“‘It will crush you like a bug’: Maternal incarceration,secondary prisonization,and children’s visitation”

Abstract

Over the last three decades, the number of children experiencing the incarceration of one or both parents has grown dramatically. Although the children of prisoners are not under legal sanction, they are nonetheless indirectly subject to the coercive apparatus of the state by virtue of their parent’s status and they are directly subject to this apparatus during their visits to correctional facilities. In this ethnographic study of a mother–child visitation program in jail, we examine secondary prisonization among children of incarcerated mothers. Previous research on secondary prisonization has focused primarily on adults, finding that contact with the prison system alters their conception self, body, moral statuses, emotions, and relationships. Our ethnographic data demonstrate that the implications of this for children are considerable. Here, we analyze secondary prisonization as it impacts children across two domains: discipline of the body and regulation of emotion.

Keywords

children of incarcerated parents gendered punishment incarceration mass incarceration maternal incarceration parental incarceration secondary prisonization women’s incarceration

In September 2015, Georgia executed Kelly Gissendaner, a 47-year-old mother of three. Her execution took place over and against the objections of her children. On the eve of her scheduled execution, the state subjected her children to a devastating choice—see their mother one last time or go before the Board of Pardons and Parole to make a final appeal to spare her life. They chose the latter. In response, the state denied them the opportunity to say their final goodbyes to their mother in person. Standing outside Georgia’s execution chamber, her daughter Kayla recalled, “We chose to try and save her life and they still denied us.”¹

The experience of Gissendaner’s children serves as a poignant example not only of the way in which family and friends of prisoners are directly implicated in the punishment process, but also how unresponsive the penal system can be to the emotional and physical needs of prisoners’ children and family. Building on Clemmer’s (1940) concept of prisonization, Comfort (2008) argues that members of prisoners’ social networks are not isolated from the coercive effects of the penal apparatus and, in fact, must acclimate to its norms, practices, and routines. “Secondary prisonization” refers to the process through which the prison interpolates the routines, relationships, emotions, appearance, and worldview of family members and friends. Legally innocent persons must adapt to carceral norms and structures in ways that are not dissimilar from how prisoners are socialized within the crucible of the prison and the jail. Comfort (2008: 297) observes, “By producing changes and disruption in the personal, domestic, and social worlds of people who are not themselves sentenced to confinement, secondary prisonization ultimately extends the reach and intensity of the transformative effects of the correctional facility.”

In this study, we examine secondary prisonization among children of incarcerated mothers. Previous research has focused on adults, finding that contact with the prison system alters, to greater and lesser degrees, their conceptions of their selves, bodies, moral statuses, emotions, and relationships (Comfort, 2007, 2008; Tewksbury and DeMichele, 2005). The implications of this for children are considerable. Research on the general impact of parental incarceration on children has focused on a variety of outcomes, ranging from academic, economic, and residential, to behavioral with particular emphasis on delinquency, substance use, and participation in crime (Aaron and Dallaire, 2010; Craigie, 2011; Foster and Hagan, 2009, 2007, 2013; Kruttschnitt, 2011; Swisher and Shaw-Smith, 2014; Uggen and McElrath, 2014; Wakefield and Wildeman, 2011). This literature consistently demonstrates that children with an incarcerated father are at risk for a variety of negative outcomes. There is not quite the same uniformity with respect to the children of incarcerated mothers. Some research reports “heterogeneous effects,” meaning that loss of a mother to a carceral facility does not always lead to negative outcomes within a specific set of domains (Turney and Wildeman, 2015).

Outcome studies raise a number of important questions about the circumstances children find themselves in prior to and during the period of maternal incarceration, and the ways in which the community, family, and institutional structures that children are situated within render them more or less vulnerable. Compared to incarcerated fathers, women are more likely to have served as primary caregiver and shared a residence with their children prior to entering state custody (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2016; Glaze and Maruschak, 2010; The Sentencing Project, 2009). The number of children who have been impacted by maternal incarceration is historically unprecedented.² Given current trends in women’s rate of incarceration, Roettger (2015) estimates that hundreds of thousands of children will be impacted by the incarceration of their mothers before they reach the age of 15 years.

In order to better understand the impact of parental incarceration on children in general and the complexity of maternal incarceration in particular, it is necessary to supplement outcome studies with research that focuses on incarceration as a process. Additionally, it is crucial to examine how carceral facilities mediate family relationships and serve as institutional sites of childhood socialization. In this ethnographic study of mother–child visitation in a regional jail, we explore how and in what ways children are subject to secondary prisonization. Our focus is on the processes through which children learn the norms of the jail, adapt to its strictures, and are subject to its disciplinary controls. We ask, how are the children of incarcerated mothers processed, surveilled, and disciplined by the jail? What do children learn in the course of visiting the jail about their bodies and emotions? How do carceral norms and structures mediate children’s relationships with their mothers?

In pursuing this research, our goal is to take a step back from outcome studies to examine how institutional processes associated with visiting a parent in prison affect children. Visitation remains one of least understood elements of children’s experience following the incarceration of parent (Rodriguez, 2016). Previous studies of visitation have been based on interviews with parents and caregivers that recall children’s experiences (Poehlmann et al., 2010; Siegel, 2011; Tasca et al., 2016). Our study offers a crucial addition to this literature by providing direct, ethnographic observation of mother–child visits. Our analysis of the data reveals that children experience secondary prisonization in ways that are distinct from adults, with important implications for their wellbeing and family relationships. Beyond this, our findings identify how aspects of children’s secondary prisonization may account for the apparently heterogeneous effects reported in quantitative studies of maternal incarceration.

