four minutes about how you could build a computer system the same way you did with CorrLinks. Build a computer system that would allow me to see my dad, you, Julia, and people who you care about on Zoom. We can do that. This is not rocket science.
We should do that. That’s another thing that we could be doing to help families stay in touch with each other, especially during COVID when prisons were closed for a year and a half. This is smart. This is using technology that is safe and non-risk to the order of the prison, and you can always have limitations on it and things, for goodness sake. Let’s get the Bureau of Prisons who’s working hard and facing unbelievable challenges. I get that. We have a new director of the Bureau of Prisons. She’s come out of the Pacific Northwest. Let’s use technology to keep families closer together, and this is another way to do it.
There are so many things I want to touch on that you said, however, talking about communication. One of the things that they push back on is funding. Where are they getting the money? Taxpayers don’t want to pay for that because there are so many other things that are needed. That’s where I see a lot of the pushback. However, there are organizations out there like Zoom, Microsoft and other companies, Apple, and so many that would be willing to support something, to support a pilot or do something like that.
If anybody out there has any contacts, let us know. That would be something good because, during the pandemic, you mentioned the pandemic, and that was horrible for families and people that were incarcerated. People don’t realize that people that were incarcerated were locked up for maybe 23 hours of the day and getting out for an hour if they could. The condition was horrible for everybody, and we are not totally through it yet.
Things are a little better. Visitation has opened up but some places only allow visitation for two hours. You have people that want to travel, they might have to go 4 or 5, 6 or 9 hours to see their loved one. I’m talking about here in Nevada for two hours. Do they load up the kids the dog, and go down there, visit their loved one and then come home? There was somebody that did that for those two hours.
When my brother was incarcerated, I could visit for the whole weekend. I had to travel. When you were talking about that day in the court when they announced the guilty verdict, it brought tears to my eyes, and other people have been through that because I was right back there on that day when that happened when they took him away.
When somebody is taken into the system, you can’t say goodbye to them. They are gone, and the family is standing there in shock. One of the things that I would like to see is support for the families and victims, as there should be. However, I would also like to see some support for the family so that they know what to expect because they must wait for their loved one to be processed. They might not hear from them for weeks or even months.
They don’t know what’s going on. Groups like Prison Families Alliance, which is the nonprofit that I’m involved with that does peer support groups, are saying there’s so much that we do to help the families but to let everybody know because, as we said, it can happen to anybody. Don’t think that it’s not going to happen to you or somebody that you know. Also, going back to what you said about families being ostracized. That there’s a stigma.
There are families with children, and all of a sudden, their children can’t play with other children because their parents won’t let them. The kids are like, “What happened?” It causes much trauma for the family. You touched on so much that anybody that has been through it can relate, agree with you, and people that haven’t been through it, students or other people that are reading, are aware of what’s happening out there and what we can do.
There’s so much out there and a real need to support. I keep coming back to this. People are going to be coming back to the neighborhood. They are coming back to the community in almost all cases, and isn’t it better to have that support network there? Also, it’s the right thing to do. It just is.
I agree, and Prison the Hidden Sentence has workshops. One of the programs is a reentry program for families. What I would love to see is a wraparound program where the person, the loved one that’s incarcerated, along with the family, is going through this program so that they can communicate and stay in touch. They can be a part of the family. When they get out, they have a plan. They have been communicating and setting boundaries so that they are in an agreement.
Again, they have a better chance of being successful in society because the other thing that happens, which I know you are well aware of when people come out, do they have to check the box when they go for a job? Yes, I have been incarcerated, and it’s hard for them to find jobs. The other thing that people don’t realize, especially people that have been incarcerated for a long time, is that there are two things.
One is that they don’t have credit. If they don’t have family, how do they get a place to live? Also, technology changes. Having programs in the prison is important too and I think you touched on that. I want to talk about the Prison Visitation Fund because that’s such a wonderful program. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that?
Thank you for allowing me to talk about something. I care about this organization a lot. When I was in Loretto, I was very fortunate. I had visits pretty much every week. My dad and June would come about once every 3 or 4 weeks. I had friends come and visit from Ireland, New York, and Chicago, to visit but at the same time, there were other people that didn’t get visits. Sadly, some people’s families have passed away or they have been forgotten.
