I recently came across this story about a program in North Carolina that allows incarcerated fathers to spend time with their children, including allowing them to communicate with them on the internet and to spend a week together in a Child/Father summer camp where they get to do clinically guided activities together.
I'm not sure what to think about this just yet. I have worked with several people that have been through the penal system both jail and prison (most say prison is better). Whether this system is for reformation or punishment or both, one thing is for sure, they usually do not want them to come back. I don't have the exact figures but we know that they frequently do. One thing I have seen is that if people are to change they often will do it for their children.
Maybe having contact with their children will encourage and motivate prisoners to stay out of the system. On the other hand, maybe they end up being a negative influence on the kids and shouldn't have a limited amount of contact. Do they still have the right to see their children or did they forfit that right when they committed the crime? What about the children's rights? In the end the child ends up paying the price.
My gut reaction is that, if the father is not dangerous or a bad influence, this would be a good thing for the children. I went to visit my brother in prison last weekend (drugs), and there was a mother and daughter (toddler) there. She could hardly wait to see her father. A program like this, of visitation for a week, would have to be heavily screened and supervised.
ReplyDeleteI agree w/ Paul. As long as the parent has been well screened to make sure the child would be safe, I think this is a good thing. Even if we don't care about the prisoner anymore, the child still wants that connection. Hopefully, the staff are very well-trained facilitators.
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna agree with Paul and Dan as long as the visitation is regulated and so it is not abused (i.e. kids used for drug trafficking etc) than I think it has a lot of potential to motivate the incarcerated to reform and also to allow the child access to interaction with a father figure! I'm curious to see how it works out!
ReplyDeleteThis is a hard issue. I do think that children should have rights to see their parents. They didn't commit the crime. But, like has been voiced before, a program like this would definitely need to be closely monitored. Perhaps one way to motivate fathers to become involved is to make it available upon "good behavior" that way only those fathers who are really interested in seeing their children will have access to the program.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure like most policies, there will be good and bad that come from father/child interaction in prison. This may be one of those situations where the policy is enacted and evaluated for outcomes. Hopefully, the outcome will be positive for both the fathers and children. Personally, I wouldn't want my child to be a guinea pig for this social experiment.
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