Mom and dad divorce. Dad gets custody, during court battle about that agrees to ‘visitation’ with mom. Mom wants overnight visitation. Dad says no. Mom points out visitation agreement. dad says
I’ve been thinking about this for a few days (since I first saw the story). I’m not completely set on a position as yet.
On the one hand, Kids who know who their parents are should have, whenever possible, reasonable contact with non custodial parent(unless the parent has harmed children) And, I’m more concerned about the child’s welfare than anyone else here.
But on the other hand, I’m not convinced that overnight visits with mom in this case would fall under that ‘reasonable contact’ thing. Yes, it helps the child be less afraid for their mom’s safety (that’s the big reason here - the kids get scared for their mom’s safety, even if mom is a monster, the kid still has feelings for them). However, in this case, mom isn’t coming home any time soon.
I can certainly appreciate the stance of dad, and don’t believe that he fully understood what ‘visitation’ would consist of when he agreed to it.
(the rationale by the way, for the visitations have to do with the kid’s sake - as explained above, maintaining the relationship for the kids sake given that in most cases mom is coming home again in the not too distant future and visitations of this sort can seriously benefit those who will be reunited soon.
Kids in general love their mommies. the mom should be punished, yes, but if we can reduce the punishment on the child, shoud we do so? )
Should prisons allow overnight visits? I’m a bit skeptical, if (as I assume) it means letting prisoners out of the cell and giving them special accomodations. (Though it seems to be a longstanding practice in this case).
Should parents object to allowing their children to stay in prison overnight? I am skeptical here too. (I think kids should maintain relationships with their parents regardless of whether they are coming home soon or not. And I don’t see the big difference between a day visit and overnight visit. Unless the kid is traumatized).
Can the father back out of his agreement by saying he didn’t realize it included prison visits? I say next time get a better lawyer, a deal is a deal.
while the visits don’t occur in the cell, they still are behind the prison walls and in secured setting. There’s a special part of the prison that’s set aside for these visits, with different decor (bunnies and clouds for example).
I agree that contact should be maintained, I have no problem with the overnight visits generally if mom is coming home again soon. The difference to me is that mom coming home soon means mom will be able to take a proactive parenting role when outside (inside, they simply cannot - they can’t go to the soccer games, meet with the teacher, help daily w/homework, go to the doctor etc.). If the kid’s going to still be a kid when mom comes home, I think it’s important to attempt to maintain that parental role (it’s very difficult to be the ‘mom in charge’ again after you’ve been not there for a period of time), but not so critical if child’s going to be an adult when mom gets out. That’s why I made the distinction.
Overnight visits in prison are not completely risk free. I don’t have any data that problems occur, just acknowledging that a prison is not a completely safe place (not that anywhere is). When we ran the correction center we allowed overnight visits until the woman was arrested for cocaine sales (one method for delivery was sticking the coke in the pampers). So, while I want to have visitation for all those social worker instincts that I have, I also acknowledge that it presents for difficult prison managment and there will be those who will take advantage of such visits. That’s one of the reasons why I believe the dad may have a legal point in objecting.
Let’s see. Can you think of any time it would be reasonable to let your child spend the night with a convicted felon who was guilty of double murders? Visitation for a few hours is reasonable. Overnight visitation where she wasn’t being watched like a hawk by guards is unreasonable.
Sure I can. Parental rights should be terminated in cases where the parent ‘should never be in unsupervised contact’ with the kids. The judge involved in this case did not do this.
There’s no evidence she ever harmed, intended to harm or even neglected her kids. What she DID do was horrible and she should be (and is being) punished. Her relationship with her children, however is something distinct and different - and we should exercise some care that punishing the mother for her bad acts do not do harm to her children, who are innocent of wrong doing.
Should mom get out of prison legally, and should a court determine that she not have her parental rights be terminated, and should there continue to be zero evidence that she constitutes any threat to her children, I cannot conceive of a legal reason to deny overnight visitation in those circumstance.
Maybe I’m just a weirdo. But if someone is in prison for murder they’ve demonstrated to me that they can’t be trusted. I’m not against visitation but I am against overnight visitation.
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The fact that she’s already murdered two human beings would be enough for me to worry. Personally I’m not willing to give her the benefit of the doubt in this case.
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The children are already harmed by this. I suppose we could argue that some contact with their mother is better then none. And I would tend to agree with you. However I wouldn’t be comfortable with my children spending the night in a prison. Visitation is fine but overnight visits aren’t.
I think it is rather silly for prisoners to have overnight visitation in the first place. But if this is something the law allows I suppose there might not be a legal reason to avoid overnight visitation. I’ve never heard of a man being allowed to spend the night with his kids while he was in prison. Is this some new program?
