Group vows more help for children of inmates
Posted on Sunday, May 11, 2008
Advocates for the children of Arkansas prison inmates vowed Friday to continue pushing for lower telephone rates at prisons and for more financial support for people who care for their grandchildren.
At a rally in the state Capitol, Arkansas Voices for the Children Left Behind also gave a $ 1, 000 scholarship to Brittany Fantine, 19, of Conway, whose mother is serving a 15-year-sentence for burglary and theft convictions.
Fantine said her mother was incarcerated for most of her childhood, beginning when Fantine was 3.
“Everybody thought that I was going to be just like her — pregnant, dropped out of school, on drugs,” Fantine said.
Instead, Fantine said, she has earned her General Educational Development certificate and is planning to attend Pulaski Technical College this fall.
An estimated 2 million children across the country, including 25, 000 in Arkansas, have at least one parent in prison, said Dee Ann Newell, co-founder of Arkansas Voices for the Children Left Behind.
While many people assume the incarcerated parents will be a bad influence on the children, that usually isn’t the case, Newell said.
“The evidence is that these children have a hunger and a need for a connection with their parents,” Newell said.
Advocates for inmates’ children have staged rallies around Mother’s Day since 1994, Newell said. Since then, the state’s prison population has increased more than 80 percent from, 8, 100 to 14, 800.
At Friday’s rally, Newell, state Sen. Irma Hunter Brown and others spoke at a podium in the Capitol rotunda before a small group of supporters. Visitors and Capitol staff members snapped photographs during performances by the gospel choir from the Southeast Arkansas Community Correction Center, which houses women.
Among advocates’ priorities is reducing the fees that state prison inmates pay to make phone calls. Last year, the Department of Correction reduced the charge for 15 minutes — the maximum time allowed — by $ 2, to $ 4. 80, but advocates say the charge is still too high.
Correction Department spokesman Dina Tyler said the fees generate $ 2. 5 million a year, money that helps pay for improvements in the prisons as well as the $ 100 in “gate checks” that inmates receive when they are released.
“You have to use it within reason,” Tyler said. “You can’t make an unlimited amount of calls and expect to have a tiny bill.” Many inmates’ children are under the care of a grandparent, and Newell’s group has been pushing for the grandparents to receive more financial support from the government. The grandparents can receive welfare payments of $ 81 for one child and $ 42 for each additional child. Newell’s group wants the payments increased to $ 250 a month for each child. Newell said her group also wants prisons and jails to expand their visiting hours and for teachers, caseworkers and therapists to be more sensitive to the children’s needs. Fantine said she visits her mother as often as she can, but 1 making the 1 / 2 hour drive to the McPherson Unit in Newport can be difficult.
Growing up in foster homes, she said she missed having her mother at events such as her 16 th birthday and her GED ceremony next week.
“You need your mother to be there, to guide you through hardship, to understand what you’re going through,” Fantine said. “I didn’t have that.”
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