Family-Centered Jails
Challenges and Case Building
Like most jails and prisons across the country, Minnesota’s jails were not set up to support parent-child relationships. When we started our research, many jails in the state offered plexiglass barriers and grainy video calling to children visiting their parents. Providing extra support to maintain connections between parents and their minor children seemed like a practical way to benefit both.
Our 2014 evaluation of another innovative approach, Extended Visiting (EV) pilot program at Minnesota Correctional Facility - Shakopee, in partnership with the MN Department of Corrections, confirmed this. EV allows mother and child to have unlimited physical contact during visits (cuddling, hair braiding, sitting on laps) in more child-friendly settings. Participants gained support from other mothers and children and experienced personal growth. Mothers and caregivers were overwhelmingly supportive of EV.
Extended Visiting is a practical and feasible way to disrupt and mitigate trauma to children and families affected by incarceration.
Our observational jail study, jointly funded by the University of Minnesota Clinical & Translational Science Institute and University of Wisconsin Institute for Clinical & Translational Research, led to the implementation of an intervention utilizing the Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration materials designed for young children of incarcerated parents. A second study, Visiting Incarcerated Parents (VIP), funded by the University of Minnesota Office of the Vice President for Research, examined the experiences of older kids and adolescents. These projects explored for the first time, children’s and young people’s experiences with on-site visiting.
In 2023, the Minnesota state legislature funded the model jail practices learning community through the Healthy Beginnings, Healthy Families Act.
Community-engaged Solutions
Our next step was to help scale up Extended Visiting practices and benefits. Guided by the National Institute of Corrections’ Model Practices for Parents in Prisons and Jails: Reducing Barriers to Family Connections (July 2019), we partnered with the MN Department of Health to pilot the Minnesota model jail practices learning community.
Model jail practices are programs, practices, and supports that increase the quantity and quality of parent-child interactions during and after incarceration.
This multidisciplinary group works to strengthen and expand programs, practices, and supports that increase the quantity and quality of parent-child interactions during and after incarceration. These include evidence-based parenting education classes, building community coalitions and partnerships with jails, offering staff and partner training in providing model jail practices, leveraging state agency partnerships, and piloting improvements to visiting spaces and intake practices (such as asking if there are children at home). We hypothesize, too, that model jail practices can reduce recidivism and improve public safety.
In 2023, the Minnesota state legislature allocated $250,000 to expand the model jail practices learning community through the Healthy Beginnings, Healthy Families Act. Partial funding for this effort was provided by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. With model jail practices now established in more than a dozen Minnesota counties, our learning community seeks to expand them until they become a statewide standard.