I don’t see the connection between these dificulties and the father’s objections. His objections are based on the claim that he didn’t realize etc. a weak claim.
I don’t think she should have any kind of visitation at all… daytime or overnight. As far as I’m concerned she lost every parental right she ever had when she murdered those two people. Maybe she hasn’t done anything to physically harm her children but think of the emotional shit they’ve had to go through because of what she did. She’s not a fit parent because she killed two people in cold blood and didn’t think about the impact it would have on her kids. What kind of an example is that for them?
::“Yeah, I murdered two people and I’m gonna be in prison for the rest of my life but I’m still allowed to be a part of your life even though I’m a worthless piece of shit.”::
If my husband (or ex-husband) ever did something like that and was going to be in prison for the rest of his life, I’d do everything I could to make sure my kids didn’t have contact with him. What this man needs to do is go back to court and get the visitation revoked. When you’re in prison you’re in there to be punished for the crime(s) you committed and you shouldn’t be allowed the same privileges as those who are on the outside. Take away her visitation until the kids turn 18 and then if they decide they want to maintain a relationship with her, let them.
In Cook County prisons (Chicago), the majority of the female inmates are in on drug-related charges. Some inmates are pregnant when convicted. There is a program for drug offenders that houses pregnant inmates and inmates with very young children (I think up to age 5) in a locked-down wing of a rehab hospital. Where parental rights are not being terminated, the children are very young, the mother will be out in a relatively short time, the mother may be breastfeeding, the mother is in the rehab program and the mother’s crime is non-violent/violent only to adults in connection with the addiction, then I think this type of program is worthwhile and in the children’s interest–these mothers will be back in their children’s lives whether we like it or not.
A lot of these factors are missing in the case in question; where the mother will not be getting out, I think the rationale for the program is gone.
Having said that, I don’t know how to resolve the big question: should guidelines be in place in advance or should we trust prison officials or judges or social workers to make case by case decisions on inmate participation in this type of program? Prison officials and social workers have goals in addition to “the child’s best interest;” they typically want to have the ability to reward or punish inmate behavior and to rehabilitate the inmate.
WTF? A real mother who actually cared for her kids well being would never allow her 8 y.o. child to spend the night in prison. I don’t care if there is a F’n Chuck E. Cheese inside. This psycho bitch should be excuted then the rest of the families could attempt to rebuild their lives.
[url=“http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20010830_513.html”} the state has changed it’s policy to pretty much what I and several other posters here were for - when the mom was going to come back out and parent the child again, it makes sense to do some things to maintain that parental bond (that can’t reasonably be maintained in hourly visits). However, if mom isn’t going to be out (either ever or not until the kid is a grown up), it’s not necessary to attempt to maintain that bond. They’ve also added a comment ‘except when the custodial parent/guardian disagrees with the overnight visit’.
Ok, note that these are not necessarily my opinions.
The original article mentioned that ‘no, there was not a simliar program in effect at the men’s prisons’
Anecdotally, while running a correction center from 77 - 91, I noted that in general, about 80% of my female clients not only had children but would have custody again. the same was not true for the males (they had children but in general would not have custody).
The thinking is that for parents who are incarcerated and will have custody afterwards, this sort of visitation does great things towards maintaining the parental connection, and making a successful transistion more likely afterwards. If there’s not going to be custody, it wouldn’t be as crucial. (note again I am not claiming that there aren’t major flaws about gender equity and the reality of fatherhood etc.).
but you asked, does it happen, and if not why not.
(frankly I agree that if we really want to have a reasonable level of sucess afterwards with the folks, that if they’re going to be raising the kids after release it makes sense to make real attempts to keep the parental relationship fairly strong, when possible)
I’m not assuming anything. the snipet you cite referred to data from the correction center I worked at from 1977 to 91, and reflected the information there. While I don’t know for certain the marital status of the males, I did know that most were not returning to a situation where they had custody of the children. I made no claim that extrapolation from that data (‘persons at that correction center 77 - 91’) was or would be the same for the population as a whole (we had maybe up to 150 males at the center each year, out of the 15,000-35,000 inmates in the state totally. even today, working with over 100 annually, most males that I’m working with are not custodial parents)
And, I can understand your view on the ‘except where custodial parent disagrees’ since it’d be too easy for the custodial parent to interfere w/the parental relationship. I can, tho’ appreciate why they put it in there (I hope that in the future, if a custodial parent disagrees, they’ll need to come up with something a bit more specific than ‘I don’t want it to happen’)