Secondary prisonization and the impact of parental incarceration on children

At least 2.7 million minor children have an incarcerated parent and the majority of prison and jail inmates are parents to children under the age of 18 (Glaze and Maruschak, 2010; Mumola, 2000). The vast majority of children experiencing parental incarceration are African American or Latino/a and under the age of 15 (Glaze and Maruschak, 2010; see also Geller et al., 2009). Wildeman (2009) estimates that one in four African American children born in 1990 experienced parental incarceration before their 14th birthday.

In general, the children of incarcerated parents are at risk across a variety of economic, behavioral, legal, academic, and health domains (for reviews, see Comfort, 2007; Foster and Hagan, 2013; Uggen and McElrath, 2014; Wakefield and Wildeman, 2014). Maternal incarceration creates additional layers of complexity. Care arrangements and economic conditions often change dramatically upon the incarceration of a mother (Siegel, 2011). While 89% of incarcerated fathers report that their children are living with the other (non-incarcerated) parent, only 37% of incarcerated mothers can make the same claim (Glaze and Maruschak, 2010). Given the smaller number of correctional facilities for women, incarcerated mothers are at greater risk of being located at substantial distances away from their children (Christian, 2005; Coughenour, 1995).

In light of these and other complicating factors associated with maternal incarceration, it is puzzling that research on the consequences of maternal incarceration for children reports heterogeneous effects. In one of the most comprehensive studies to date, Wildeman and Turney (2014) discover that after adjusting for economic contexts, all negative associations between maternal incarceration and children’s behavioral outcomes disappear. It may be that the disadvantages these children face (e.g. poverty, violence, residential instability, parental drug, alcohol abuse, etc.) are so great as to mute the discrete impact of maternal incarceration (see Arditti, 2015; Turanovic et al., 2012; Turney and Wildeman, 2015).

The apparently heterogeneous effects of maternal incarceration may also be an artifact of research studies that focus principally on outcome, rather than process. Both Arditti (2015) and Turney and Wildeman (2015) argue that qualitative research is needed to disentangle how institutional, familial, and social processes shape how children fare in the course of maternal incarceration. Indeed, it is critical to not only understand how differently situated families and communities may be in better and worse positions to buffer children from the negative effects of maternal incarceration, but also how carceral policies and procedures intersect with family and social systems to shape childhood outcomes. Visitation is a crucial, yet understudied, aspect of incarceration that poses significant consequences for family life (Poehlmann et al., 2010; Rodriguez, 2016; Tasca et al., 2016).

We argue that for many children, jails and prisons play a prominent role, alongside schools, religious organizations, and community centers, in childhood socialization and development (McCorkel, 2016). To that end, Comfort’s (2008) concept of secondary prisonization serves as an important analytical framework for thinking about how prisons operate as “people processing” institutions for more than just those who live and work there (see Hasenfeld, 1972). It is important to note that this phenomenon is not unique to prisons, but is also evident in “lower level” carceral settings, including jails (Comfort, 2016; see also Wildeman et al., 2016).³ Of the few qualitative studies on the children of incarcerated mothers, most situate children outside the penal facility, focusing on the absence of the mother, stress on caregivers, and the emotional and social consequences of altered arrangements (Bernstein, 2005; Siegel, 2011). Comfort’s (2008) research on prisoners’ wives and girlfriends suggests that it is necessary to also consider prisons as sites of socialization. Like the women Comfort (2008) studied, children who visit their incarcerated parents cannot opt out of secondary prisonization. Access to their incarcerated parent is contingent on their ability to conform and adapt to institutional norms. How children learn and adjust to carceral norms and the impact it has on them remains largely unknown (Poehlmann et al., 2010; Rodriguez, 2016). To capture children’s direct experiences, we collected participant observation data of visitation over an 18-month period and supplemented our ethnographic observations with interviews with incarcerated mothers and jail staff. In the sections below, we provide an overview of the field site and the research study, and then turn to an analysis of the predominant forms of secondary prisonization that all children experience during visits: discipline of the body and regulation of emotion. While research demonstrates that adult visitors grapple with these forms of secondary prisonization as well (Comfort, 2008, 2016; Tasca et al., 2016; Tewksbury and DeMichele, 2005), they carry different implications for children, particularly in terms of how they understand themselves, their emotions, and their relationship with their mothers.

Data and method

There are no uniform standards that guide visitation policies across federal, state, and local correctional facilities. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously approved Michigan’s severe restrictions on visitation and refused to set even minimal guidelines for parent–child visitation (Overton v. Bazzetta 539 U.S. 126, 2003). In the absence of legal guidelines, correctional facilities have been largely free to create their own policies to fit within security, staffing, administrative, and ideological priorities (Boudin et al., 2013). Given widespread variation in policies, we opted to study a “child friendly” visitation program with a separate, dedicated space for children and their incarcerated mothers. We collected participant observation and interview data in Northeast Jail’s Mother Child Visitation Program (hereafter MCVP) over 18 months from 2005 to 2007.⁴ At the time, MCVP was the only program of its kind in the state and one of very few across the country.⁵ In the course of a decade, however, the landscape with respect to children’s visitation has changed dramatically, particularly in light of research suggesting that visitation may improve family relations and increase the odds of reentry success (Bales and Mears 2008; LaVigne et al., 2005; The Sentencing Project, 2009). Approximately one third of women’s prisons have separate spaces for children’s visitation (Hoffmann et al., 2010) and a number of state prisons for men and local jail facilities have launched family friendly visiting initiatives (Washburn, 2016). The Bureau of Prisons recently introduced programming to enhance children’s experiences during visits (U.S. Department of Justice, 2016: 2). Today, the MCVP is an ascendant model of child-friendly visitation.

