Let prisoners see their children

He recalled Singh, who had subsequently been placed on suicide watch at the St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital, once hugged his wife and mother when they visited him at the institution in 2002, declaring his three children were keeping him alive.

Singh’s children, Adesh, Sharda and Rajiv, who were 16, 14 and seven, respectively, at the time, were unable to see their father because children must be 18 and over to visit patients in the Forensic Ward.

Singh, who was acquitted, died of a massive heart attack at the Westshore Medical Centre, Cocorite, in November 2008. Khan revisited Singh’s ordeal, last Saturday after Superintendent of Prisons Programmes and Industry, TT Prisons Service, Charmaine Johnson, made an appeal for all mothers incarcerated at the Women’s Prison to be given the opportunity to celebrate with their children during its annual Mother’s Day function.

Johnson said while it has been the custom to have only a few mothers celebrate with their children at the function, that must now change.

“It really tugs at me to see the kids here coming to come and visit with their moms but it tugs at me even more when we have to choose a certain amount of mothers. We have to decide who comes out for the children to spend the day with and that destroys me,” she said.

“So, I am making a pledge, once I am in the Trinidad and Tobago Prison Service, that from next year every mother who has a child and is in the Women’s Prison would be allowed to have their children here with them.” Johnson’s appeal resonated with Khan, so much so that he feels strong consideration must be given to allowing children to visit more frequently their incarcerated parents.

“I remember Dhanraj Singh had that problem and that is why I feel strongly about it because I saw the destruction, his children were around primary school age at the time and he was unable to see them for the years he was in jail. By the time he came out a free man, everything was finished, done,” Khan told Sunday Newsday during an interview on Friday.

The former health minister said he intends to table a motion next week in Parliament, calling for a mechanism to be established whereby children can regularly visit their parents in prison, some of whom may be receiving lengthy terms. Khan said he had already spoken to National Security Minister Edmund Dillon about the motion “and he has agreed to meet with me to discuss it.” Khan argued that the existing system places untold hardship on children, many of whom have to be left to their own devices when their parents are imprisoned.

“We are talking about childhood care, looking at a bunch of children who are being displaced indefinitely and that is the direction I am looking at. “I am taking the focus off the inmate and putting it on the children. It is not about punishing the inmate but taking care of the children. That is the whole direction I am going to take,” he said.

“This is not about inmates. That is the mistake everybody is making.

It is about children to be able to see their parents.” As Khan sees it, the word inmate promotes negativity in the minds of most people.

“People will say, ‘Nothing for them.

They do the crime, let them suffer.’ But we have to look at the children aspect of it and not being able to see their parents. That bond has been broken.” As the country grapples with youth violence and indiscipline, some being perpetrated in schools, Khan argued that a child’s prolonged absence from his or her parents “could lead to mental problems and their heading in an abnormal direction.” Many of the children, Khan said, may be exposed to sexual, emotional and physical abuse with nowhere to turn.

He said when the parents are eventually freed, the bond between parent and child is more often that not, gone.

“So, you end up now with a situation in the society that you really don’t want but that you are fostering.” Khan claimed programmes in which children were allowed frequent visitation have worked successfully in San Francisco and other parts of the United States.

“Child psychologists looked at the problem years ago and they showed a correlation between parents being snatched away by the protective services and leaving the children there, in the hands of other people and not being able to see them under the age of 18,” he said.

“The damage, psychologically, that occurs with these children as a result of that and being in foster homes and not being taken care of properly, to not be able to touch and hold their parents, we end up with people who hate the system and they tend to be the criminals of tomorrow.” According to Khan, visitation programmes in other jurisdictions are executed in congenial settings.

“What they have done in other parts of the world is designate an area in the prisons, which is non-prison- oriented, like how a hospital room might look, and the parents meet the children there under supervision.

“They may even help them with their homework, read a book to them. And it is allowed for weekly visits, birthdays and different things. They may even have a cake and blow out the candles. That is what I am hoping to get done.” San Francisco’s one family programme Checks by Sunday Newsday revealed that initiatives to help inmates bond with the children have worked successfully in San Francisco, according to reports.

In a special report titled, Bonding Behind Bars, carried in a September 2016 edition of The Chronicle, Sunday Newsday learnt that children are allowed to see their parents as part of San Francisco’s One Family Visitation Programme.

The report alluded to the experience of a 12-year-old boy, named Sean Sanchez, who regularly visited his imprisoned father.

“The boy won’t just speak to his dad. As part of San Francisco’s One Family visitation programme, he’ll be able to hug him, sit close, play a board game together. He can lean in to tell him what happened at school that week — and how much he misses him.

They’ll be together for 90 minutes. Most kids with jailed parents can’t do that,” Jill Tucker wrote.

Tucker noted that while county jails across the country restricted visits to opposite sides of a glass partition, only a handful, including San Francisco’s main facility in San Bruna, allowed contact visits between jailed parents and their sons and daughters.

But there was a downside to the trend, Tucker observed.

The intimate visits cost more and have raised security concerns.

Still, research suggests the visits may benefit both parent and child.

Maintaining contact with a locked-up parent reduces anxiety and mental health issues among the children while reducing recidivism among the parents, according to “Shared Sentence,” a recent study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a Baltimore organization focused on child health and welfare.

For inmates, just one family visit of any kind can reduce recidivism by 13 percent, according to a 2011 Minnesota Department of Corrections study of 16,000 inmates.

“There is no question that the bond is really nurtured when (children) come for a visit,” said Ruth Morgan, the founder and director of Community Works West, a Bay Area non-profit organisation addressing the effects of incarceration, which oversees San Francisco’s One Family programme.

“We know it benefits the parent in jail. It’s one thing that really inspires them to change their life.” Balance mental health Child and educational psychologist Margaret Nakhid-Chatoor said she supported calls for widespread visitation between children and their incarcerated parents.

However, she said the plan must take into consideration the holistic development of both groups of people, particularly in the area of mental health.

“Because one of the things I think about inmates is that they feel they no longer have a connection to family so that their mental health deteriorates,” she said.

“As regards mothers, one of the things that increases mental health is attachment to family in the social context and the attachment between a mother and child or a father and his children, that I think, if it is broken, creates a lot of issues.

“And, if the thrust is that visits between parents and children would facilitate a connection I am all for it and I agree with it.” On the flip side, Nakhid- Chatoor said: “We still have to look at the long term and short term goals because, on the other hand, it is argued that we don’t want prison to be a place where people feel that they are given all of these benefits and you are in prison, because you are in a place where your benefits are taken away from you because of the crime that you have done.

“So, we don’t want the argument to be that benefits are still given to you while you are in prison.

“That is why I say that the first thing to be looked at is what are the long and short term goals of the plan.” Nakhid-Chatoor said mental health must be the focal point of any plan for rehabilitation.

“If that is the key, then it is an excellent plan. But the entire thing must be looked at holistically.”