Family & Corrections Network
The
Second North American Conference on
Fathers Behind Bars and on the Street
November 6-8, 2002 St. Louis, MO
Child Custody Issues of Incarcerated Fathers
by Denise Johnston, M.D. & Michael Carlin
Over the last 13 years, the Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents [CCIP] has received increasing numbers of requests from incarcerated fathers for assistance with child custody problems. These requests are different in kind and in quantity from the requests received by incarcerated mothers and belie the assumptions commonly held about imprisoned men as fathers. This presentation describes the child custody issues of men in prison, and describes the child custody advocacy services needed by incarcerated fathers.
Assumptions About Incarcerated Men As Fathers
The CCIP Child Custody Advocacy Services [CHICAS] Project has been assisting prisoners with child custody and placement issues since 1990. CHICAS has served more than 1800 jailed and imprisoned fathers. Two common assumptions about incarcerated fathers have been recognized by CHICAS practitioners:
One, it is often assumed that that incarcerated fathers are not interested in parent-child issues. Two, it is also commonly assumed child custody issues are less important to incarcerated fathers than to incarcerated mothers.
Post-conviction litigation patterns of male and female prisoners are often cited as evidence supporting these assumptions. A comparison of such litigation between the two groups reveals that the great majority of litigation by women prisoners addresses child custody and other family law issues, while litigation by imprisoned men primarily concerns conviction and sentencing appeals, as well as conditions of confinement. However, there are three circumstances that explain these differences:
Involvement in the foster care system is 10 times more common among incarcerated mothers than among incarcerated fathers, and that system’s short reunification times and high rates of termination of parental rights compel parents with children foster care to seek legal assistance.
Family law services are not useful to parents who cannot locate their children and many incarcerated fathers do not know the whereabouts of their children.
Post-conviction legal activity reflects the legal expertise available in prison legal services offices. If an office has no practitioners with expertise in child custody matters, there will be no record of legal activity in this area coming out of that office.
The reality is that incarcerated fathers who wish to assert their parental rights are challenged by circumstances that go unrecognized by prisoner advocates and even by prisoners themselves.
Review Of The Research And Advocacy Literature
Almost all literature on child custody issues among prisoners addresses incarcerated mothers and their children. The majority of these reports are concerned with the issue of foster care.
Only a few papers have examined the child custody issues of mixed populations of incarcerated mothers and incarcerated fathers. Again, these authors primarily address child welfare issues.
Recently, the Child Welfare League of America issued a special edition of the journal Child Welfare dedicated exclusively to the issue of children of prisoners. Only one article in this edition addressed incarcerated fathers and their children.
There has been very little research or speculation on child custody status among and child custody services needed by incarcerated fathers.
The Pre-Incarceration Family Structure Among Fathers In Prison
Most male prisoners with children did not live with those children before coming to prison. Only one in five fathers in prison lived in a traditional, two parent family with their kids prior to incarceration. Over 60% of imprisoned fathers did not live with any of their children or their children’s mothers prior to their incarceration.
Child Placement and Custody at and after Parental Arrest
About 90% of the children of incarcerated fathers lived with their birth mothers at and after their father’s arrest.
About 12% of the children of fathers in prison live with a grandparent during paternal incarceration. Less than 2% of these children live in foster care during their father’s imprisonment.
There is no information about the numbers of children who lived with their grandparents or in foster care at the time of their father’s arrest.
Father-Child Access During Paternal Incarceration
More than one in five imprisoned fathers never have any type of contact with their children during incarceration. They do not send or receive letters, telephone calls or visits.
Most incarcerated fathers have limited access to their children. More than 80% visit with their children once a month or less. More than 50% have no visits with their children. About 60% have telephone calls with their children once a month or less.
Among the 1800 fathers who have participated in the Child Custody Advocacy Services [CHICAS] Project, more than 75% don’t know where their children are and want help locating them.
Fathers Without Children
Many incarcerated fathers don’t know the whereabouts of their children. They don’t know how their children are cared for, who cares for the children, what the children think of them or who their children are. As a result of this profound estrangement, incarcerated fathers often feel anger, anxiety, shame, guilt, despair, grief and/or sorrow. It is our experience in CHICAS that fathers deal with theses feelings in three ways.
Fathers who are living without their children and without knowledge about the status of their children may rationalize their situation, saying things like “It’s not a problem” or “My kids will come around when they get older” or “He’s probably better off without me”.
Rationalization requires fathers to deny the importance of father-child attachment, and this in turn requires an emotional shut-down and the refusal to process feelings. Lack of emotional processing of parent-child issues over long periods interferes with normal adult development.
Other fathers may be overwhelmed by their situation, experiencing grief and other emotional reactions to loss. As a result, they may withdraw and isolate from others, and/or they may become depressed.
Depressed fathers often engage in self-defeating behaviors like drug use, aggression, or other acting out behaviors. Depression often causes prisoners to embrace prison life and turn their back on the outside world.
Some fathers resist the loss of the father-child relationship. These fathers utilize all available resources to maintain father-child contact and relationships that support the father-child relationship. They make every effort to avoid conflicts with their former partners and the families of their children’s mothers.
They seek to locate their missing children. They advocate for themselves as fathers. In a few cases, they may become advocates for other incarcerated fathers experiencing the same situation. This outcome is described by Mike Carlin in the Report of the Family & Corrections Network (2000).
This is an important issue. On any given day, there are over 150,000 imprisoned fathers who have no contact with their children and more than 305,000 minor children who have no contact with their fathers in prison.
Child Custody Advocacy & Legal Assistance For Incarcerated Fathers
There are virtually no legal assistance services for incarcerated fathers that specifically address individual family law issues. There is only one national organization that provides child custody advocacy services for incarcerated fathers.
The Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents makes the following recommendations for child custody advocacy services for fathers in jail and prison:
Legal advocacy and assistance should be available and accessible to incarcerated fathers. Services should be offered to all fathers upon their entry to prison. Services should be offered on-site in correctional facilities, just like other post-conviction legal services.
Advocacy services should help fathers locate and make contact with their children.
Incarcerated fathers should be offered services that address parent-child separation, grief and loss issues, and the development of a healthy identity as a father. Fathers who live without their children in their lives may need a variety of interventions; without such services, many will not even consider using legal advocacy or assistance.
Parent programs for men in prison should address not only the rare, ideal situation in which fathers lived with all their children prior to incarceration and will live with them again after release. Programs should also address the more common situation in which fathers live for long periods or permanently without their children.
Parent programs and child-related services in prison should be offered by appropriate models. The best practitioners are prisoners and former prisoners who have personal experience with child custody matters, as well as interdisciplinary training and expertise in the core competency areas of child custody advocacy.
There are three goals of good child custody advocacy services for prisoners:
1. Incarcerated fathers are able to locate and make some type of contact with their children.
2. Incarcerated fathers are able to accept themselves as fathers and to accept the meaning of fatherhood in prison.
3. Incarcerated fathers are able to develop healthy, cohesive, adult identities---with or without on-going relationship with their children.
References
Carlin, M. (2000). Asserting parental rights from prison. FCN Report, (22):1-3.
Gabel, K. & Johnston, D. (1995). Children of Incarcerated Parents. New York: Lexington Books.
Johnston, D. (2001). Prisoners & child custody. FCN Report, (22):1-9.
Johnston, D. & Carlin, M. (2002, November). Advocacy for incarcerated fathers: What’s missing? Prison Legal News, 13(11):8-9.
Mumola, C. (2000). Incarcerated parents & their children. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.