If you are a child of someone who is incarcerated and you have a question for me, you have three options:

1. Post a question in the comments section below,
2. Send an email to questions@livesinfocus.org,
3. Call (646) 867-1891 to leave a message.

I also welcome questions from others who might simply be interested in knowing more about how the life of children is affected when a parent is incarcerated.

Click on the player above or download this video here. (iPhone version)

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: How has your parent’s incarceration affected your interest in staying in school?

[Use the comments feature below or call (646) 867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

click for slideshow

You wouldn’t think Felix Castro cries at all by looking at him. He bounces and struts when he walks. His chest is broad, his knuckles massive. His hair is shaved close and two tattooed tears mark his right cheekbone. But in a plaza outside of his work near Washington Square, his eyes welled up as he recounted the students’ stories he heard when he visited Lillian Rashkis High School in Brooklyn as a youth counselor.

Castro is the founder and facilitator of ChangeNThoughts, a violence and gang prevention program in its infancy stage. He looks far younger than his age of 37 would suggest. Castro gets intense and emotional when he discusses his work. “You want to try the judicial. Did you try the rebuilding?” Castro said, before adding, as he does frequently, “What the students really need is love.” (more…)

The Contra Costa Times, a local newspaper outside San Francisco, has an interested piece that looks at the strengths and minuses of addiction treatment programs versus prison or jail terms. The piece profiles 32-year-old John Delino who went in and out of jail and treatment programs until he pulled himself together. But that program is running out of funding and not everyone is sold on its merits. (more…)

Lives in Focus is relaunching its monthly video column by 23-year-old Makeba Lavan, a young woman whose mother was incarcerated until late 2005.

If you are a child of someone who is incarcerated and you have a question for Makeba, you have three options:

1) Post a question in the comments section below,

2) Send an email to questions@livesinfocus.org,

3) Call (646) 867-1891 to leave a message.

Makeba also welcomes questions from others who might simply be interested in knowing more about how the life of children is affected when a parent is incarcerated.

Click on the player above or download this video here. (iPhone version)

Jay Coleman, who served 25 years in prison, talks about how he felt as he watched his children grow up from behind his prison cell:

Click on the player above or download this video here.

In a previous piece, Coleman discusses how he helped raise his children by using a telephone. He also describes how he went from being a crime-loving man to a family man.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: Did you send your spouse or partner in prison pictures of your children? How did you feel experiencing your children grow through photographs alone?

[Use the comments feature below or call (646) 867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

Davian Reynolds, a 16-year-old from Brooklyn, is a poised young man. He is joining the Family Life Behind Bars project as a columnist writing about his experiences growing up in the foster care system.

He attended several of the video training workshops offered by the project.

While he is quiet in person, he has a lot to share. Please watch this video in which he introduces himself:

Click on the player above or download this video here. (iPhone version)

The document Davian mentions, Children of Incarcerated Parents: A Bill of Rights, is attached in the previous link as a PDF. Just click on the link to download it.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: What are some impressions you have formed about your incarcerated parent? And when you visit, how true is that impression compared to the real person?

[Use the comments feature below or call (646) 867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

If you are a child of someone who is incarcerated and you have a question for Davian, you have three options:

1) Post a question in the comments section below,

2) Send an email to questions@livesinfocus.org,

3) Call (646) 867-1891 to leave a message.

Davian also welcomes questions from others who might simply be interested in knowing more about how the life of children is affected when a parent is incarcerated.

This project, which examines the impact on family relations and dynamics when one or more member of a family is incarcerated, is getting an overhaul at several levels–from a new look to a new philosophy. The makeover is possible with the help of a generous grant. (more…)

click for slideshow

Over the course of several perfectly sunny Saturday afternoons, I gathered a group of teenagers and young adults who have in some way been affected by having an incarcerated parent. We met at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, where I planned to teach them how to use video to document how their parents’ incarceration has affected their lives. (more…)

<a href="http://fs2.formsite.com/familylifebehindbars/form471433221/index.html">Click here to complete: 2008 Arts Competition</a>

The first time Emani Davis’s father saw her as a baby, he was behind a glass partition at the Brooklyn House of Detention. At that moment, neither imagined that this first encounter would set the stage for most of their interactions in the decades to come. When Emani was six, her father was again headed for prison–this time sentenced to 107 years for his role in a shooting in Virginia. For the past 22 years, the time she spends with her father has been monitored by armed guards and limited to prison visiting hours.

Her father’s incarceration started to affect Emani immediately. Most of her classmates stopped talking to her when they found out that her father was in prison and sometimes she would get into fights with kids who teased her about her dad.

“It was the first time that I realized that this was something that people thought that I should be ashamed of,” she said.

(more…)