sherri13
04-01-2002, 12:34 AM
another segemnt of a research paper i wrote stressing the importance of maintaining family contact during incarceration
Maintaining Family Contact
Generating better outcomes for children with incarcerated parents will ultimately require a lot of attention and collaborative efforts of many government systems, particularly the criminal justice and child welfare systems. (Katz, 1998) Such efforts would need to include providing interventions for children that help to reduce the negative immediate and long-term effects of this traumatic experience. Visiting allows children to discuss their emotional reactions to the separation from their parent and is an important part of helping children to cope with the trauma of such a loss (Johnston, 1995; Katz, 1998). Maintaining close family ties during incarceration has been shown to reduce recidivism rates, improve mental health of inmates and other family members, decrease the stress of separation, and increase the likelihood of reunification (Reed, 1997; Seymour, 1998). However, an estimate of 50% of incarcerated parents do not receive any visits from their children. Inhibiting visits are such factors as the remote location of prisons, rigid visitation schedules, lack of transportation, inhospitable visitation conditions/facilities, and unwillingness of caregivers to facilitate visits (Seymour, 1998).
Many prisons are located in remote areas of the state, which requires long drives at very early hours. Once family members arrive at the institutions, they have long lines to wait in, and complicated check-in procedures. They often have no information regarding visitation rules and procedures, which in some cases causes family members to not be allowed to visit due to an infraction they were not even aware of. Visitation rules and procedures vary from institution to institution, so there is inconsistency in the application of rules, such as dress code. The visitation area itself is often cold and sterile.
Some creative programs have been established to provide parent-child contact visitation in less sterile surroundings and have been highly successful (Johnston, 1995). Unfortunately, most of these programs have been initiated in larger states such as Texas, California, Florida and New York. Orange County Correctional Center is an institution in North Carolina that utilized grants from community groups to install playground equipment and tables and benches for visitation purposes.
Another significant obstruction to maintaining family contact is the telephone system. Telephone calls from an inmate at an institution are diverted to a single telephone
company under contract with the department. The cost of a ten-minute phone call can cost up to $10.00. The average family of an inmate spends up to $70.00 a month accepting telephone calls from the inmate (Trovillion, A.). Many families cannot afford to accept such costly calls and therefore have to refuse the calls or place a block on collect calls, thus creating an additional barrier between the incarcerated individual and his or her family. The collect call system is a lucrative business for the prisons as the telephone service providers can offer the departments up to 55% of their profits as commission.
There is a group called CURE that is advocating for a billed party preference that would allow the persons paying for the telephone calls to choose a preferred carrier. The family then would become the customer instead of the prison (Trovillion, A.).
Alternative programs such as crisis nurseries, and community based mother-child correctional programs foster maternal bonding, and provide a stable placement and preservation of the families of participating women prisoners. Such programs offer mothers opportunities to address their problems while learning to assimilate back in to society. Women learn parenting skills, responsibility, and are able to participate in mental health and or substance abuse treatment, educational and job training programs, and their
children are spared the trauma of losing their mother for months or years. Summit House in Greensboro, North Carolina is an example of such a program. Other programs which address child-parent separation issues are child custody advocacy services and support groups for children (Johnston, 1995).
Interventions addressing quality of care include parent empowerment projects, child placement and foster care services, caregiver and family support services, drug treatment for offenders, and re-entry services. After release from jail, both men and women often have difficulty finding housing, employment, counseling, medical care, childcare, and various other resources. Discharge planning is crucial to a successful return to the community, for both the parent and his or her children (Johnston, 1995; Greene, 2000).
Physical Custody and Care of Children
Children with incarcerated parents often experience multiple and disruptive placements. U.S. Department of Justice (1994) found that for children with incarcerated mothers, 25.4% lived with their fathers, 50.6% with grandparents, 20.3% with other relatives, 6% in foster homes, 4.1% with friends, 2.1% in agencies or institutions, and 2% lived alone. When these children are raised by grandparents or other family members (75.9%), these caregivers often have limited income and social supports and the care of the child or children adds additional strain to an already difficult situation (Seymour, 1998).
Unless these grandparents/family members (kinship care) are willing to go through the stringent requirements to become a licensed foster care provider, they are not eligible for any special financial assistance. In addition, this arrangement gives the state ultimate responsibility and decision making power related to the child. In cases where the parents will be incarcerated for more than eighteen months, the grandparent has essentially no other option than to adopt the child, creating further alienation of the natural parents.
