Tuesday, March 19, 2024
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Tags Children of prisoners

Tag: children of prisoners

True life: I’m serving a 40-year sentence too

Secondary prisonization is what happens when people visit someone in prison. Children are no exception. We experience subtle versions of our parent’s physical confinement, elaborate surveillance and strict guidelines for any and everything. In my experience, from the long rides all the way to small prisons in the middle of nowhere, Kentucky, to my little sister’s severe nosebleeds in the car as we traveled through the mountains of West Virginia, to the amped up security at each facility, to the absurdly cold visitation rooms – all of it was miserable.

Our children are affected by our incarceration

In America there are 24 million children with an incarcerated parent. Judges do not consider children when sentencing a parent, nor do they consider where those children will go or who will care for them. As parents, we must think about our children before we act because the courts have no money and our children are the ones suffering.

Poems for my son

A father writes to his son from prison: Often feeling guilty / Just knowing he’s feeling all alone / Rarely seeing, visiting or talking / To my precious son these days / Still, he lives vibrantly in my heart forever / For always / Just like true love / He’s the one I’m always and forever thinking of.