In selecting this site, we were primarily interested in whether MCVP was a meaningful alternative to traditional visitation, one that would prove less stressful and facilitate improved parent–child interactions (see Poehlmann et al., 2010). Additionally, there are several advantages to situating a study of secondary prisonization in a jail, rather than a prison. First, jails frequently serve as the first point of carceral contact for persons accused of a crime. Twenty times as many people rotate through jails as enter state and federal prisons, with roughly 12 million Americans cycling through jails each year (Rabuy and Wagner, 2015; Subramanian et al., 2015). The sheer volume of adults passing through jails and the potential disruptions this poses for children, families, and communities has prompted an urgent demand for research that extends “beyond the prison” (Comfort, 2016; Sampson, 2011; Wildeman et al., 2016). Second, women constitute 14% of the jail population and women in jail are currently the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated population (Glaze and Kaeble, 2014; Kaeble et al., 2015). Thus, many more children experience maternal incarceration through the vector of the jail than the prison. Situating this study in a jail allows us to capture a broader range of children’s experiences, from those whose mothers are serving sentences of 2 years or less following criminal convictions to those who experience the “revolving door” of multiple incarcerations in a relatively brief span of time (Comfort, 2016). Third, jails offer greater opportunities for children to visit their incarcerated mothers. Women’s prisons are few and far between, and are typically located in rural areas far from the urban centers that prisoners come from. As a result, visitation is strategically difficult, expensive, and rare (Casey-Acevedo and Bakken, 2002; Christian, 2005; Coughenour, 1995). In contrast, county jails are more centrally located. In our study, Northeast Jail is located in a small town that is approximately 10 miles away from the city where many inmates resided prior to their incarceration.

Like most jails, Northeast Jail has general visitation during which approved family members and friends are allowed non-contact visits with inmates through a thick, glass partition.⁶ They speak to each other through phones on either side of the partition. Although children are able to accompany caregivers to a non-contact visit, most of the incarcerated mothers, we spoke to said that “glass visits” were difficult and traumatizing for their kids and for this reason, they opted not to have them.⁷ As a result, very few children participated in general visitation. Instead, most children who visited Northeast Jail came in through MCVP. The core appeal of MCVP to inmates is that it allows contact visits and it provides a space that is at least nominally more child-friendly than the general visiting area.

MCVP visits took place once a week, for 90 min, on Saturday mornings. Although all incarcerated mothers with children under the age of 18 were eligible to participate, access was limited by a mother’s disciplinary status and by resources. A mother who was “locked”⁸ during the week due to a disciplinary infraction was not eligible to have either a general or MCVP visit. Participation was also limited by resources. The jail initially provided transportation for children who needed it, but this was quickly dropped due to budget constraints. In spite of the difficulties inmates faced in securing transportation for their children, the program was popular. This, too, taxed the resources of the jail. Eligible mothers were initially able to see their children once a week. By the end of the first year, however, staff decided that large numbers of kids made the visiting room too crowded. As a result, mothers were only allowed to see their children every other week.

Throughout the study period, the number of mothers who participated in the program on a weekly basis varied dramatically, ranging from 1 to 22. Similarly, there was considerable variation in the number of children present on any given Saturday. Numbers ranged from a low of 1 to a high of 51 children during the Christmas visit. Typically, about 20 children were present. Overall, children ranged in age from early infancy to 17 years. Of all the children we observed during the course of the 18 month study (n = 158), 19 made five or more visits to the facility.

Data for this study include participant observation in the MCVP program and in the women’s unit of Northeast Jail, as well as formal, semi-structured interviews with 83 inmates and informal interviews with Northeast Jail administrators and staff. Although Internal Review Board requirements prevented us from formally interviewing the children in this study, Aiello spent a considerable amount of time with them before, during, and immediately after the visits. She had a formal role in the program as a volunteer escort for the children.⁹ Throughout the study period, Aiello averaged 10–12 h per week in Northeast Jail, usually over the course of 3 days, including the Saturday MCVP visits.

Northeast Jail has an average daily population of 1200 inmates, 10% of whom are women. Women inmates (regardless of whether they participated in MCVP) were eligible for the interview portion of this study if they had children under the age of 18. Recruitment was through word of mouth and participation was voluntary. Only one mother declined an interview request.¹⁰ The demographic characteristics of interview respondents approximated that of women inmates in jail. Thirty-six respondents are white, 28 are Latina, 17 are African American, 1 is Asian, and 1 is Cape Verdean. At the time of the interviews, their average age was 32 and they had an average of three children. Most of the women were incarcerated for drug-related charges, and just under 30% (n = 24) were in jail for the first time. Sentenced inmates are overrepresented in our study, as only six women were pretrial detentioners at the time of the interview.¹¹ Interviews typically lasted an hour and focused on mothers relationship and contact with their children before and during their incarceration, parenting strategies from prison, and their experiences on visits. Interviews were conducted in an empty office with only the interviewer and the respondent present. In appreciation for their participation, respondents received a modest supply of stationary supplies.¹² All interviews were audio recorded and subsequently de-identified and transcribed.

Data analysis proceeded from a modified approach to grounded theory in which categories of theoretical significance (e.g. secondary prisonization) were compared and iteratively refined against themes that emerged through open and axial coding of fieldnote and interview data (Charmaz, 2014; Strauss and Corbin, 1990). Through open and axial coding of interview and fieldnote data, it became clear that the jail functions as a key agent of socialization among children of incarcerated mothers. We then engaged in a tertiary phase of selective coding, using predominant themes connected to children’s socialization from our data, as well as from Comfort’s (2008) theoretical elaboration of secondary prisonization. This resulted in the two predominant categories of the secondary prisonization of children presented below: discipline of the body and regulation of emotion.

