According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 9:
"As a rule, the child has the right to live with his or her parents if the child feels happy and safe living with them. A child who is separated from his or her parents has the right to meet and maintain regular contacts with both parents. Such a meeting can be prevented if it is contrary to the child's best interests."
Visitation and contact with an incarcerated parent allow children to express emotional reactions to the parent-child separation due to imprisonment and to see the parent's situation realistically, which can relieve children's fears about prisons and how their parent is treated there (Myers, Smarsh, Amlund-Hagen & Kennon 1999, 16). This is especially important with younger children, who might not understand their incarcerated parent's situation wholly, causing irrational fears and fantasies of prisons to develop. In 2013 the Criminal Sanctions Agency published a report on their child and family work policies. The publication's purpose was to implement the UN convention on the Rights of the Child to make sure the primacy of the best interests of the child (Article 3) was actualized in the Criminal Sanctions Agency's work (Criminal Sanctions Agency 2013, 1). This meant significant changes in visitation policies because as Hairston (1998, 624) discussed in her article, correctional facilities restrict social interactions between prisoners and visitors, and this focus on discipline and control is usually done without care to a child's wellbeing. Strict discipline and control can be functional for the management of prisons (ibid., 625), however for a child visiting their incarcerated parent, a prison can be a strange and scary place, a closed-off facility stripped to the bare minimum. As Arditti (2012, 12) pointed out, institutionalized visitation within the prison or jail is a primary means of interaction between incarcerated parents and their children.
Thus, parent-child contact automatically means contact with the prison and the criminal justice system, which is why it is critical to implement more child friendly visitation policies in prisons.
Enabling parent-child contact is part of the Criminal Sanctions Agency's family work for prisoners.
Family work offers resources that are focused on (1) communication between a prisoner and his/her family, (2) supporting positive family relationships, and (3) providing rehabilitation that is aimed towards improving parental and intimate relationships. (1) Communication between a prisoner and his/her family include phone calls, monitored visits, unmonitored visits, family appointments, and other parent-child appointments. Monitored visits, also known as plexiglass visits, usually allow two adult visitors or one adult and multiple children per prisoner. The plexiglass can be 30 cm high from the table upwards or reaching from floor to ceiling, depending on the evaluation for the prisoner's need of surveillance. Family appointments and other parent-child appointments are unmonitored visits, and facilities depend highly on prisons and their security concerns. (2) Supporting positive family relationships means work that is aimed towards improving communication between family members that can be for example, prisoner-, couple-, or family-focused counselling. Some prisons also organize family camps. Finally, (3) rehabilitation from the point of view of family work can include preventing recidivism and close relationship violence.
(Criminal Sanctions Agency 2013, 10, 15.) The report stated that the situation of child and family work policies at the time were still largely prison based, with differences in practice between prisons, and children's rights and best interests were often forgotten (ibid., 1). Support and rehabilitation work for prisoners and their families are important with chances of improving communication, and preventing domestic violence, substance abuse and recidivism Thus, attention will be returned to the topic of interventions and the possibilities they can provide for families with incarcerated persons in the discussion of this thesis. Next, research on parent-child contact is considered in the context of the prison and the effects that parent-child contact may have on children of prisoners.
Prior to the report from the Criminal Sanctions Agency in 2013, Ryynänen and Suomela (2011) had reported on prisons' contact policies, emphasizing problems that resulted from the inflexible nature of the policies and the lack of consideration for children's rights and best interests. Using surveys, they studied prisoners' and their loved ones' experiences regarding contact keeping while in prison.
Parental incarceration was addressed regarding experiences of prisoners with children and how they kept in contact. Overall the results were bleak. Out of 119 imprisoned parents, 54% felt that their children could contact them poorly or very poorly during imprisonment. Parents reported issues such as the short lengths of visits, unpleasant plexiglass visits, unsuitable facilities for children, strict regulations on phone calls, and the scarcity of visits, to be the most common reasons for difficulty in keeping in contact. One of the biggest issues seemed to be the lack of child friendly
visiting facilities in some prisons. Incarcerated parents voiced their concerns about how children perceived the "abnormal" nature of visits, where they were required to sit still in a room with other people and talk to their parents through a plexiglass, which further highlighted the fact that they were visiting in prison. In the open comment section of the survey, many parents proposed visitations where they could be "normal"; play games together, do crafts, or watch a movie with their children. In general, the majority of the study's incarcerated parents wanted to spend more time with their children, without constant reminder that they were in prison. (Ryynänen & Suomela 2011, 35–39.)
Although prison visitations can be stressful when visiting environments are not child friendly, lack of any contact with incarcerated parents may result in children's negative feelings about their incarcerated parents (Poehlmann, Dallaire, Loper & Shear 2010, 7). Studies have also shown that family contact during imprisonment has positive outcomes for prisoners and is an important enabler for a successful re-entry (May, Sharma & Stewart 2008; Mills & Codd 2008). Contact during imprisonment may support children through the period of the prison sentence and even help children prepare for the parent's return (Lanskey, Lösel, Markson & Souza 2016, 44). Findings of a study on children's contact and their relationships with their imprisoned fathers, suggest a significant positive association between frequency of visits and telephone calls and father-child relationship post-release (Lanskey et al. 2016). Children and family visits were also considered in the study and although less frequent than ordinary visits, fathers reported being able to play and be physically close with their children, which facilitated a sense of family and fatherhood (ibid., 52). In contrast, post-release tensions between fathers and their children might be linked to limited contact during the father's prison sentence (ibid.). The researchers stated that opportunities for contact were highly dependent on the prison system, the conditions of individual prisons, and the agreement of influential others, that is caregivers, prison staff, and social workers (ibid.).
In addition to enabling parent-child contact during imprisonment and taking children's interests and rights into consideration, co-operation between different networks should be improved to factor in children's possible needs for support during a parent's imprisonment. Seymour (1998) pointed out in her article on child welfare that children with incarcerated or criminal justice-involved parents differ from the rest of the child welfare population. These children have unique permanency planning needs because neither the parent nor the child welfare system can affect or shorten the length of parent-child separation. Children's therapeutic needs may also differ due to the parent's criminal behaviour prior to incarceration, trauma associated with parent-child separation, or the
stigma associated with incarceration. In addition, naturally the involvement of the criminal justice system limits contact between incarcerated parents, caregivers, children and social workers that makes it difficult to plan for the child's future. (Seymour 1998, 474–475.) Co-operation is important between officials of the criminal justice system and child welfare because of these factors. More importantly, it is emphasized by law with the duty to notify social services if there is concern about a child's need for child welfare on account of the child's need for care, circumstances endangering the child's development, or the child's behaviour (Child Welfare Act 417/2007 § 25). A parent's arrest, involvement in crime investigation or remand are examples of circumstances that require investigating the need for child welfare, long before conviction or imprisonment. Hence, the police service should work continuously with social services to ensure the best interests of children. In the case of effective collaboration between systems, incarceration can be a period of positive intervention for families at risk (Seymour 1998, 477). This kind of positive intervention not only improves the chances of successful reintegration for incarcerated parents but enhances the likelihood that children will be reunited safely with their parents or find permanency with other families (ibid.).