The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Reform Act of 1980 was designed to reunify families whenever possible, however the time limitation (18 mos.) that the child
can remain in foster care leaves few options for incarcerated parents or their families The parents are often unable to meet the legal requirements for reunification and as a result their parental rights are terminated ( Johnston, 1998).
With the population of female prisoners increasing by almost 400% over the past fifteen years, and with seven in ten women in jail or prison having minor children, there
are tremendous implications for how we design services, frame our research, select our collaborative partners, and expend our limited resources in attempting to improve the lives of families involved in the criminal justice system (Genty, 1998).
Resources
The number of local resources designed specifically for children of incarcerated parents can be added up quickly- ZERO. Aside from various prison ministries, the Angel Tree Outreach Christmas program, there are not any programs targeted for the children of incarcerated parents. Michelle Vanderboom , Family and Children Services of the Piedmont , Cynthia Cole, Guilford County Department of Social Services, Nina Dameron, The Guilford Center, all report that they have no specialized services for this population. No other agencies in the Guilford County area were found to have specialized programs or resources for these children.
Policy
Recent trends in public policy have had a significant influence on the status of children of offenders. At all stages of the justice process, their existence and their needs
have remained unrecognized. Resolution to this situation calls for new legislation and practical application of policy in the areas of law enforcement, sentencing, child welfare
and corrections (Johnston, 1998). National child welfare reform has produced circumstances that work against incarcerated parents and their children. Legislation can
mandate the development of specific programs for their assistance. Sentencing reform would reduce the rate of parental incarceration, freeing some funds for the development of more community based intermediate sanctions and prevention services. If we continue to address crime by building new prisons and jails at the expense of preventing crime through the funding of education, vocational training programs, drug treatment, health care, and other services, we will continue to destroy vulnerable but viable family systems (Reed, 1997).
Conclusion
Children of incarcerated parents are not a “new group” in need of special help. They are, however, a group that has been overlooked. There is little private or public funding to support programs specifically for these children. There are no precise statistics on the numbers of children and there are no longitudinal studies that indicate lasting ramifications. It is imperative that we acknowledge the plight of these children. If we continue to ignore it, generations to come may suffer the consequences (Bloom, 1995).
Maintaining Family Contact
Generating better outcomes for children with incarcerated parents will ultimately require a lot of attention and collaborative efforts of many government systems, particularly the criminal justice and child welfare systems. (Katz, 1998) Such efforts would need to include providing interventions for children that help to reduce the negative immediate and long-term effects of this traumatic experience. Visiting allows children to discuss their emotional reactions to the separation from their parent and is an important part of helping children to cope with the trauma of such a loss (Johnston, 1995; Katz, 1998). Maintaining close family ties during incarceration has been shown to reduce recidivism rates, improve mental health of inmates and other family members, decrease the stress of separation, and increase the likelihood of reunification (Reed, 1997; Seymour, 1998). However, an estimate of 50% of incarcerated parents do not receive any visits from their children. Inhibiting visits are such factors as the remote location of prisons, rigid visitation schedules, lack of transportation, inhospitable visitation conditions/facilities, and unwillingness of caregivers to facilitate visits (Seymour, 1998).
Many prisons are located in remote areas of the state, which requires long drives at very early hours. Once family members arrive at the institutions, they have long lines to wait in, and complicated check-in procedures. They often have no information regarding visitation rules and procedures, which in some cases causes family members to not be allowed to visit due to an infraction they were not even aware of. Visitation rules and procedures vary from institution to institution, so there is inconsistency in the application of rules, such as dress code. The visitation area itself is often cold and sterile.
Some creative programs have been established to provide parent-child contact visitation in less sterile surroundings and have been highly successful (Johnston, 1995). Unfortunately, most of these programs have been initiated in larger states such as Texas, California, Florida and New York. Orange County Correctional Center is an institution in North Carolina that utilized grants from community groups to install playground equipment and tables and benches for visitation purposes.
Another significant obstruction to maintaining family contact is the telephone system. Telephone calls from an inmate at an institution are diverted to a single telephone
company under contract with the department. The cost of a ten-minute phone call can cost up to $10.00. The average family of an inmate spends up to $70.00 a month accepting telephone calls from the inmate (Trovillion, A.). Many families cannot afford to accept such costly calls and therefore have to refuse the calls or place a block on collect calls, thus creating an additional barrier between the incarcerated individual and his or her family. The collect call system is a lucrative business for the prisons as the telephone service providers can offer the departments up to 55% of their profits as commission.