Findings

In Discipline & Punish, Foucault (1979) argues that systems of domination render subjects compliant through seizing and manipulating the body and then infiltrating the “soul.” This “micro-physics” occurs at “… the point where power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies, and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes, and everyday lives” (Foucault, 1980: 39). Secondary prisonization is the process through which the micro-physics of carceral power is realized among members of prisoners social networks, including children. Our analysis of the data shows that the most crucial components of secondary prisonization for children involve: (a) discipline of the body and (b) regulation of emotion. In a broad analytical sense, neither of these components is unique to children. Institutional demands on body and emotion feature significantly in the secondary prisonization of wives and girlfriends (Comfort, 2008), however, children encounter these demands in unique and developmentally consequential ways.¹³ We analyze each component below.

Disciplining bodies

Institutional regulation of children’s bodies began as they moved from the relatively free space of Northeast Jail’s lobby into the secure, interior room where they spent time with their mothers. Although rules governing kids attire were fewer and less cumbersome than those for adults, caregivers had to nonetheless prepare them for admission and screening. All outerwear had to be removed, as did jewelry. The only items that children were permitted to carry with them were baby bags (which were always searched) and, if prescribed, medicine. This rule proved difficult for many children to understand and it was often the case that they tried to bring photographs or homemade gifts for their mothers. These items were always denied entry.¹⁴

At the appointed time, correctional officers lined kids up to pass through a metal detector. Caregivers were prohibited from accompanying children beyond the lobby. This meant from the metal detector forward, kids had to go it alone, accompanied by staff or volunteers they may or may not know. This was very scary, particularly for children who had not yet become accustomed to the jail. For example, Aiello tried unsuccessfully to console a 5-year-old who was frightened because she did not understand where she was being taken, or that her mother would be in the next location. It was not unusual for kids to head into the facility only to look up and realize their caregivers were not with them. This generated confusion, screams, and sobbing.

Children were individually passed through the metal detector before being taken through the first of two large, heavy, iron doors that served as end points in the sally port. In order for the second door to open, the first had to slam shut. The doors were controlled remotely. Out of concern for tiny fingers and toes, staff sternly and loudly warned kids about the door, “it will crush you like a bug!” Most kids visibly dreaded walking into the sally port and the staff’s warning exacerbated their apprehension. Beyond the second door was a lengthy, gloomy hallway that led to the visiting room. The long walk was frightening for children. Several mothers reported that the hallway was the reason they did not want their children to visit. One mother recalled her children’s one and only visit: “The hallway, that long hallway, and then they were walking down and they were crying. I was like, Christ, I’ll never put them through that again and I didn’t.”

At the end of the hall, children waited for an officer to open the first door to the visiting area. They were then crowded into another sally port, this one considerably smaller than the first. Staff worked very hard to contain and restrain their bodies in the tiny space, particularly as children glimpsed their mothers waving and crying at them through the window. When the second, heavy door slid open, children rushed into the visiting area.

Children learn that access to their mothers is contingent on carceral disciplining of their bodies. Adults recount this experience primarily in terms of the intense scrutiny directed at their wardrobe and appearance, periodic visual and physical inspection of their undergarments, and surveillance of their comportment (Comfort, 2008). In contrast, children are preoccupied by three different aspects of this process. The first is the separation (often forcible) of their bodies from familiar objects and people. Second is the physical sensation of being immersed in a space that overwhelms with its vast size, intimidating sounds, and foreboding iconography, as well as its promise to crush small bodies. Third is the confinement of their bodies, specifically the imposition and regulation of narrow boundaries within which they can move, touch, socialize, and play. Nowhere was this corporal boundedness more distressing for kids than during the visit.

Children, even those under the age of 3, quickly learned that visits with their mothers had very specific spatial parameters. The area beyond the visiting room and the door through which mothers enter was strictly off-limits. Occasionally, a mother was delayed.¹⁵ Even in these instances, children learned not to approach the door to look for their mothers. When one inmate was late for a visit, her 2-year-old pointed emphatically at the door and said, “Mommy! Mommy!” In spite of the child’s anticipation, she did not go near the door. Another little girl jumped excitedly when she saw her mother coming down the hallway. Without warning, an officer called the mother back to scan her ID. The little girl must have known she could not cross the yellow line that marked the boundary because she just bounced up and down behind the line until her mother finally arrived.

Over time, children incorporated the jail’s physical boundaries into their relationships with their mothers. “Mommy” existed in a space separate from the spaces they were allowed to know or inhabit. Those who made regular visits did not need reminders to stay on the correct side of the yellow line, or when and where they could hold and hug their mothers. For the youngest children, there was no “mommy” outside institutional structure of the jail. In one interview, an inmate speculated that her 2-year-old son did not understand or expect that she would actually live with him at home:

I think he knows when he comes here, he’s coming to jail, to see his mom … . he knows that I don’t live with him … . When it’s time to go see Mommy he knows he’s going in the car, and he’s coming to this place that he’s grown to know … . And I’m not sure that he thinks that I’m coming home. I think he thinks that this is a permanent situation.

