“They [society] always
forget about the children.”
Rebecca Deierling
(Principal
for Adult Services, ND Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation )
He sits alone in the bedroom
with the light off, even though dusk is deepening into night. His growling
stomach alerts him to the fact that it is time to eat something. He knows that
no one will call his name to come to the table for dinner. He overhears
conversations at school that other people… families… sometimes sit down
together around a table and eat the same foods and talk about common things. They
have real conversations about how school is going, what happened during the
day. Stuff like that. Sometimes it’s been like that at foster homes, but he
can’t remember ever doing it with his own family. He wonders what that would be
like.
The cacophony of emotions that he
daily resists indulging sweep over him like a tide. He hates this place. His
cousin or aunt or family friend (he isn’t sure their connection to his life)
that he now lives with offered to take him from the most recent foster home so
that he could be with “family.” Some family. Most of the time there is no one here.
He has to find his own food and there is precious little of it. Most of
whatever money there is around here goes for booze or drugs. Lunch five days a
week is the one redeeming thing about school.
This place almost makes him miss
his last fosters. This was his fourth move in seven weeks and there have been
so many moves before that he can’t keep count. Just when he starts to (sort of) get used to a
place, something happens, and he’s packing his three smelly t-shirts and one
pair of jeans into a plastic grocery bag and being driven to a new place.
Sometimes fosters are nice enough, but they aren’t his parents. He doesn’t even
try to connect with them anymore. He used to believe that if he was good enough
or nice enough or helpful enough, his current caregivers would keep him. Maybe
even adopt him. But he gave up that dream years ago. Besides, it isn’t the same as being with his
dad. Or his mom. Yeah, they have their problems, but he loves them anyway. He
can’t help it.
He wishes for the hundredth time
that his grandmother could take him, but she isn’t much better. She has her own
issues and his cousins and aunts and uncles that rotate in and out of her tiny
house mean that she has no space for him. At least here he has a room with a
bed and a door. He has to share the room with some kid younger than himself,
which is annoying, but it could be worse. When his dad was around, they mostly
crashed with friends or relatives, which meant he usually had no bed to sleep
in or door to shut. Just a blanket on the floor and lots of noisy adults staying
up late. And his teachers wonder why I can’t stay awake in school.
His dad has been in the state
penitentiary for three years now. Three years feels like a lifetime. The last
time he saw his dad, he was in the fourth grade. Now he’s in middle school, and
he knows that he looks totally different. He’s not a kid anymore. Maybe his dad
wouldn’t even recognize him. The last time he saw his dad the door was being
kicked in and police in bulletproof vests were swarming the house and pinning
his dad to the floor. Everybody was yelling; his dad, the police, everybody. He
was so scared he couldn’t breathe. A social worker was there and tried to say
nice things and be reassuring, but he saw that same terrible scene every night
when he closed his eyes. The look in his dad’s eyes of fear, anger, and
embarrassment as they led him away in handcuffs. He had tried to run after his
dad that night, but the social worker held him back and to his embarrassment he
had burst into tears. Big, racking sobs that he couldn’t stop. His chest hurt
even now just thinking about it.
He misses his dad so much!
He wants to visit his dad in
prison. He knows it is possible. His social worker told him so. But his dad won’t
see him. His social worker said it wasn’t because his dad didn’t want to see
him. It was the other way around. His dad doesn’t want his son to see him in
prison, wearing a number and being ordered around. He’s ashamed or something.
‘I don’t care about any of that! I just want to talk to you, dad, in person.
Not on the phone. Not in a letter. One-on-one. Like the old days.’
He knows he’s messing up his own
life. School is terrible. He is embarrassed to tell the few friends he has that
his dad is a convicted felon, so he lies all the time. About almost everything.
It is exhausting to stay ahead of the lies. Sometimes he messes up his stories
and has to think fast. He can’t invite anyone over, not to this place, so he
never gets invited to anyone’s house. It gets lonely. Real lonely.
His grades are in the toilet
too. A couple of D’s and the rest F’s. He doesn’t care anymore. All the moving
around keeps him distracted and stressed out. He can’t focus on his classes or
his homework. Sometimes his fosters would ask about it, but he’d lie and say he
had finished his homework. He hasn’t stayed in one place long enough to have
anyone check on his grades or help him get caught up. He knows he isn’t helping
his own cause. He’s always moody and keeps to himself. It’s easier that way.
Better to not have warm feelings about anyone you are just going to leave
anyway.
He hangs his head and feels the warning
burn behind his eyes of tears that want to trickle down his tired face, and
soak into his dirty shirt. ‘Dad, I need you!’
