This article was originally published in North Carolina Prison News Today out of Nash Correctional Institution. It won third place for Best Opinion in the 2025 American Penal Press Contest.
“I’m not blaming my father, but his incarceration kind of set the tone for my life,” Sadiq Banks said. Banks, a habitual criminal, has done time in several states. Raised in Newark, New Jersey during the 1980s, his upbringing was the rule rather than the exception. “Most of the guys I grew up with didn’t have a relationship with their fathers because they were either in prison or dead.” His father was no different. James Banks committed a bank robbery where two people were killed and ended up with two life sentences when Sadiq was 12 years old. “My father was a hustler, and he always took care of his family. So, when he went to prison, as the oldest of three I felt like I had to step up and provide for the family,” Banks said. He started stealing cars, then quickly graduated to selling drugs. His first arrest came a week shy of his fifteenth birthday. During his incarceration, his mother got hooked on drugs, and as a result, his two younger sisters were sent into the foster system. “I haven’t seen them since,” Banks said.
Mass incarceration has devastated communities. Whenever a parent is convicted, their children are sentenced as well, and, in many cases, their sentences are much harsher. Children of incarcerated parents are six times more likely to go to prison, according to James Conway, a Ph.D. in the Department of Psychological Science at Central Connecticut State University.
In North Carolina, over 20,000 children have an incarcerated parent, one-third of incarcerated North Carolinians have at least one child under 18. According to a Bureau of Justice special report, there are more children with an incarcerated parent than there are people in all American prisons. Several recent studies state the adverse effects incarceration has on children. Adverse Childhood Experiences (A.C.E), what several recent studies name the effects incarceration has on children, can vary from more aggressive behavior, delinquency, drug abuse, teen pregnancies and their own interactions with the justice system. Recognizing the problem, the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction (DAC) decided to take a proactive approach. “The DAC places a strong emphasis on offering diverse opportunities for high quality rehabilitative programming, which certainly includes opportunities for family connections and parenting programs,” says Charles Mautz, Director of Rehabilitation Services. “These programs… not only assist the incarcerated individual, but improve the life of the [children] themselves.”
The DAC offers several programs that aim to bolster the parent/child relationship including Fatheread, Motheread, Proverbs 22:6, Mothers and Their Children (MATCH), Father Accountability, Parent Day, and Family Reentry Support and Help (FRESH). The latter two are overseen by Our Children’s Place of Coastal Horizons, a non-profit program based in Durham and headed by Ms. Melissa Radcliff. Our Children’s Place focuses primarily on community support for children of the incarcerated and returning parents. Ms. Radcliff worked with crime victims for over a decade before taking over Our Children’s Place, where she learned so much about various systems, what’s broken and what’s working.
In 2012, she took that experience and parlayed it into the program called Parent Day. “I always joke that it’s actually more like kids’ day because kids get to make all the decisions.” The day consists of games like cornhole, ring toss, board games like Connect Four, and checkers. There are also arts and crafts such as decorating baseball caps to take home as something they created with their dad. Lastly, there is a book display, which is a great opportunity for parents to reinforce a love of learning and reading, and a way to learn more about their child. “We usually encourage the parents to write notes inside the books so that when the kids open them up when they get home, they can read it and say, “my dad signed this,” Ms. Radcliff remarked. This spring, Parent Day was held at three correctional institutions: Sampson, Orange and Southern, which are all male minimum-custody facilities. While these programs are excellent opportunities to connect parents with their children, the fact remains that participation is predicated on the incarcerated individual being “infraction free,” which begs the question, is this about the parental connection or another institutional tool used to modify behavior?
The DAC Policy and Procedure Manual Chapter D. 0211 states: “[I]f a person assaults staff and it results in a physical injury, their personal visitation privileges will be suspended for a minimum of 12 months, with the possibility of a 24-month suspension. Then, after the suspension, only non-contact visits will be allowed for the remainder of a person’s incarceration.” Regarding telephone privileges, Section D. 0804 says, “Offender participation in the telephone program may be suspended through the disciplinary process as a form of punishment.” If a write up can keep me from parental programs as well as visits and even phone calls, then my child becomes just another carrot on a long, punitive stick.
The dilemma of incarcerated individuals versus parents will go a long way in defining the true purpose of the carceral state. Is incarceration predicated on rehabilitation or punishment? If ir’s the former, then program eligibility should reflect that end, but if it leans toward the latter, then prison reform is nothing but hyperbole.
The North Carolina General Assembly recently passed The Parent’s Bill of Rights (SB 47), which gave parents more say over what is happening to their children in school and what they are being taught. SB 47 aligns with the view of the Supreme Court. In Quilloin v. Walcott (1978), the Court ruled: “We have reсognized on numerous occasions that the relationships between the parent and child is constitutionally protected.”
What does this constitutional right look like in prison? What does this constitutional right look like for the child? Some may opine that people forfeit their parental rights when they commit crimes, and children are simply “collateral damage.” However, the impact reverberates beyond the immediate family, in the form of more tax money spent on ballooning welfare programs, food stamps, and more subsidized government housing.
Several states have read the tea leaves and have decided to take action. The New Jersey General Assembly passed a law called The Women and Families Strengthening Act, which imposes the right for incarcerated parents to be housed near their children. In 2018, Massachusetts made in-person visits mandatory in all county jails. Illinois did the same with their Protect Prison Visits Bill which prohibited Illinois prisons from eliminating in-person visits. Even The American Corrections Association (ACA) unanimously ratified the need for in-person visits.
These measures are essential to maintaining familial bonds, but they must be fortified with a rehabilitation infrastructure that includes all stakeholders to formulate a board to examine the best practices to ensure the children of incarcerated parents are able to thrive. This board would include representatives from the DAC community based organizations, governmental agencies like Child Protective Services, as well as the incarcerated parents themselves. These measures would give parents the opportunity to be involved with decisions that directly affect their children, as well as introduce suggestions that will help create programs within prisons for the strengthening of the parent/child relationship. With the onus of responsibility squarely on their shoulders, incarcerated parents would be forced to step up, which would ultimately place rehabilitation in their hands.
Our involvement could take the form of a Prison Parents’ Council at every facility that would operate like the Men’s Club. The Council could then use fundraisers to host events like toy drives, programs where parents get special visits with their children, and even sponsor bus rentals to bring family members to the prison for such visits. Because membership on the Council entails leadership qualities and exemplary conduct, the Council could be based on good behavior, which would give incarcerated parents the incentive to stay infraction free without punishing the children with denial of visitation. Reason being, infractions that punish children by depriving them of visitation, calls, and events has nothing to do with infractions that prevent the incarcerated from leadership positions. There’s no contradiction.
Knowing that one-third of the prison population are parents, North Carolina’s commitment to prison reform, re-entry, and re-acclamation rests solely on how the DAC structures its support for family bonding. Better parents make for better people, better people make better communities, and in the end, isn’t that what reform is all about?