Children were further preoccupied by a fourth element associated with the regulation of their bodies—physical discomfort. The discomfort children endured during visits is a product of the jail’s fixation with security, a preoccupation that outweighed broader ideological commitments to rehabilitation and mother–child bonding. At the annual Christmas party, children were not permitted to wear coats, despite the fact that the path to the gym, where the party was held, required children to walk outside in frigid temperatures. From the staff’s perspective, children’s winter coats provided additional opportunities for smuggling in contraband and it was not worth the extra time and effort to search them. Of considerably greater significance to children was MCVP’s policy regarding bathroom use. Mothers and children’s access to the bathroom was heavily regulated because administrators believed that the privacy afforded by a bathroom stall would facilitate the transfer of contraband from children’s bodies to the bodies of their mothers. Thus, mothers were not allowed to use the bathroom at all during the visit, nor could they accompany their children there. Instead, children were chaperoned into the bathroom by staff. One staff member tried to give children as much privacy as she could by standing just inside the doorway of the bathroom and turning away. In doing so, however, she had to keep the door slightly ajar, thus compromising children’s privacy relative to the rest of the visiting room.

One inmate’s 8-year-old resisted the urge to go to the bathroom because she was very self-conscious about bathroom smells. After considerable encouragement from her mother, she agreed to be accompanied by Aiello. Her concern about smell soon gave way to an even greater fear: loss of her mother. As she washed her hands, the girl furrowed her brow and said, “I hope my Mommy doesn’t leave while I’m in here.” This was not unusual. Children avoided the bathroom for a variety of reasons: embarrassment about bathroom sounds and smells, an unwillingness to be accompanied by a stranger, and fear that mothers might disappear in their absence.

In this way, the institution forced children into a difficult position: endure the physical discomfort of having to “hold it” or sacrifice their privacy to assuage institutional concerns about contraband. Whichever they chose (to the extent they were able to choose at all since younger children, in particular, were unable to “hold it”), they learned that their bodies were not their own. Indeed, control over the body during the visit did not rest with them or even with their mothers. It rested with the jail. Having to surrender control of their bodies to strangers, often under duress, left many children confused and overwhelmed. This was particularly the case for children who were well-versed on school and family safety rules like not going anywhere with strangers and avoiding public restrooms without a parent or older sibling present. Although kids quickly adapted to institutional rules about where, when, and how they could move and touch, they were incapable of comprehending the logic behind the rules or that the jail’s control of their bodies terminated at the conclusion of the visit. This is quite distinct from adult visitors who can identify the logic of rules and security procedures, even if they reject it (Comfort, 2008; Tewksbury and DeMichele, 2005).

From the jail’s perspective, children’s bodies were, first and foremost, vehicles for contraband and, in a related sense, a potential source of chaos. This chaos was not limited to the possibility that children would wander into spaces that were off limits, distract officers from their tasks, or even that they would be “crushed like bugs” by heavy metal doors. Their chaotic potential was also linked to their incarcerated mothers, specifically that children’s presence, if not contained and regulated, threatened to undermine the jail’s control over inmates. For this reason, the jail sought not only to discipline children’s bodies but also to tightly regulate their emotions.

Regulating emotion

Children’s emotions and the emotions they provoked in their mothers were an ongoing target of surveillance and intervention, and a crucial component of their secondary prisonization. Institutional efforts to regulate and manage emotion during visits included (a) rules regarding how children and mothers display their emotions, and (b) concerted efforts to manufacture and facilitate certain feeling states among children. Together, these informed how mothers and children talked and related to each other. While adult visitors report having to stifle overt expressions of frustration and anger toward staff in order to be admitted for a visit (Comfort, 2008; Foster, 2016), they are not subject to the same kind of incursions into their emotional territories.

Participation in MCVP demanded that both mothers and children quickly master and obey what Hochschild (1983) refers to as “feeling rules.” These dictate what kind of emotions are acceptable to have, whether and how to display emotions, and under what circumstances. The enforcement of feeling rules was particularly pronounced during the end of the visit. The process of departure was painful for both mothers and children. Staff demanded that inmates make a “clean break” from their children. In practice, this meant no overt displays of sadness like crying and no prolonged physical contact. In interviews, mothers were consistently critical of the program’s departure ritual. As older children lined up to leave, mothers handed babies over to staff to carry back to the lobby. Despite the “clean break” requirement, it was not unusual to see mothers sobbing inconsolably as they handed off their kids. Some women became visibly angry when staff insisted on taking their children before the very end of the visitation period. Mothers were not the only ones who struggled with the program’s departure rules. One young daughter appeared confused at the end of the visit and kept going back to her mother even as the officer on duty tried to close the heavy door. A 5-year-old, who had been cheerful and happy during the visit, broke down during the goodbye ritual and clung to her mother. When breaches such as these occurred, staff admonished mothers for their emotional displays, as well as the emotional behaviors of their children. A staff member loudly warned the mother whose daughter clung to her, “Don’t do this. Don’t make it hard for us.”

As the door to the sally port lurched closed, mothers leaned up against the glass, straining to see over each other, often crying. Children exited in a variety of ways. On a few occasions, they appeared happy and upbeat. A couple of kids made a game of it, walking backward down the entire hallway and waving long after their mothers disappeared from view. Older kids, particularly those who visited frequently, were able to manage their emotions even when they were upset. For example, one teenager cried as she exited the visit but became stoic and smiled politely after realizing she was being watched by her escort. Younger and less experienced kids cried all the way down the hall and into the parking lot. Some fell to the floor when the metal door that separated them from their mothers clanged shut. Other kids silently withdrew and refused to interact with anyone, even their caregivers. A fieldnote excerpt reveals how emotionally distressing the end of the visit could be:

The departure was the most traumatic one I have ever witnessed. Miranda’s kids were all hugging her, crying, and not wanting to leave. Her 12 year old was by far the worst though. She totally broke down. She didn’t want to let go of her mother at all. Outside at the window, she basically collapsed and was screaming, sobbing.