For some, it was because they couldn’t afford to go. I remember one person that I got close to there. His family was from Baltimore, and Baltimore was only 100-something miles from Loretto. His family couldn’t afford the bus or hotel to come to visit on a Saturday or Sunday when I got out and began working with my friend Gordon Caplan, who had also been at Loretto. We were not there at the same time. We talked about one of the needs that we saw as families could not afford to see their loved ones sometimes for years.
We began a nonprofit. It is still in its early days. I’m working with some terrific people. One of my colleagues, Mikayda, who I work with, has become a terrific champion in this space. She’s working so hard to connect families and keep families together. What we do, Gordon, me, our team, and Mikayda people have PrisonVisitationFund.org. They can find our application process online. We are continuing to try and raise funds to pay for this and also pay for people to go and visit their loved ones.
Unfortunately, there are far more applications than there are funds to support them but we are continuing to try to keep families together. One of the reasons I do it is that when you are in prison, the days when you have visitation are so special. There’s a positive feeling about the compound. People are up and dressed in their uniforms on a Saturday or Sunday. Their families are there, and kids are running around the visitation room. It keeps your spirits up.
Imagine a world where your family wishes they could come and can’t afford it. That’s not a system that I want to be a part of, so we are going to do something about it. Under Gordon’s leadership and all of us, we are committed to trying and help as many families and incarcerated people as we can. We’ve had some real successes. I learned very early on how important visitation is. I went in April and was there for about ten days. I was doing fine. I was surrounded by a very good group of people in Loretto. I was fine. I didn’t have anxiety. I was sleeping fine.
In fact, in some ways, my first night of sleep in prison was one of the best nights of sleep I had in a long time because there was nothing more the government could do to me. They sent me to prison, and I knew I would be fine but my dad and June were at home in Hamilton, New Jersey, four hours away. As you were mentioning before, I wasn’t even able to talk to them for the first 3 or 4 days or maybe more.
They were the first visitors I got. They drove on Friday, and the visitation was Saturday and Sunday at Loretto Camp from 8:30 to 2:30. They drove over the Friday night before and stayed at the Courtyard by Marriott in Altoona, Pennsylvania. I talked to dad the night before and said, “Make sure you get here at about 8:15. You can get through security the 3 of us can spend 6 hours together. I said, “But Pop, if you’re not here by 9:30, they shut the prison down for the count. If I’m with you in the visitation room, we can stay but if not, they shut everything down. I got to go back to my bunk, and you got to stay in the parking.
My father is a very prompt guy. A military guy says to me, “We will be there. We will be on time. Don’t worry.” We printed out the directions. I get up the next morning. It was my first visitation Sunday, and you put on your green uniform and black boots and waited. They start calling people into the visitation room. Bear reported the visitation room. Dutilo reported in the visitation room but not Baroni. It’s now 8:45 but no Bill. It’s now 9:00. All of the anxiety, panic, and upset that I had not had showed up.
I’m thinking there was an accident. Somebody has been taken to the hospital, got sick or they were lost in rural Western Pennsylvania, and I couldn’t do anything about it. The very reason I went into prison when I did, even though my friend Bridget stayed out, was to get it over with, so I will be there for my father and stepmother, and now they are lost, hurt or killed in an accident. It’s all my fault because I did this. I went to prison and was in full panic. At 9:15, no dad. I am in full panic. At 9:30, they call a count, and I’m thinking the worst.
I go over to the phone on the way to the bunk to go for the 9:30 count. I picked the phone up and dialed my dad’s cell phone number, hoping that maybe he would answer. Sure enough, he answered the phone. I said, “Pop, where are you?” He said,” We are in the parking lot.” I said, “What are you doing in the parking lot?” He said, “When we got here, they had shut the prison down. We have to wait an hour.” I said, “I get that, pop but I thought you guys were getting here at 8:30.” He said, “When we came downstairs this morning to come over to the prison, they have a breakfast buffet.” I said, “What?” He said, “They have a breakfast buffet.” My father said what every 75-year-old person would say at this very moment. He said, “It came with the room.” He says to me, “I knew you weren’t going anywhere.”
