Hurting convicts' children

Restrictive visiting hours at some of the region's prisons make it unnecessarily difficult for children to maintain relationships with their incarcerated parents. This punishes the children and helps perpetuate a damaging cycle.

The Riverside Correctional Facility, Philadelphia's women's prison, holds visiting hours from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays, for example. A spokesman told me those hours "were constructed around working hours by the facility's administration." However, children's caregivers are often at work until 5 p.m. Depending on where they live and travel time, that can make it impossible for them to take children to visit their mothers at the prison.

The visiting schedule can also cause conflicts for children at school. In Philadelphia, most children are in school from at least 8:30 a.m. until 3 p.m. Many participate in after-school activities or homework that may last until 5 or 6 o'clock. And travel time may serve as an additional obstacle for children trying to visit their parents before 6.

Some prisons maintain visiting hours that are much easier on families. Chester County Prison in West Chester, for example, has visiting hours from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. on weeknights, giving children and their guardians plenty of time to get to the prison after work and school hours.

Visiting hours that give children a realistic chance to see their parents are particularly crucial given that many prisons, including Riverside and Chester County, allow only one visit a week. This is another barrier to parent-child bonding.

Some may ask, "Why should we care if the children of inmates see their mothers or not? The mothers should reap the consequences of their crimes." But regardless of the decisions prisoners made, their children should not be needlessly punished.

Two state legislative resolutions introduced this year call for more research on children of incarcerated parents and an assessment of their needs. Studies have shown that such children are more likely to participate in illegal behavior. This often means children repeat the mistakes of their parents, which leads to their becoming prisoners, too. Something must be done to stop this cycle of incarceration.

A few nonprofit programs are working to improve the lives of young people whose parents are in prison. Philadelphia-based Amachi (www.amachi.org) provides at-risk youths with peer mentors and counselors. The Philadelphia Society for Services to Children's Kids n' Kin program (www.pssckids.org) supports children living with caregiver relatives while their mothers are incarcerated.

Such groups are also working to sustain relationships between children and their incarcerated parents. Unfortunately, the region's prisons are not.

More can be done for the children of incarcerated parents. One simple step is to give them an opportunity to have a relationship with their parents.