Staff members were particularly vigilant at the end of the visit, monitoring the emotional performances of mothers and their children. When children expressed “negative” emotions like sadness or anger, staff blamed it on mothers’ inability to follow the program’s rules and used this as a basis to evaluate women’s selves. When a 4-year-old ran back to give her mother one last hug, staff accused the inmate of intentionally making the departure difficult. One staff person told Aiello that this mother was “selfish” for accepting the hug. Older children were often aware when their mothers violated feeling rules and the potential this held for negative consequences. At the conclusion of one visit, a 5-year-old proudly reported to his grandmother that his mother had, for the first time, managed not to cry at all.

For mothers, the program’s feelings rules presented a significant challenge as they sought to reconnect with their children, engage in healthy parenting practices, and manage the tide of emotions that the visits produced. During orientation, the staff instructor explained MCVP’s feeling rules to a group of women who had recently arrived at the jail: “It’s hard. You’re gonna cry, but I hope you can contain yourself and not upset your kids because they need to know that you are okay.” In an interview, a 28-year-old inmate explained her objection to these rules,

And they [MCVP] tell you, “Happy Moms make happy kids!” Oh God, I’m so sick of hearing that … I think it’s normal to feel like that [sad]. I don’t want my kid to never cry. Crying is normal. Crying is healthy. And I’m sorry, if I want to cry, I’m gonna cry. I’m not gonna hold my tears back because “Ms. Correctional Officer” says don’t cry.

She was not the only mother who rebelled against MCVP’s feeling rules; mothers and children often cried when it was time to separate. They did so at considerable risk. Failure to manage emotion came with the threat that visits would be suspended or terminated altogether.

Some mothers endeavored to conform to feeling rules through emotional detachment. This strategy yielded mixed results. One mother who had served 18 months on a 2-year sentence reported having to adapt her parenting in order to maintain emotional control when her sons, ages 2 and 7, visited. She described the process of intentionally withdrawing from them,

I give myself enough time to back away before they leave, so that I’m not in tears when they leave because if I’m in tears, they are in tears. And I don’t want them to cry. I want them to think everything’s okay.

She explained that she “backed away” to protect her sons from her emotions, but in doing so, she was forced to deprive them of the affection she would have otherwise lavished on them. Another young mother reported that during her first visit with her 4 year old, she violated the program’s feeling rules by sobbing throughout, particularly at the end. After being admonished by staff, she emotionally withdrew the following week in order to ensure a “clean break” with her daughter. She appeared so cold and detached that staff subsequently (and unironically) instructed her to be more affectionate.

Beyond efforts to squelch certain emotional displays, MCVP also sought to facilitate emotional states, particularly happiness, in children. When asked about the goals of the MCVP program, staff routinely ranked children’s emotional wellbeing as the most important. For staff, this meant that children should feel happy and content. They operationalized this exclusively in terms of reassuring kids that their mothers were okay. To that end, MCVP distributed a book to the children that depicted an idealized version of an inmate’s “typical” day. Titled, I Never Stop Missing You: Thoughts and Feelings from Mothers in Jail, the book was written as if it was from the perspective of an incarcerated mother. In reality, the author was a staff member.¹⁶ The book emphasized that mothers missed their children every second, but they went about their day in a very normal way: getting dressed, doing their hair and makeup, and going to school or work. The book depicted meals, holiday parties, and forms of autonomy that were quite a departure from the reality of inmates lives. More significantly, the book positioned jail as a familiar institutional space not unlike a school or community center. In downplaying the jail’s coercive elements, the book left children ill prepared for the hard realities they encountered on their visits.

Most of the work of managing children’s feelings and emotions fell to mothers, but staff did endeavor to induce certain emotional states, particularly happiness. For example, staff and volunteers worked to distract children from the more intimidating aspects of clearing security and walking down the long hallway. They cheerfully asked, “Are you excited to see your Mommy?” and just as enthusiastically declared, “Your Mom is going to be so happy to see you!” These statements were largely true: mothers and children were happy to see each other. However, it was also the case that children harbored much more complicated feelings associated with their mother’s crimes and drug use, her absence due to incarceration, their relationships with caregivers and other family members, and anxiety about their futures. None of this was up for discussion as they were escorted to their visit. Staff members suggested that such sentiments would upset their mothers, which children interpreted as a warning that their visits would be terminated. On other occasions, staff simply did not acknowledge children’s feelings when they mentioned bittersweet or sad aspects of their lives.

The program’s feeling rules also informed the substance of what mothers were allowed to discuss with their children. For example, one mother entrusted a friend, rather than a family member, with caring for her 9-year-old daughter. Throughout her incarceration, she feared that family members would interfere with this custody arrangement. During one visit, as she sat coloring with her daughter, she warned her not to trust a particular person. A staff member immediately interrupted the conversation and scolded the mother, “She’s just a baby and she doesn’t need to hear that. Let’s focus on right now.” For this mother and her daughter, the visit provided the only interactional space in which they could discuss the shifting dynamics of family and caregiver relationships. In another instance, a mother was joking with her oldest son about her husband. A volunteer shook her finger in the mother’s face and told her, “Watch it.”

Regulating conversations and the emotions that they provoke undermines what, for many mothers, is a vital aspect of parenting. During an interview, one mother explained that visits should serve as a space for emotional exchange, serious talk, and play. She cried as she elaborated:

Well they come in of course, and you pick them up and give ‘em a hug and then I sit him [her son] down. And I ask him you know, “How you been? How’s your grandmother?” And the first thing he always tells me, oh it’s the first thing, “Mama says she loves you.” That my mom loves me and then you know I just sort of ask him, “How was school, did you pass?” Or you know “How’s things going?” and he answers my questions. And then he asks me, “How you doing mom?” “Well, I’m fine. I wish I could go home.” And then he asks me, “When are you going to go home?” And we start playing or coloring and stuff. It’s hard.