My father is uniquely able to keep me humble. Dad comes in to visit at 10:30 or whatever it was he got in. We sat there and visited. It was good for me. It was good for him. It was good for everybody there to have visited. Over the course of that time, I had people who come. My closest friends would come every three weeks. I had an amazing friend who flew in from Ireland because they wanted to be there to support you. They also want to know that you are okay. Every family member who’s reading this, I get it. I understand. I saw it on my father’s face the first time he visited.
Not the breakfast buffet part but when he was sitting there in a visitation room, and I walked in. Here’s this tough military guy who has been through a lot. He watched his kid go to prison and lose another child. My sister passed away. He is a tough guy, and I saw the pure panic on his face sitting in a visitation room of Federal prison in Pennsylvania. It’s not something he ever wanted to see for his son. Trust me. It’s not something his son ever wanted to see for his father.
There I was in the visitation room, and my father started to realize that I was going to be okay. In the camp, in higher level prisons, you can only talk to your visitor but in the camps, it’s a little bit less strict. Dad would see that the people I was there with were taking care of me, and that was good for him because when somebody gets sentenced to prison, they are not the only ones sentenced. It was not just me that was going to prison. Dad and June were too. Also, Andy, Mike, John, Georgina, and Maureen. All these people who came to visit were living it too.
When somebody gets sentenced to prison, they're not the only ones sentenced. Share on XThat’s why I call it Prison the Hidden Sentence because it’s a hidden sentence that people don’t realize that people on the outside are serving. You put that point up well.
Therefore, as we make public policy and also how we support each other, it’s important that things like these show that people should know they are not alone. They are not the only people going through this. It’s important to some of the seminars that you are doing and that others are doing to let family members know, not only as their family members are going in but as a continuum while they are in. I was 18 months but what if you have 18 years? What do you do then? How do we support them? That’s not in any way to minimize the effect that whatever thing happened, there are victims. We need to support our victims too. They are equally suffering, especially if the crime is a violent crime.
I appreciate you bringing that up because we are not diminishing the crime for the victims. We are focusing on what the family can do.
The reason I say that and having lived it is that you look at any other Western country. Their system of keeping incarcerated people closer to their families far exceeds anything this country does, whether it’s Ireland, where I spend a lot of time or other parts of Europe or the West, we can improve this system, and yet, people always say, “It’s expensive.” It’s expensive everywhere, and you can’t have a system and say, “Why do people commit crimes again?”
Part of it is that they don’t get to stay in touch with their families while they are in. Part of it, as you mentioned before they get out and have trouble getting a job. Maybe their employer was a group of pastors in Western Pennsylvania. After I was out, I went to a meeting, and there was a fellow there who had been incarcerated in the state system in Pennsylvania and applied for a job at Wendy’s, which is a great place to work. People wanted the benefit of work and were turned down because he had been a felon.
It wasn’t like he was a felon stealing burgers at a burger place. Whatever he had done had nothing to do with Wendy’s. They wouldn’t hire him or you can’t get a bank account. Every single person I know that has been incarcerated, with me included, even to this day has trouble getting a bank account. I was ruled by the Supreme Court of the United States that I didn’t do anything illegal. I have trouble with banking. Even my friend Ralph from the Bronx, who served ten years on a nonviolent drug charge, had nothing to do with banking, not bank fraud, and didn’t rob a bank but has trouble getting banking.
We say to somebody, “If you can’t get a bank account, how do you get an apartment?” If you can get an apartment, maybe pay cash for what you are having to do, and you can get a job. Maybe if you are lucky to get a job, then you get in your paycheck, and you are going to one of these predatory check cashing places. You have to work harder and harder because the system won’t give you a bank account. That’s not a system that works.
