“How many of you grew up without a father in your life?” Monica Roush asked. Tentatively, one hand was raised, then another, then another. Soon, most of the men in the room held their arms high. “Now, tell us, how many of you wished that your father had been there?” In the quiet of the room, nothing changed. All hands remained above the heads of the men who had felt the shame and the loneliness of being a boy without a dad.
Monica Roush is a coordinator for the Tennessee Partnership for Ongoing Parental Support (TPOPS), a partnership between the Tennessee Department of Human Services, the Tennessee Department of Corrections, and the college’s Social Work Office of Research and Public Service.
The men in the room were inmates in the Morgan County Correctional Complex, a new prison that houses as many as 2,400 men in the hills of East Tennessee.
TPOPS is piloting a curriculum and training series on parenting and child support in the Morgan County prison for offenders who have children. This new initiative began taking shape in the fall of 2009 in response to this chilling set of facts: Sixty-four percent of the men who enter prison are fathers; children of offenders are five times more likely than their peers to end up in prison; and as many as 1.5 million children in the United States have at least one parent in prison.
Beginning with classes on parenting, life skills, and child support, TPOPS is creating a network of strong community resources that may be the key to providing inmates with new perspectives and values.
Studies show that a father who transitions successfully from prison to a healthy life as an employed and housed member of the community, who also values his children and his relationship with them, is willing to support them financially. Men who establish healthy family relationships have strong reasons to maintain a lifestyle that will not lead back to prison. And perhaps more important, their positive presence in the lives of their children works against patterns causing second-generation recidivism, in which the children of incarcerated individuals engage in criminal behavior, with tragic consequences.
Roush, along with fellow TPOPS coordinator Belinda Jones, has her work cut out for her. “We are trying to reconnect children with parents in prison,” Jones says. “We hope that will help break first- and second-generation cycles of imprisonment. We’re also helping inmates understand their financial responsibilities for their kids. We’re helping male prisoners learn about methods for establishing paternity, and we’re helping re-entering parents connect with community services that will work with them to find and keep jobs.”
OUTREACH
Roush and Jones are cautiously optimistic. If they are successful, TPOPS may prove to be a model for prisons and communities across the nation.
TPOPS is only one of the ways UT Knoxville enriches the lives of Tennessee’s citizens. Visit our website to find out more ways to enrich the lives of others.
