My art work shows a girl writing about missing her dad who is in jail. The words show what she is feeling about her father:

click to view full drawing

In this video column, Emani Davis, the director of Project Family Connect and the daughter of an incarcerated man, talks about  the stigma that she experienced as the child of an incarcerated parent and her desire to address the specific needs of this group.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: How has having an incarcerated parent affected the way you see yourself?

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

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…)