What do we do? We end up pushing a certain number of people back into the very life that caused them to be incarcerated in the first place. That’s not a system that works, and that’s not a Republican or a Democrat, a Conservative or a Liberal. The government should work. This isn’t working. One of the things that are not working is that we are not doing everything we can within the understanding of valuing the security of our corrections officers who work in the prison, the security of the communities that surround our correctional institutions from a safety perspective, valuing and lifting up the family members of victims in those situations.
What we don’t want to do is build a system that says, “We are going to take Bill and lock him away. We are not going to let him get a job when he gets out. We are not going to let him have a bank account when he gets out, and yet somehow, we are shocked that Bill commits a crime again. That’s a crazy system, and what I’m sensing, though, and I see it, my own students. I taught this class with twenty-something students. This semester, I’m teaching nearly 60.
People are interested in this. They are interested in the criminal justice form. It is something that crosses parties in ideological lines. It crosses geographic lines. Maybe and thanks to shows like this and organizations like yours and Prison Visitation Fund, Interrogating Justice and the White Collar Support group, and lots of great organizations, we are making progress but we have a long way to go.
It’s like eating an elephant. One bite at a time. That’s what they say. Everything you said hit a chord with me. I agree with a lot of what you are saying. It’s so helpful for people to read this, and I appreciate your time and sharing this wealth of knowledge because you’ve lived it. You have been through it. You’ve seen both sides. You’ve seen all the sides of it, and that’s so important.
It’s important for the families to read this and for other people. You’ve already answered the question I usually leave, which is, what would you leave the families with? If there are 1 or 2 things that you can leave everybody with that’s going through it for the families that have somebody that’s incarcerated, that they are missing their loved one, anything that you can provide them with that can give them hope.
Things are slowly getting better. We had some small victories with the First Step Act. Not only when it comes to the placement of incarcerated people closer to their homes in the Federal system. Things are getting better in the BOP, United States Bureau of Prisons, I hope at the very top. More and more people are recognizing the real public policy need to improve the system of communication with their family members.
The thing I would say to family members is that there are nights when you are sitting in prison, and all you can think about is the picture that’s in your locker of your wife, husband, kids or parents. That fence around a prison can seem high. The barbed wire is sharp. The guard towers were guarded with guns drawn. The one thing that gets over the fence or through the gate as someone who’s incarcerated is knowing that your family is out there. In those lonely days when you are sitting there in prison, whether it’s a cell, in a penitentiary or a bunk in a camp, your family is out there.
One thing that gets over the fence through the gate for those incarcerated is knowing that your family is out there. In those lonely days when you're sitting there in prison, your family is out there. Share on XThe family needs to know that when the phone rings from the prison, your five-minute conversation with them is priceless. That we, as incarcerated people, are desperate to hear their voices or read their handwriting on a card or a CorrLinks email. What that tells me is that for those of us who are on the outside, what we can do is help lift those families up and be there for them. Check on them and help them do visits.
If you know your next-door neighbor is going to visit their kid who’s locked up in Loretto five hours away, offer to babysit. There was a wonderful friend of dad in June’s, my friend Sue, who would bring dinner over. I know this sounds like there are so many more important things in the criminal justice system, and there are but again, Bill was coming home. Julia was coming home. Bob was coming home. Bear was coming home.
We got to do everything we can to make sure that when they come home, they can succeed and get a job, a house, an apartment, and a bank accountant. We all say we want to rehabilitate people. Rehabilitation’s got to be more than just a phrase. It’s got to be something that we all do. I want to say thank you because this organization and what you are doing and connecting families to each other and advocating for policymakers, matters so much because we can make things better. The only way that’s going to happen is if we all do it together, and the 100 million of us, whatever the number is, it isn’t small. If we do it together, we can succeed.
I say that to my great students, and I say that to people whose family members are about to go to prison. That they are not by themselves. They are not alone. They are supported and lifted up because their loved one has been convicted or pled guilty to a crime. It does not mean that life is over. It does not mean that there’s not another chapter coming but we are going to help you get there. This organization, hopefully, this show, and ones that are much better than me, will help convince people to do that. I’m grateful for you letting me come on and tell my story.
Thank you so much, Bill. There’s always hope.
Thank you.