Often mothers were not able to predict what topics and conversations staff would find problematic. This, combined with intense efforts to hold back their tears and sadness, rendered many of their interactions with kids awkward and stilted.

While staff primarily held mothers accountable for children’s emotional displays, there were instances in which they directly penalized children for violating emotion rules. When a 16-year-old tried to leave the jail without being signed out by an adult, a staff member accused her of “having attitude.” The staff person explained to Aiello that she chose to discipline the daughter in spite of her awareness of the teenager’s hardships because “rules are rules.”

For children, rules about what emotions were appropriate to have and when to display them were confusing and restrictive. MCVP’s efforts to suppress sadness and anger frequently ran counter to what kids learned at home and in school. Further, the expectation that they achieve a state of happiness during the visit generated a troubling disconnect between the complicated range of feelings that children actually felt and the narrow range of emotions the jail prescribed them to feel and express during the visit. In contrast to adult visitors who are able to distinguish their authentic feelings from the emotional performances, they stage to placate correctional authorities (Comfort, 2008), even older, more experienced, children were incapable of making this contrast. The arc of children’s emotional control was punctuated on one end by children who were unable to moderate expressions of sadness, anger, excitement, fear, and frustration. They sobbed, screamed, punched the air, and clung to their mothers and caregivers. At the other end were children who repressed emotional displays altogether, appearing withdrawn and sullen throughout all or most of the visit. Children who had no control over their emotions were very young and/or less frequent visitors. Those who withdrew altogether or, in the case of teenager who quickly dried her tears, were able to alter or repress their emotional displays, tended to be older and more experienced visitors. It is important to emphasize that although most children became relatively adept at navigating the jail’s feeling rules, none that we observed were able to differentiate authentic feelings from manufactured emotional states, in either themselves or their mothers. In this sense, kids interpreted strong, negative emotions in much way the same the jail did—as a potential source of chaos. Strong, negative emotions meant trouble for their mothers and the possibility that they would not see each other again. Even for children who harbored complicated feelings regarding their mothers’ incarceration, the prospect of discontinued visits was terrifying.

Conclusion

This research project is animated by two sets of substantive concerns. First, we are interested in how children experience secondary prisonization and the extent to which their experiences differ from those reported among adult family members (Comfort, 2008; Tewksbury and DeMichele, 2005). Second, we want to understand how processes associated with secondary prisonization might clarify some of the apparently heterogeneous effects of maternal incarceration reported in quantitative outcome research (Turney and Wildeman, 2015). In developing this line of inquiry, we argue that jails and prisons have become important sites of childhood socialization, with implications for child development and family wellbeing. One of the most immediate ways that carceral facilities intervene in family relationships is through decisions regarding access, specifically by setting the terms and conditions through which family members are able to see, talk, and touch their loved ones. Nowhere is this process more demanding on family members than the visit, where they are subject to wide-ranging forms of surveillance, regulation, humiliation, and status degradation.

Our findings reveal that the core aspects of secondary prisonization among children involve discipline of the body and regulation of emotion. These are not the only forms of secondary prisonization that children encounter, of course. They also experience changes in their schedules and routines, among other things. However, none of these other aspects provoke the same amount of anxiety, confusion, concern, and attention as the jail’s efforts to discipline their bodies and regulate their emotions. Research demonstrates that adult family members also experience discipline of the body and regulation of emotion as core features of secondary prisonization. Together, these produce changes in the self-image and behavior of wives and girlfriends (Comfort, 2008). The impact on children is that much more consequential given their distinct and vulnerable location in the carceral landscape. Most notably, children experience the institution’s efforts to discipline their bodies and regulate their emotions as simultaneously intense and terrifying. Failure to correctly comport the body meant, from the perspective of young children in particular, that they would be “crushed like bugs” by heavy metal doors. Failure to regulate their emotions as well as the emotions of their mothers meant that they might have their visits terminated. In this way, warnings and threats from jail staff were interpreted according to zero-sum rubrics by children who had not yet developed a nuanced understanding of metaphor, individual rights, bureaucratic logic, and the rule of law. In contrast, adults are much better equipped to compartmentalize carceral demands, even in instances where they have experienced abuses of authority and/or humiliation (Comfort, 2008). Notably, one study reported that less than 5% of adult visitors reported feeling fearful while en route to a visit (Tewksbury and DeMichele, 2005). While we did not survey children in our study, our observations suggest children routinely experienced a mix of fear, dread, and excitement as they prepared to visit their mothers.

Compounding matters for children, there is nothing to counter or contradict the jail’s authority over their bodies or emotions. Incarcerated mothers could not effectively intervene on their child’s behalf when a staff member scolded the child for “having attitude,” restrained them from running to their mothers, or denied a visit. Mothers could not, with any authority, assert that a staff member overstepped her bounds or made a hollow threat. The discretionary power of staff members coupled with the powerlessness of mothers and children meant that visits, phone calls, and other forms of contact could disappear at any time, without warning, and with limited or no justification. Indeed, secondary prisonization eroded maternal authority by preventing mothers from performing basic parenting duties such as accompanying their children to the bathroom and encouraging kids to share and express emotion. In so doing, the institution’s construction of children’s bodies and emotions was all but hegemonic. That is, children were forced to view themselves from the perspective of the jail—as a source of trouble and chaos. There was little that countered or qualified this perspective since mothers were conscripted by MCVP to consider their bodies and emotions and the bodies and emotions of their children in a similar manner. Given that children possess fewer intellectual, psychological, and social resources than adults for distancing and compartmentalizing the effects of secondary prisonization, it seems reasonable to conclude that for many children, carceral contact plays an influential role in development and wellbeing. This was certainly the case for children in our study who, following repeated visits, became increasingly adept at repressing their emotions and curtailing their physical movements.

