How should Centre County’s jail, others across Pa. allow children to visit with inmate parents?
A State College-based fathers’ advocacy group has raised concerns about how inmates, including those in Centre County, are permitted to visit with their children.
A study commissioned by the Dads’ Resource Center found less than half of county jails in Pennsylvania allow inmates barrier-free visits with their children.
Twenty-eight of the 50 county jails that responded to the survey do not allow contact visits, while 22 county jails only allow contact visits under certain conditions, according to a news release.
The Centre County Correctional Facility permits contact visits, but is one of eight responding counties that first requires inmates to complete a parenting class before granting a visit.
“When did we make the presumption that people in jail are bad parents? Is there evidence on that? I doubt it,” DRC founder Joel Myers said in the release. “To me, this is a serious abrogation of some really important American family and constitutional values.”
The jail’s policy was implemented in April 2017 and follows a recommendation outlined in a December 2011 Pennsylvania Joint State Government Commission report, county administrator Margaret Gray wrote in an email.
The 152-page report found parenting programs benefit family reunification and reduce recidivism. It recommended corrections administrators encourage inmates to complete a parenting program before they were released.
“This program is not a prerequisite of visitation because there is a presumption that an incarcerated individual is a ‘bad’ parent, ... but rather because reunification is to be approached with knowledge regarding a child’s likely sense of a loss of stability and abandonment,” Gray wrote. “Children often exhibit feelings of trauma and insecurity, which incarcerated parents can address with education and training”
The six-week class, which is provided both by the Youth Service Bureau and a volunteer group, is offered quarterly and is capped at 12-15 inmates per class, Gray wrote.
Contact visits are permitted on Tuesdays and Saturdays in a designated visiting room.
The Pennsylvania Prison Society is committed to working with county jail administrators to ensure their policies are sensitive to security concerns and supportive of families, Executive Director Claire Shubik-Richards said in a statement.
“The core of the Prison Society’s mission is to work to ensure humane prison conditions and to provide support to incarcerated people and their families,” Shubik-Richards said. “Being able to hug one’s child is a right rather than a privilege to be earned, and it is our duty to minimize the harms that incarceration imposes on both parents and children.”