Phyllis Dooney Documents Formerly-Incarcerated Man’s Return to Society and Fatherhood

D’Juan Collins tries on a shirt at Goodwill in Harlem, NY on Feb. 14, 2014. D’Juan was charged with drug possession and spent 6 years of an 8-year sentence in prison. He was released in July 2013 and is currently in a custody battle with the New York foster care system for his 7-year-old son, Isaiah.

INTRODUCING PHYLLIS DOONEY

Often when I want to publish images I want to add thoughts of my own and, in all honesty, direct the message a little. Today’s feature is an exception. Photographer Phyllis Dooney approached me with a complete pitch and story. From the issue to the subject, from Dooney’s motivation to her text and images, there is nothing I can add. This piece is entirely Dooney’s.

The series titled Collapsar follows D’Juan Collins who served six years in a New York State Prison, during which time he lost custody of his son. He’s done everything within his power to reestablish a stable life and yet the prospect of losing his son permanently looms larger than ever before.

D’Juan Collins goes to the local branch of the New York Public Library in the Bronx, NY on Dec. 16, 2013. D’Juan is there to get on the internet, a service his 3/4 housing does not provide. He has launched www.saveisaiah.com to raise awareness for his issues with the foster care system and to raise funds.

COLLAPSAR

Words by Phyllis Dooney.

“You need a man to teach you how to be a man.”

— Tupac Shakur, Tupac: Resurrection

D’Juan Collins wants to be an active parent in his son Isaiah’s life. At the same time, D’Juan realizes that fatherhood, in the form of genuine leadership, nurturing and daily guidance, is a challenge for him. His three-quarter housing is not a fit home for his son. D’Juan needs more income than his job, selling tickets in Times Square, can amount to.

D’Juan is a 44-year-old black man from inner-city Chicago, who now resides in the Bronx. Like his absent father before him, D’Juan both used and sold drugs as a psychological and economic solution. Eventually this behavior landed him in prison. In July 2013, D’Juan was released from prison after serving six years of an eight-year sentence for possession of crack-cocaine.

D’Juan shopping for ties at Goodwill in Harlem, NY on Feb. 14, 2014. D’Juan has a job interview as a paralegal and is shopping for appropriate clothing.

Isaiah Fischer-Collins, 7, plays with his paternal grandmother, Dianna Collins, and uncle in a hotel room in Brooklyn, NY on Dec. 21, 2013. Dianna was granted visitation rights from ACS to spend holiday time with her grandson for the weekend. However, Dianna is not an approved visitation supervisor by ACS  which means that when she looks after Isaiah the family remains fractured because D’Juan cannot be present as well.

D’Juan joins forces with the organization Fostering Progressive Advocacy in a protest on the steps of City Hall in New York, NY on April 16, 2014. Most of the participants are calling attention to ACS because ACS has not placed their children with biological family members.

Fostering Progressive Advocacy members protest on the steps of City Hall in New York, NY on April 16, 2014.

Isaiah Fischer-Collins, 7, with his paternal grandmother, Dianna Collins, Brooklyn, NY on Dec. 21, 2013.

While in prison, D’Juan petitioned the court system and New York’s ACS to place his now 7-year-old son, Isaiah, with his biological grandmother, Dianna Collins. For a variety of reasons, this never came to pass and Isaiah has been stuck in the foster care system for over six years now. D’Juan is drug-free, has a regular job and is looking for new housing. He is granted two hours a week to see his son via supervised visits at Graham Wyndham, a branch of the foster care system. In the meantime, it appears that Isaiah is acting out at school and against authority figures.

In the face of this adversity, D’Juan has launched a campaign (saveisaiah.com) to get his child back. At present, D’Juan has non-custodial parental rights only. If he gets full custody back for himself or the boy’s paternal grandmother, D’Juan feels that at best he can make sure Isaiah does not feel abandoned by his biological family and will have the confidence and emotional security to succeed in life. At the very least, like many disadvantaged fathers with a checkered past, he can teach his son what not to do.

The verdict is due to come in 2015 and it is quite possible that the foster mother will be granted the court’s permission to adopt Isaiah. If the custody goes to the foster mother, in lieu of the recent decision by the Court of Appeals of New York in the Hailey ZZ case, the court lacks the authority to order visitation for the biological family, including the father. D’Juan and his extended family may never see the child again.

D’Juan speaks on the phone to the biological mother of his 7-year-old son in the Bronx, NY on Feb. 11, 2014. D’Juan is appealing to her for help to ensure the foster mother cannot adopt their joint son but the biological mother is on and off drugs which makes her an unreliable source of strength and assistance.

 The view from D’Juan’s bedroom in the Bronx, NY on Jan. 24, 2014.

Residents, Buzz, Reed and D’Juan, relax in their 3/4 house in the Bronx, NY on Feb. 1, 2014.

