JW: Children of prisoners are burdened with a host of "statistics" saying they are destined to failure in so many categories, including their own likelihood to be imprisoned, educational failure, and so forth. They are automatically stigmatized by having a parent in prison, with no daddy in the home, with no one to lead them and teach them and be the role model and fill the place in their hearts only Daddy can. Children need the love and support of their parents.
For almost three years now, I have come to deeply respect prisoners' wives, parents, family members and friends -- those who make the often long, hard trips to visit prisoners. In my mind, though, the unsung heroines are the mothers (sometimes grandparents) of prisoners' children, usually exhausted and sleep-deprived women who load small children into under-maintained cars, often in the dead of night, to drive hundreds of miles, fueled by $4.00-a-gallon gasoline, caffeine and Happy Meals, to connect children with their daddy in federal prison. Those few hours each week or month are supposed to be enough to carry the children through an otherwise fatherless life. And for those few hours, the children are "normal", sharing a common characteristic of being the child of a prisoner. I've been blessed to see the looks on the faces of entire families as a child cries, "Daddy!" as he or she runs and jumps into the arms of a joyful and proud man.
That Sunday, however, BOPers in Forrest City decided to deprive children of something they need, something critically important: normal human contact with their father. The prison employees summoned prisoners to the desk or went to the prisoners who were holding their children and made them stop, telling them they could not hold their children in their laps. Thanks to my special "RESERVED" seating, I heard this. Then I saw the prisoners having to tell their children they could not hold them, and the look of hurt and confusion was nothing short of cruel, for both the children and the prisoners. They are only little for a short while, and then the opportunity to hold them is over, but the emptiness of being unheld often has forever consequences.
Driving home that Sunday, I thought of President Obama and his family. Malia and Sasha are older than the children forced from their fathers' arms yet he is frequently shown holding hands with them. I wonder how Obama would feel if he couldn't hold his children. I wonder how he would feel if he couldn't embrace his wife or hold her hand. Even more, I wonder how his children and wife would feel.
Willful blindness results in bad policy. As the worlds' most aggressively punitive nation, with more citizens per capita imprisoned than any other country on the earth, we are destined to pay dearly for mass imprisonment, including the harm to future generations.
Should we "visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children"? Absolutely not!
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