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October 03, 2008
Helping Mothers and Children Stay Connected-During and After Prison Coalition for Women Prisoners helps bring Family Reunion Program to New York's largest prison for women
Helping Mothers and Children Stay Connected-During and After Prison
Coalition for Women Prisoners helps bring Family Reunion Program to New York's largest prison for women
September 2008
Correctional Association of NY
The Department of Correctional Services (DOCS) has begun the process of establishing a Family Reunion Program (FRP)—which allows incarcerated people to have extended, overnight visits with family—at Albion Correctional Facility, New York’s largest prison for women. Our Women in Prison Project (WIPP) and its Coalition for Women Prisoners have long pressed for the implementation of an FRP at Albion and, with the efforts and full support of DOCS and Commissioner Brian Fischer, helped secure an allocation of $200,000 for the program in this year’s State Budget.
By establishing this FRP at Albion—which is located near Rochester, more than eight hours from New York City—DOCS will enhance the limited opportunities many mothers at Albion currently have to stay connected with their families. Also, experience tells us that FRPs provide an incentive for people to maintain good behavior while in prison and help reduce recidivism by assisting with the post-release reunification process.
In addition, the FRP at Albion will play a role in helping incarcerated mothers safeguard their parental rights. New York’s Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) almost always requires foster care agencies to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the last 22 months. One of ASFA’s exceptions does allow a foster care agency to refrain from filing termination papers if they document a “compelling reason” why termination would not be in the child’s best interest. The new FRP at Albion will increase opportunities for mothers to strengthen relationships with their children and show foster care caseworkers that maintaining mother-child bonds is critical to their children’s health and well-being. In so doing, the FRP can help incarcerated mothers with children in foster care reduce the risk of losing their parental rights forever.
Click here to read the Women in Prison Project’s 2007 monitoring report on Albion Correctional Facility. For more information about this issue, please download When “Free” Means Losing Your Mother, which presents WIPP’s comprehensive analyses and recommendations for making the criminal justice and child welfare systems more responsive to the needs of families separated by incarceration.
Read report at this URL:
http://www.correctionalassociation.org/publications/download/wipp/reports/When_Free_Rpt_Feb_2006.pdf
Posted by lois at October 3, 2008 12:18 AM