D’Juan Collins’ fragrance “Innocent Black Men” sits on his dresser in the Bronx, NY on Jan. 18, 2014.

D’Juan Collins checks himself in the mirror before heading out of the 3/4 house in the Bronx, NY on Dec. 10, 2013.

D’Juan reaches out to potential customers in Times Square, NY on Jan. 13, 2014. D’Juan has limited job opportunities as a felon and currently sells tickets to make ends meet.

On June 15, 2008, Father’s Day, at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago, then-Senator Barack Obama delivered a speech addressing a well-known American archetype, the absent black father. His message and tone were accusatory, catering to a public opinion.

In his opening sentences, Obama begins by saying, “…too many fathers also are missing — missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men… You and I know how true this is in the African-American community.”

D’Juan represents the legions of “missing” black American men who are caught up in the trappings of intergenerational underachievement as a result of poverty and the effects of the “War On Drugs.” Forty years ago, American inner cities had already begun to feel the impact of globalization and de-industrialization with the loss of jobs matching the skill-sets of inner-city minority men. Today, the minorities living in these areas make up generations of boys and men who have not had access to the education and training to compete in today’s global economy.

80% of our black American men in major cities have criminal records and therefore most are stuck in a cycle of incarceration and recidivism. More African American adults are under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850. Astonishingly, rates in crime have more or less stayed the course in the US over the past 40 years, but with the changes in sentencing laws, under the auspices of the “War On Drugs,” rates of incarceration have increased by 500%.

D’Juan is part of this statistical nightmare.

D’Juan looks around for potential customers in Times Square, NY on Feb. 10, 2014.

A view of the Bronx from the elevated train in New York, NY on Dec. 14, 2013.

D’Juan Collins, 43, washes his sheets by hand in the bathroom of his 3/4 house in the Bronx, NY on Feb. 1, 2014.

D’Juan uses his laundry bucket to do pull-ups in his 3/4 house in the Bronx, NY on Jan. 18, 2014.

Ellen Edelman of Families, Fathers & Children weighed in about the generational impact of incarceration on the black American family, “When incarceration is a narrative in a family, just as a talent is a narrative where there may be several generations who are musical or good at sports, or with behaviors that are very negative, like drugs or alcohol use, it tends to be a generational narrative.”

Mass incarceration – particularly as a response to drug related crimes – has served to effectively warehouse our black youth and males, pulling them out mainstream American life and separating them from their families. Formerly incarcerated men emerge from prison more ill-equipped to confront the demands of daily life. Minority men, with a very traditional definition of manhood and fatherhood, are particularly emasculated when they have not met the expectations of the husband-father-provider. Reintegration after prison is characterized by the same symptoms of depression, hopelessness and anger that preceded the prison sentence or worse. Maladapted coping skills become the family’s legacy that in turn becomes the community’s legacy and ultimately, as the numbers continue to escalate, America’s legacy.

Studies have shown that without intervention 70% of children with incarcerated parents will follow in their parent’s footsteps and go to prison.

Says Malcolm Davis of The Osborne Association in New York City: “Incarceration creates a ripple effect. When a father goes to prison continuously, the kids see that as the normal and they emulate that, ‘I wanna be just like my dad and Dad goes to prison, Dad comes home, Dad looks good, stays home for a little while, but goes back to prison.’ There is a second side of it where we see the kids without any fatherly guidance in their life so they turn to the streets. They turn to the streets for love, for attention, for support, and the cycle continues.”

D’Juan Collins washes his hands in the soup kitchen before Sunday service at Manhattan Bible Church in New York, NY on Jan. 19, 2014.

D’Juan Collins, 43, sings and prays at the Manhattan Bible Church in New York, NY on Jan. 19, 2014. D’Juan is fighting the New York City foster care system to regain custody of his 7-year-old son, Isaiah.

Nearly six years after now-President Obama’s Father’s Day speech at the Apostolic Church of God, black fathers continue to be amiss in their family’s lives. Young boys continue to take to the streets to seek out the structure, support, and affirmation that is oftentimes lacking in single-parent and foster care households. One can only hope, with the White House’s “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative and Senators Paul Rand and Cory Booker’s bipartisan call for criminal justice reform that family narratives like D’Juan’s will speak of upward mobility among our black American men and boys, freed from the pitfalls of abandonment, poverty, substance abuse and our national response to them, incarceration.

D’Juan and girlfriend Melinda relax in bed in his 3/4 house in the Bronx, NY on April 12, 2014.

BIOGRAPHY

Phyllis B. Dooney is a New York-based photographer and storyteller. After graduating from Pitzer College with a combined degree in Eastern Religion, Art History, and Fine Art, she began her career as a photo art director in the commercial sector. Currently, Phyllis works as a social documentary photographer and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Time Out New York, The Boston Globe, VISTA Magazine, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere online and in print.

Follow her on activities on Twitter and on Instagram.