This raises a second and related line of inquiry regarding the relationship between secondary prisonization and childhood outcomes. In the case of MCVP, much of what was demanded of children differs markedly from developmentally appropriate and healthy responses to the incarceration of a loved one. The program’s limitations in this respect were evident as we followed children from the jail’s lobby into the interior of the facility. Children who were happy and carefree in the lobby became fearful, tentative, angry, and withdrawn as they moved through the jail. Over time, children who made regular visits no longer attempted to run or cling to their mothers and caregivers. They repressed emotional expressions, crying less or withdrawing altogether. Research studies have noted similar negative shifts in emotion and behavior following a visit with an incarcerated parent, and several studies report increased behavioral problems among children who visit (Arditti, 2012; Dallaire and Wilson, 2010; Dallaire et al., 2009, 2010; Schlafer and Poehlmann, 2010). Research on child development offers important clues as to why this may be the case. Healthy emotional development for children includes the ability to control emotions and the freedom to effectively express them (Cole et al., 1994). Failure to acknowledge emotions is associated with an inability to manage emotional experiences effectively (Saarni, 1999). Children who suppress and avoid their emotions are less likely to seek help when they need it. Further, the suppression of anger among children puts them at risk for poor quality relationships and increased feelings of distress and anxiety (Zeman et al., 2002). It is not hard to imagine how the carceral management of emotion like that practiced by MCVP puts children at greater risk for internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors and delinquency (Foster and Hagan, 2013; Poehlmann et al., 2010).

This returns us to the puzzle of heterogeneous effects. Our findings suggest, certainly in the short term, that visitation programs like MCVP have negative effects on children’s wellbeing and development. This finding is contradicted by research that suggests visitation is beneficial for children (Blumberg and Griffin, 2013; Block and Potthast, 1998; Snyder, 2009; Trice and Brewster, 2004), as well as some outcome research that shows maternal incarceration is largely inconsequential for children, particularly among those whose mothers are most likely to experience incarceration (Turney and Wildeman, 2015). There are several plausible reasons for this apparent contradiction. First, families, schools, and community organizations differ in their capacity to provide children with resources to counterbalance the effects of secondary prisonization. Additional research is needed to examine how short-term negative effects may be muted or reversed over the months and years that follow a mother’s incarceration. Second, children whose mothers are most likely to experience incarceration may develop social and emotional adaptations that buffer them from feelings of fear, anger, and sadness that preoccupied many of the children in our study. It should be noted that frequent visits familiarized children in our study to the jail’s sights, sounds, and staff and this greatly reduced their fear, particularly as they navigated the long hallway. Third, considerable variation exists among visitation programs not simply between jails and prisons but also within each of these carceral categories. The program we studied represents a popular trend in “family friendly” visitation that appears in select state and federal prisons, as well as larger jails. It is entirely possible that this program, precisely because it aims to facilitate “mother–child bonding” does more harm than good. That is, in contrast to traditional visitation programs that pay substantially less attention to the substance of parent–child interactions, “family friendly” programs actually generate greater levels of surveillance and place more emotional demands on parents and children which, in turn, have the effect of reducing the quality of their interactions. Comparative research on visitation programs is crucial to identifying those practices that enhance child wellbeing and family relations.

It would be disingenuous of us to conclude this article without emphasizing that mothers in our study welcomed a visitation program that was dedicated to their children. Kids, too, were excited to see their mothers. At a time when some states and municipalities are limiting visitation or offering it in the restrictive form of a video monitor, MCVP is admirable in its desire to facilitate face-to-face access and to strengthen mother–child relationships. In spite of its progressive aims, MCVP fell short of providing a “child friendly” space that would serve to buffer children from the various layers of trauma associated with their mother’s incarceration. This is primarily because the institutional prioritization of security undermined rehabilitative goals by framing children first and foremost as purveyors of contraband and chaos. Although our study demonstrates that this particular visitation program did not adequately buffer children from certain kinds of carceral harms, we caution readers from drawing negative conclusions regarding the viability and desirability of family visitation programs. Secondary prisonization is an unavoidable outcome of the incarceration of a loved one. Nonetheless, research suggests that it is not a fixed or uniform experience (Tewksbury and DeMichele, 2005). It is shaped by institutional structure, organizational culture, and public policy (Comfort, 2008). Modest changes in MCVP’s policies such as allowing caretakers to accompany their charges down the long hallway would go a long way to securing children’s physical and emotional wellbeing. Respecting incarcerated women’s status as mothers strengthens, rather than undermines, their relationship with their children. A recent study found that many of the detrimental effects associated with visitation were ameliorated by a family program that did a better job of prioritizing the needs of mothers and children relative to the prison (Schubert et al., 2016). Given that the potential benefits of family visitation are considerable for both children and parents (Cochran and Mears, 2013; Moran, 2013; Thomas, 2011), the aim for researchers must be to identify those practices that enhance child and family wellbeing.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Sarah Becker, three anonymous reviewers, and the editor for their thoughtful comments and suggestions.

Notes

Brittnie L Aiello, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts. Her research focuses on maternal incarceration and the role of motherhood in the punishment of incarcerated women.

Jill A McCorkel, PhD, is Associate Professor of Sociology an Criminology at Villanova University. Her research is in the sociology of punishment, focusing primarily on the impact of mass incarceration on women and families. She is the author of Breaking Women: Gender, Race, and the New Politics of Imprisonment (New York University Press, 2013)..

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