This fictional story is a compilation of interviews I
conducted with social workers, teachers, and research related to children of
incarcerated parents. While the characters are fictitious, this child exists
among us. Here are some chilling realities about children who have one or both
incarcerated parents.
Five million children (1 in 14) in the U.S. have had at
least one incarcerated parent. Studies reveal that, for several reasons, it is
difficult to maintain parent-child relationships during incarceration. Some
might believe that it is in the best interest of the child to avoid visiting a
parent in prison, but research consistently reveals the opposite. It is good
for the parent AND the child to maintain a relationship during the
incarceration. Children are wired to be attached to their parents. When that
attachment is harmed, known as attachment insecurity, it can lead to devasting
long-term effects such as externalizing behaviors, depression, social
misfunction, grade retention, chronic physical health issues, such as asthma,
stigma, and poor mental and physical health into adulthood.
Insecure attachment is one of the worst predictors for
success throughout a lifetime. When children are passed around from caregiver
to caregiver, however well-meaning the intention, trauma is increased for that
child. Research has shown that it literally affects brain architecture and can
cause developmental delays that may require therapy. The social stigma of
having an incarcerated parent is another trauma for children. The negative
effects of experiencing this stigma can last well into their adult years.
This is where frequent visitations between a parent and
their child can have positive effects. However, the numbers are not
encouraging. Only fifty percent of incarcerated parents are ever visited by
their child(ren). There are several reasons for this that may include a
prohibitive distance from the caregiver’s home, lack of child-friendly
visitation areas within the prison facility, policies within the prison about
visitation, or the incarcerated parent or the caregiver refuses visitations.
It would be erroneous to paint a visit to a prison as
anything but a potentially emotional experience for all involved, but research
supports it as mostly positive, if the family unit has counseling support.
Recidivism rates tend to be lower for parents who experience child visitations
during incarceration.
It is good for the children as well. Predictive factors for
successful family relationships upon release from prison include more frequent
family visit along with parenting classes.
Much of the preceding information came from a literature
review compiled by the North Dakota Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation and Children of Incarcerated Parents (Smith, 2018). Recommendations
from the report for alleviating some of the effects of separation include reducing
the trauma and stigma of having an incarcerated parent, improving communication
between the parent and child(ren), and making visits to the prison more child
friendly.
During the long night of Covid, Project Armchair longed for
a way to continue to serve the children of our community while unable to read
in-person with them. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
sub-committee, Children of Incarcerated Parents (COIP), reached out to us and
asked if we could help them come up with ways to increase visitation rates with
literacy as its core component. Working with DOCR staff and a talented inmate,
we created a visually beautiful cozy corner in what had previously been a
sterile and unwelcoming space within the state penitentiary. The results were
so spectacular that, Missouri River Correctional Center, a minimum-security
prison requested help to accomplish the same results in their visitation room.
With plans now firmly in place, the inmate artists are
creating a unified theme for a bright and welcoming mural within MRCC, along
with a two-person bench conducive to reading side-by-side, and a low bookshelf.
Missouri River Correctional Center is considering other ways as well to make
visitations between incarcerated fathers and their children less intimidating
and more welcoming. Project Armchair applauds these efforts.
This is where you can participate. Books to
keep the shelves stocked need to be donated specifically for that purpose. In
the state penitentiary, for security reasons, books read with children in the
visitation room need to stay there. For a visiting child to keep and take home the
book they just read with their father; duplicate books will be kept outside of
the secure area. A team of literacy experts have compiled a list of
high-quality, high-engagement book titles for your convenience. It would be
wonderful if the supportive donors of Project Armchair would donate books from
this vetted list. Donating two books of the same title would allow children
with a father in the state penitentiary to keep a copy of the book they just read
with their dad. Please visit our website click here to find a list of
suggested titles under the “get involved” tab. If you prefer to donate money, our
website is linked to Paypal. We’d be happy to pick out the books for you!
A side note: the rate of illiteracy among incarcerated
individuals is high. Seventy percent of incarcerated inmates cannot read above
a fourth-grade level. When choosing book titles to donate, colorful picture
books (books that tell the story as much through illustrations as text) are
ideal for preserving the dignity of the parent. These books are generally
geared for kindergarten through second grade.
References
Smith, N. (2018). Children of incarcerated parents
outline. North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Murphey, D. & Cooper, M. (2015). Parents behind bars:
What happens to their children? Child Trends. Retrieved from: https://www.childtrends.org/publications/parents-behind-bars-what-happens-to-their-children
https://governorsfoundation.org/gelf-articles/early-literacy-connection-to-incarceration/