Important Links
- Dutchess Management
- National Chorale
- White Collar Support Group
- Three Felonies a Day
- https://www.PrisonvVisitationFund.org
- https://InterrogatingJustice.org
- https://Law.shu.edu
- https://PrisonFamiliesAlliance.org
- Prison: The Hidden Sentence™: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR LOVED ONE IS ARRESTED AND INCARCERATED
About Bill Baroni
Bill Baroni has been a State Senator, law professor, attorney, author, Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, college board chairman, and, most recently, Federal Inmate 67325-050, before his conviction was unanimously overturned by the United States Supreme Court.
Bill served in the New Jersey State Assembly from 2004-2008 and the New Jersey State Senate from 2008-2010. As a legislator he took a significant and high-profile role in critical pieces of legislation: in 2009, he was the tie breaking vote in the Judiciary Committee to advance New Jersey’s Marriage Equality bill; in 2008, he was the deciding vote in the Health Committee to create New Jersey’s Compassionate Care Medical Marijuana program and the deciding vote to create the nation’s first ever Paid Family Leave program.
In 2010, Bill was named to co-head the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as its deputy executive director. Bill was responsible for overseeing the management of the Port Authority’s various transportation assets, including six airports, six Hudson River crossings, the PATH transit system, and the largest seaport on the US East Coast. Additionally, he oversaw the rebuilding the World Trade Center site, including the construction of the National September 11 Memorial and One World Trade Center.
It was in that role, however, that Bill entered the most difficult time of his career. After seven years, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Bill had been wrongly convicted as part of the “Bridgegate” scandal in New Jersey. Bill had already started serving an 18-month sentence in Loretto Federal Prison in Pennsylvania before the Supreme Court took his case, however, and he was ordered released immediately following their decision. During his time in Loretto, he tutored fellow inmates working on their GED and taught adult education classes on history and business. He is the author of the forthcoming book, From Bridge to Bars, a Journey Through the Criminal Justice System.
After his case was overturned, Bill started working with Justice Advocacy Group, a group of former corrections professionals and inmates who assist others as they prepare to enter prison and help them on their release back home. He has assisted more than a dozen inmates get compassionate release during the Covid19 pandemic. He is also the host of a new podcast, “Going to Prison with Bill Baroni,” which helps people about to enter prison and their families.
Bill is a founder of the Prison Visitation Fund, which raises funds to help families visit their loved ones who are incarcerated, allowing these families to remain close and better preparing incarcerated persons to re-enter society upon their release.
Bill is a member of the board of Interrogating Justice, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank tackling the most pressing criminal justice and incarceration reform issues across the United States.
Of Bill’s post-incarceration criminal justice and advocacy work, Forbes Magazine wrote, “Baroni has become a go-to person, a connector, for people who are headed for prison and those coming out.”
Bill is also a partner in and advisor to Dutchess Management, a strategic advisory firm focused on corporate transformations and complex transactions.
Bill teaches law at Seton Hall University Law School, teaching classes on Prison Law and Education Law. He has been named Professor of the Year twice.
Bill previously practiced law with both Hill Wallack in Princeton and Blank Rome in Trenton and Washington, DC.
Bill served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Mercer County Community College, which serves more than 13,000 students pursuing over 70-degree programs administered by 130 faculty on two campuses. During his term, he oversaw dramatic physical improvements to MCCC facilities, including a building program that added additional classroom and student life facilities to both Trenton and West Windsor campuses.
Bill is also a leader in the area of health and fighting obesity. He is the author of Fat Kid Got Fit, a first-person account of losing more than 130 pounds and his efforts to maintain that success. The book’s introduction is written by Dr. Howard Eisenson, former executive director of the Duke University Diet and Fitness Center, where Bill has lectured for more than 20 years.
Bill serves on the board of the National Chorale, a professional chorus in New York City that has called the Lincoln Center home for more than 54 years. Bill formerly served on the boards of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Greater Trenton Symphony Orchestra, and the Boheme Opera Company.
Bill is a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School and The George Washington University, where he received his BA in History.
Joseph A. Moffo says
Bill Baroni is a great guy!