PRISONER-FAMILY VISITS


 For many families and friends of prisoners, the visit to a prison is a lesson in humility, intimidation and frustration and a highly charged and anxiety producing event.  It is not unusual for visitors, the majority of whom are women and children, to endure many indignities.  Among the problems noted were long waits sometimes in facilities without seating.  Lacking nutritious food in visiting vending machines and the absence of activities for children and intrusive searches. Hot, dirty and crowded visiting rooms are the norm for many prisons.  Visitors may be denied entry to the prison for diverse reasons including constantly changing dress codes, no identification for children, and drug scanners that inaccurately signal that a visitor is carrying drugs.




COMMUNICATION

 Communication between prisoners and their families provides the most concrete and visible strategy that families and prisoners use to manage separation and maintain connections.These contacts allow adults and parents and children to share family experiences and participate in family rituals, e.g., birthday celebrations, religious observances, etc. and help them to remain emotionally attached.  They help assure incarcerated parents that their children have not forgotten them and children that their parents love and care about them.  They allow prisoners to see themselves, and to function, in socially acceptable roles rather than as prison numbers and institutionalized dependents.

EMOTIONAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES

Prisoners' children and families must deal with feeling of shame and social stigma.  Imprisonment is not a reason for celebration nor a reason to be proud. It is not the goal one seeks for oneself or one's children.  Many family members do not tell even their closest friends about a relative's incarceration and go to great lengths to protect the prisoner's children from the consequences of revealing the family secret.  Depending on the crime and the prevalence of imprisonment in the neighborhood in which they live, family members may not be the object of social stigma or hostility in that neighborhood.  There is, nevertheless, a social stigma which families experience from other elements of society.  They may not experience stigma directly until they reveal the incarcerated relative's status to a child's teacher or a prospective landlord.




ULTIMATE TIDBIT

The ability and motivation to keep trying under the most difficult of circumstances that prisoners' families display and the sense of kinship that they have for a member who has been publicly sanctioned are solid strengths. As a nation, we must make a social investment in prisoners' families and children  that will require there be a more positive view of prisoner's families and family relationships, better understanding of family needs and societal responses, and dedicated attention to changing the prevailing system responses.

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS

The protection, care and nurturance of prisoners' children is a primary concern of prisoners and their families.  When parents go to prison, most children go, or continue, to live with relatives.  Children's care arrangements provide love, connections to kin, and a sense of belonging, but they are not ideal.There is a marked physical absence of men and father figures in the daily lives of prisoners' children as women carry the primary, and often sole, responsibility for caregiving for the children of both imprisoned men and women.




INFORMATION NEEDS

Families's lack of understanding, and access to information, about criminal justice processing provides yet another challenge to normal family functioning.  Often close relatives' knowledge of the prisoner's crime and sentence amounts to little more than "He's doing time for  drugs. With few exceptions, useful information is not available to families via handbooks or public websites either.