The Over-Reliance on Incarceration - Essay Example

The public awareness campaign can be conducted in consultation with the Children and Families of Incarcerated Parents Advisory Committee. The Outreach and Education Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee can spearhead this campaign. Meetings of heads and members of institutions entrusted with the welfare of the families of incarcerated children can be convened to discuss possible steps to improve their functioning. Regarding the possibility of developing better communication between the incarcerated and their families, “parent education classes for inmates, a therapeutic child-centered facility serving children of female inmates and examination of current rules and practices including visiting, mail and phones” have been some measures being suggested (Oregon.

gov, July 4, 2010).There have been many studies conducted on the impact of constant and good contact with the family on the rehabilitation of an incarcerated person and the results have been amazing. Findings of various studies have shown that:strong family relationships have positive outcomes on rates of delinquency for children of incarcerated parents….effects of parental criminality are mediated by parental attachment….frequent contact with children while incarcerated facilitates future reunification….

male inmates who maintain strong family ties have much better post-release success… for those who resume responsible husband and parenting roles, there are higher rates of success…. inmates who maintained frequent outside contacts while in prison did significantly better on parole…..family relationships are a key indicator of success for females…(and as) relapse prevention (Lee, June 2005).This connection between family contact and behavioral patterns of the incarcerated needs to be further investigated through solid research.

All these activities involve a considerable amount of expense. The funding for these should come from both the government and child welfare organizations. Public fundraising campaigns can be clubbed with public awareness campaigns so that both awareness, as well as a positive action, goes hand in hand. For a public policy campaign like this, media support is very important. The families who suffer silently because of the incarceration of a parent can be given a platform in print and electronic media so that they get a chance to connect with the hitherto hostile society.

But it is not easy to win prime space in the media for the issues of a marginal group like the families of the incarcerated. Individual cases and experiences representative of the common problems faced by the families and children of the incarcerated can be highlighted as human interest stories in the media. For this, there needs to be a change in common perceptions that govern media reporting.It has been observed that “in the media, in general, women prisoners are demonized and presented as morally degenerate” (Garcia Coll et.

al, 1998, pp.263). This is only one instance of the stereotyping done by media. In order to change this tendency and give a positive space to the incarcerated, discussions should be convened involving media persons on how to report the issues related to the incarcerated and what kind of restraint need to be practiced. Media need to take up the problems of children of the incarcerated, especially, incarcerated mothers as a public cause and policy matter. Then only will there be an effective attempt from their side to support the public policy in this regard?

Another plausible way is to create a media-public interface to support the children of incarcerated. Public experience sharing sessions for the family members of the incarcerated have to be organized. Media should also be encouraged to report stories of survival and achievement among the children of incarcerated. Yet another area of intervention for media is in pressurizing the government to liberalize the rules governing the visit of a child to his or her parent in prison and also mails and phone calls between them.

The Children and Families of Incarcerated Parents Advisory Committee should regularly monitor media content for negative and positive representations of the children of the incarcerated and convene routine consultations with media representatives. Innovative child support policies need to be formulated based on social research among this marginal segment of the population. All these efforts in totality should help provide more security and more financial assistance to the children of incarcerated.

The society also should be taught to show more responsibility towards these unfortunate children.