Strengthening the Families of the Incarcerated

Our communities have a huge stake in the successful reentry of prisoners after they serve their sentences. Over 700,000 inmates will be released from prison this year. These returning inmates will be our neighbors. Will they have the stability and support of an intact family? Or will they be cast adrift with no social network other than their old friends who got them in trouble in the first place? A supportive family often makes the difference between inmates becoming healthy, contributing members of society, or returning to criminal behavior.

Research shows that when returning inmates have a supportive family, they are more likely to find a job, less likely to use drugs, and less likely to be involved in criminal activities. The support and accountability that a stable family provides have a clear, positive impact. Studies also show that children who are able to visit with their parents in prison have increased cognitive skills, improved academic self-esteem, and greater self-control. They also change schools much less often. And those incarcerated parents who receive visits from their children enjoy lower recidivism rates than those parents who do not.

You would think that the prison system would do everything possible to strengthen the families of inmates. Prison officials should make preserving and strengthening families a top priority. Unfortunately, many do not. And that is bad for all of us: the prisoner, the family, and the community. Many prison policies are distinctly unfriendly toward families and make it very hard for them to remain together during incarceration. In fact, prison policies often end up undercutting rather than reinforcing family cohesion. These anti-family policies are having a dreadful impact on our communities.

If we are to reduce recidivism, we should change the following family unfriendly policies:

• Most inmates are imprisoned hundreds of miles from their families, without public transportation available for their families to come for visits.

• Many prisons prohibit relatives other than the custodial parent from bringing their children to visit their parent. Thus, the caregiver who often works two jobs to support the family is the only one who can bring the children to visit. No grandparents, aunts, or uncles are allowed to bring them.

• Other prisons prohibit children from visiting unless the incarcerated parent is listed on their birth certificate. This cuts off contact for parents not listed and places them in a Catch-22, because many states consider failure to visit or communicate with a child in foster care as grounds to terminate all parental rights.

• Federal law requires a hearing to terminate a parent’s relationship permanently with his or her child after 12 months. Many inmates receive no notice of these hearings and have no representation. Even inmates with short sentences can lose parental rights permanently.

• After traveling many hours to the prison, many families are forced to wait outside (no matter the weather conditions) without seating, food, water or sanitary facilities. And once inside the visiting room, many prisons have no books or activities for children.

• Many prisons have no visiting hours in the evenings or on weekends, eliminating visits for working spouses and parents.

• Most prisons limit prisoners to collect calls, charging exorbitant rates to their families, who are among the poorest residents of the United States. Some states charge as much as $3.95 to place the call plus 89 cents per minute. Families are prohibited from using discount cards that allow the rest of us to make calls for less than 10 cents a minute.

• Because of a most barbaric policy, many prisons require pregnant inmates to be shackled during childbirth. Some allow the mother to hold her child for a few minutes before removing the baby. Others take the child from the mother without even letting her hold the child she has just delivered.

The following policies have a harmful effect on a prisoner’s reentry experience:

• The lack of adequate health care exposes inmates to Hepatitis, Tuberculosis, Staph infections, HIV/AIDS, and many other communicable diseases. This places the inmates’ families and communities at risk when they are released.

• The climate of violence—including prison rape—inside our correctional institutions often leaves inmates scarred physically and emotionally, making their transition home much harder. The “skills” inmates develop to survive in a violent prison make them anti-social when they get out, making life very difficult for their families.

• Many prisons prohibit religious volunteers who work with inmates inside prison from having any contact with the inmate after release, cutting off offenders and their families from the very people who can be their best influence.

The policies of every state prison system are different, as are the policies of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. No system has all of the bad policies listed above. However, a majority of states do have many of these harmful policies, and the result is the destruction of many incarcerated families.

The family is the basic structure of our society. As it dissolves, crime and delinquency skyrocket. Justice Fellowship hopes you will join us in reforming state policies so that families are strengthened during and after incarceration. You can help us by contacting your legislators and asking them to review your state’s policies regarding the issues listed above. If those policies undercut inmate families, ask your legislators to work with you to change them. I hope you will use the resources on our website to inform your legislators about these issues, and to stay informed yourself. Please let us know of your progress. The result will be stronger families, and safer communities.

Pat Nolan is a vice president of PFM and leads the criminal justice reform arm, Justice Fellowship.

Find more information at the Justice Fellowship website.

Pat Nolan, When Prisoners Return (Xulon Press, 2004).

Learn how you can volunteer at Prison Fellowship’s website.