OUR FEATURED RESEARCH

Facilitating Children’s Relationships with their Incarcerated Parents:

Good for the Children, Good for Society

With 1.8 million prisoners, the United States has the highest prison population and incarceration rate of any country in the world. Even worse, over half of the prisoners are parents to minor children, resulting in 2.7 million, or 1 in 28, children with a currently incarcerated parent. Including formerly incarcerated parents, over 5 million children in the U.S. have experienced the effects of parental incarceration. These children are innocent victims whose broken parental bonds cause adverse childhood effects in many aspects of their lives. Such adverse effects include caregiver disruption, financial hardships, food insecurity, housing instability, educational interruption, emotional and behavioral problems, and mental and physical health issues. These adverse outcomes result from a situation beyond the children’s control.

Numerous research and empirical studies show that children who maintain regular contact with their incarcerated parents have better outcomes (Bales & Mears, 2008; Bales & Mears, 2013; Cochran, 2012; Hairston, 1991; Haverkate & Wright, 2020; Holt & Miller, 1972; Lee, 2020; Minnesota Department of Corrections, 2011). These outcomes include improved mental, emotional, and social well-being and health and reduced behavioral problems, substance abuse, and incarceration risk. In addition, this regular contact provides incentives and support that improve prisoner behavior and reduce the risk of recidivism. These parental outcomes reduce the cost of incarceration and lower crime rates, which makes society better.

Despite these benefits, there are many significant policy-driven and structural barriers to children maintaining regular contact with their incarcerated parents. In-person prison visits can be difficult, if not impossible, for children due to geographic distance, transportation costs, complicated prison visit logistics, restrictive visitation policies, invasive security processes, and child-unfriendly waiting and visiting rooms.

However, legislative and policy reform solutions can help lower these barriers to in-person visits. First, states should pass caregiver mitigation and diversion laws that consider caregiver status in sentencing decisions, including alternative-to-prison programs that would allow children access to their parents. Second, states should pass proximity laws that limit the distance an incarcerated parent can be imprisoned from their children and ensure adequate resources for implementation. Third, states should fund programs that provide transportation for children to visit their parents in prison. Lastly, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the state’s Department of Corrections should adopt child-friendly visitation policies and procedures to reduce the traumatic elements of prison visits without compromising safety and security.

In addition to in-person visits, there are barriers to children maintaining contact through phone calls and video visits. Prison calls are typically significantly more expensive than non-prison calls, with the telecommunications providers and prisons making money from the inflated prices. Despite the availability of free virtual video solutions, unregulated pricing allows prisons to turn video visits into profit centers by economically exploiting the children and families of the prisoners. Pre-pandemic video visits also suffered from technology problems and poor-quality video. In addition, a lack of Internet access can also be a barrier for families.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an opportunity for prisons to adopt video conferencing technology that allows them to offer free video visits so that children can have regular contact with their incarcerated parents without many of the drawbacks of in-person visits. Prisons should minimize their costs by leveraging free solutions, such as Zoom, to renegotiate their current contracts or conduct a request-for-proposal (RFP) process with new vendors. As part of this process, prisons should conduct a technology evaluation to ensure they have or adopt a highly reliable solution that minimizes technology problems and maximizes video quality. Prisons should also use video conferencing technology in other areas of prison operations to lower existing costs or streamline logistics. To address Internet access barriers, prisons should form partnerships with community-based organizations, such as churches and nonprofits, to host computer stations for children and families without Internet access.

There has been some progress in these areas. Twelve states have adopted caregiver mitigation or proximity laws, with three more currently considering them. Some state prisons have started offering free phone calls. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections adopted Zoom to offer free video visits to state prisoners permanently. The Department of Justice provides grant funding for improvements to visiting areas and revisions to policies and procedures to support child-friendly visitation experiences.

However, the progress made is nowhere near close enough to what it needs to be to make a real difference in helping vulnerable children, the innocent victims of parental incarceration. We must collectively lobby state lawmakers, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the state’s Department of Corrections for genuine legislative and policy-driven change. In doing so, we can change children’s outcomes and break the intergenerational cycle of incarceration-driven adversity they face, and their children and grandchildren will face if we do not act.