Vermont prisons work to improve visitation experiences for children of incarcerated fathers

The children of incarcerated parents have to go to jail themselves in order to maintain a physical connection with their mom or dad, and Vermont’s commissioner of corrections says it’s time to make that visitation experience more healthy and humane.

Vermont’s only prison for women has come under fire for having substandard living conditions. But the South Burlington facility’s child visitation program, which includes a special meeting space for kids and their incarcerated mothers, is widely lauded.

“There are toys in that space. There are books,” said Commissioner of Corrections Nick Deml. “Mothers can sit with their children and play games or read or just hang out and lounge around and visit.”

Deml said the equivalent visitation spaces at the five men’s prisons in Vermont do not come close to meeting that standard.

“The visiting spaces are pretty sterile,” he said. “It’s hard floors, hard wooden tables, some of them have a partition.”

Deml said the quality of children’s visits with their fathers suffers as a result, so Vermont is now working with a nonprofit, called Chicago Beyond, to overhaul child visitation practices in ways that will improve the mental health of kids and their incarcerated parents.

Nneka Jones Tapia, managing director of justice initiatives at Chicago Beyond and a former warden at Cook County Jail in Illinois, said the quality of children’s visits can have lifelong impacts on both them and their parents.

“Allowing people who are incarcerated to have a more positive connection with their loved one really prepares them for the important roles that they’re going to play in their families and in communities upon release,” Jones Tapia told Vermont Public.

Jones Tapia, who has a doctorate in psychology, has come to Vermont in recent months to meet with incarcerated individuals and their families, as well as corrections staff, to find out what sorts of visitation experiences would be most beneficial to them.

She said things as simple as putting metal detectors on mute when kids are present, or having corrections officers wearing plain clothes in visitation spaces, can transform the experience.

“Success for children whose parents are incarcerated happens when they are allowed to have real contact, positive contact, with their incarcerated loved one,” Jones Tapia said.

Jones Tapia speaks from personal experience — her father was incarcerated in a North Carolina prison when she was a child. She said the facility had unusually permissive visitation policies for corrections institutions at the time. And she says she maintained a positive relationship with her father in large part because the family was allowed to bring in food and share meals.

"And so every week I had the opportunity to have a normal family experience with my dad in this very abnormal environment nonetheless," she said.

Jones Tapia and Deml say Vermont is on track to initiate new visitation policies, and overhaul meeting spaces, within a matter of months. Deml said it’s part of a broader effort with Chicago Beyond to improve the mental health of both incarcerated individuals and corrections staff, who have some of the highest rates of PTSD of any job in America.