Reside At Correctional Facilities: Case Study

Should Florida Permit Young Children to Have Overnight Visit or Reside at Correctional Facilities with their Mothers?

Every year in the United Sates, millions, if not more, parents are removed the society, taken away from their families, and sent to jail or prison. Some parents are able to return home after a very short time or are simply placed on other programs. Others, depending on the charges, are sent away for much longer, leaving their children to grow up with family member if they are lucky, or they sent to foster homes. Regardless of the time away, each moment spent apart represents childhood memories that will never come back. So does this mean that Florida should allow children to have overnight visits
The age is definitely an important factor. Children’s age would have to range from newborns to about the time they are four years of age. If children were allow to reside only until that age, or right before they enter preschool we would save on education costs. Should we allow them to stay a little bit longer, until the age of six when they start first grade, we would need to provide education for them which would increase the cost. According to the U.S Department of Education the yearly average of a public school student is $12,743 (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2013). The Condition of Education 2013 (NCES 2013-037), Public School Expenditures). This is very important to take into consideration the age we would like to set for the children to reside with their mother. The consequences of having them past four years old is that the correction facilities would have to pay for those children to also get an education; teachers, school materials and more. Since babies and young toddlers do not understand much of what is going on around them, and those are the most important years between mother-child relationship, it would be acceptable to allow them to reside and/or stay overnight with their mothers. Men are more likely to be incarcerated for violent crimes than women, this means that the children may be at higher risk also. Given that the crimes are more violent, the inmates can be more violent. The child could possibly be exposed to child molesters and pedophiles. On the other hand, most women that are charged with violent crimes, most of those crimes were for endangerment of a child. Another issue that needs to be taken into consideration is the length of the sentence imposed to either parent. Statistic from Women Offenders shows that in June 2012, there were 1,520 adult males sentenced to 365