JOVAAN LUMPKIN ENTERED the Connecticut state prison system in 2004, at age 17. In the eyes of his mother, Diane Lewis, he was still her goofy, skinny teenager.
She loved him and had always made sure he had the right clothes: Polo Ralph Lauren, the latest jeans. Her biggest fear was for her son’s safety in prison. But she worried about smaller things, too. Without anyone to braid his hair, she wondered, would he need to cut his cornrows off?
Lewis gave birth to Jovaan at 21 and raised him on her own in Hartford, a once-prosperous city that had gained a reputation for crime and municipal neglect. She later took in three of his younger cousins, whom she treated as her own.
Lewis worked various jobs to support them, including positions at a social services nonprofit and an insurance company. Neither paid a lot, and the family had its financial ups and downs—but Lewis always provided her kids structure and a stable home. She was a no-nonsense mom who demanded to know where Jovaan was at all times, though he didn’t always comply. That protective impulse didn’t change after he was convicted of conspiracy to commit first-degree assault. Lewis made Jovaan promise he would call her every day from prison. “I didn’t want him to come home a stranger,” she said.
Jovaan kept his word. On calls, Lewis would bring him up to date on family news: who’d had a new baby, who had died. He told her about people she knew from back in the day who he’d come across in prison. He’d ask if the new Jay-Z album had come out yet. They ended every call with “I love you.”
All these calls cost a lot of money. The rate varied, but it averaged about $4 for every 15 minutes in Connecticut during Jovaan’s incarceration. They often talked four times a day, the maximum allowed. The charges added up quickly. Every Friday, when Lewis collected her paycheck, the first thing she did was deposit money in Jovaan’s phone account. Many months, she had to pick: the calls or her other bills? “You always choose your kid,” she told me, even if it meant an empty stomach or talking to her son in the dark because her power was shut off.
Over the 11 years Jovaan
