According to the US. Department of Health and Human Services, one and one half million children have at least one parent incarcerated in a state or federal prison for more than one year. These children are seven times more likely to go to jail than other children because of their separation from their parents and, as a result, they are angry, distrusting of authority figures, engage in risky sexual behaviors, join gangs and surrogate families and often become drug dependent.
This is recorded in the Federal Register February 23, 2004 US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.
The 50 states, the District of Columbia and the federal government held 1,355,748 prisoners (two-thirds of the total incarcerated population), and local municipal and county jails held 894,794 inmates.
Restrictions on the time, place and manner of visiting an inmate in a Federal or State prison are becoming more difficult due to a number of reasons. Some of these reasons are environmental, sociological and or financial. Most restrictions, however, are due to inmate behavior and family resources.
Purpose: ...is to provide the services that help strengthen families of incarcerated individuals. Millions of families are affected daily by incarceration. This can and does impose undue hardships on the well-being of the prisoners and their families, especially their minor children.
Communication between prisoners and their families provides the most concrete and visible strategy that families and prisoners use to manage separation and maintain connections. Families visit their imprisoned relatives through the convenience of televisitation. These contacts allow adults and parents and children to share family experiences and participate in family rituals, e.g., birthday celebrations, religious observances, etc. and help them to remain emotionally attached. They help assure incarcerated parents that their children have not forgotten them and children that their parents love and care about them. They allow prisoners to see themselves, and to function, in socially acceptable roles rather than as prison numbers and institutionalized dependents.