There is a group called CURE that is advocating for a billed party preference that would allow the persons paying for the telephone calls to choose a preferred carrier. The family then would become the customer instead of the prison (Trovillion, A.).
Alternative programs such as crisis nurseries, and community based mother-child correctional programs foster maternal bonding, and provide a stable placement and preservation of the families of participating women prisoners. Such programs offer mothers opportunities to address their problems while learning to assimilate back in to society. Women learn parenting skills, responsibility, and are able to participate in mental health and or substance abuse treatment, educational and job training programs, and their
children are spared the trauma of losing their mother for months or years. Summit House in Greensboro, North Carolina is an example of such a program. Other programs which address child-parent separation issues are child custody advocacy services and support groups for children (Johnston, 1995).
Interventions addressing quality of care include parent empowerment projects, child placement and foster care services, caregiver and family support services, drug treatment for offenders, and re-entry services. After release from jail, both men and women often have difficulty finding housing, employment, counseling, medical care, childcare, and various other resources. Discharge planning is crucial to a successful return to the community, for both the parent and his or her children (Johnston, 1995; Greene, 2000).
Physical Custody and Care of Children
Children with incarcerated parents often experience multiple and disruptive placements. U.S. Department of Justice (1994) found that for children with incarcerated mothers, 25.4% lived with their fathers, 50.6% with grandparents, 20.3% with other relatives, 6% in foster homes, 4.1% with friends, 2.1% in agencies or institutions, and 2% lived alone. When these children are raised by grandparents or other family members (75.9%), these caregivers often have limited income and social supports and the care of the child or children adds additional strain to an already difficult situation (Seymour, 1998).
Unless these grandparents/family members (kinship care) are willing to go through the stringent requirements to become a licensed foster care provider, they are not eligible for any special financial assistance. In addition, this arrangement gives the state ultimate responsibility and decision making power related to the child. In cases where the parents will be incarcerated for more than eighteen months, the grandparent has essentially no other option than to adopt the child, creating further alienation of the natural parents.
The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Reform Act of 1980 was designed to reunify families whenever possible, however the time limitation (18 mos.) that the child
can remain in foster care leaves few options for incarcerated parents or their families The parents are often unable to meet the legal requirements for reunification and as a result their parental rights are terminated ( Johnston, 1998).
With the population of female prisoners increasing by almost 400% over the past fifteen years, and with seven in ten women in jail or prison having minor children, there
are tremendous implications for how we design services, frame our research, select our collaborative partners, and expend our limited resources in attempting to improve the lives of families involved in the criminal justice system (Genty, 1998).
Resources
The number of local resources designed specifically for children of incarcerated parents can be added up quickly- ZERO. Aside from various prison ministries, the Angel Tree Outreach Christmas program, there are not any programs targeted for the children of incarcerated parents. Michelle Vanderboom , Family and Children Services of the Piedmont , Cynthia Cole, Guilford County Department of Social Services, Nina Dameron, The Guilford Center, all report that they have no specialized services for this population. No other agencies in the Guilford County area were found to have specialized programs or resources for these children.
Policy
Recent trends in public policy have had a significant influence on the status of children of offenders. At all stages of the justice process, their existence and their needs
have remained unrecognized. Resolution to this situation calls for new legislation and practical application of policy in the areas of law enforcement, sentencing, child welfare
and corrections (Johnston, 1998). National child welfare reform has produced circumstances that work against incarcerated parents and their children. Legislation can
mandate the development of specific programs for their assistance. Sentencing reform would reduce the rate of parental incarceration, freeing some funds for the development of more community based intermediate sanctions and prevention services. If we continue to address crime by building new prisons and jails at the expense of preventing crime through the funding of education, vocational training programs, drug treatment, health care, and other services, we will continue to destroy vulnerable but viable family systems (Reed, 1997).
Conclusion
Children of incarcerated parents are not a “new group” in need of special help. They are, however, a group that has been overlooked. There is little private or public funding to support programs specifically for these children. There are no precise statistics on the numbers of children and there are no longitudinal studies that indicate lasting ramifications. It is imperative that we acknowledge the plight of these children. If we continue to ignore it, generations to come may suffer the consequences (Bloom, 1995).