On Thursday, October 22, the CT Children with Incarcerated Parents Initiative (CTCIP) held its first symposium at the Chrysalis Center in Hartford. About 100 partners and collaborators attended the half-day event in recognition of Parental Incarceration Awareness Month.
“I felt like we had the right people in the room, motivated to make a change,” said Irvine Peck’s-Agaya, CTCIP’s senior program manager. Peck’s-Agaya and the CTCIP team envisioned the event a year earlier, and spent the past three months planning every detail. “We can’t keep having conversations about criminal justice reform without grappling with the effects of incarceration on families and coming together to implement sustainable strategies.”
State Representative Corey Paris (D-Stamford), the first African American man to represent the 145th House District, made the early morning commute to the Capitol area to provide opening remarks. Paris also serves as the House Chair of the Committee on Children.
“The experience of any child with an incarcerated parent should be at the forefront of our work to end the stigma and to end whatever traumas may come from that,” Paris said. “Our work is to ensure that they will have full and meaningful lives as adults.”
A panel of people with lived experience followed. Each spoke about the stigma around incarceration, the lack of empathy for family members during arrests, and the need for support for caregivers – those critical connections that help a child feel seen and heard.
“You do become resilient and strong to the point that you think it didn’t affect you,” said Dani Gordon, whose experience as a CTCIP scholarship recipient was highlighted earlier this month. “It does teach you something.”
For Kiana Cintron, a recent recipient of the CTCIP scholarship, the symposium marked the first time she had shared the story of her father’s incarceration. She was just 10 years old when he was arrested in their family home. He was released from prison shortly before her high school graduation.
“I took on a lot of responsibility as a 10-year-old trying to make my mom’s life easier and care for my sister,” Cintron recalled. She was only able to visit her father only twice during his incarceration because of the distance and expense, before video visitation became an option. Today, she is a fourth-year UConn student majoring in biology on a pre-med track, reflective of how those early challenges shaped her.
“His mistakes and his choices do not define him or me,” Cintron said.
“As the panelists shared, you could hear people around the room responding emotionally,” said Peck’s-Agaya. “I felt that our panelists were giving us a call to action, because policy decisions have real and tangible impacts on children and families. That is one of our guiding principles at CTCIP – to put forward the voices of people who are so often impacted by policies.”
School of Public Policy and IMRP Assistant Research Professor Dr. Lydia Wileden presented Trends in Connecticut’s Carceral Visitation (2019-2026), setting the stage for discussion of past and current barriers to visitation.
Special guest Dr. Bree Boppre, a well-known researcher in the field who works for The Urban Institute, traveled from Nevada to present How to Support Families Impacted by Incarceration: Strategies to Improve Access to Communication and Connections. Her presentation included national statistics and challenged attendees to consider visitation from a child’s perspective, including how facilities could make visiting areas more child-friendly. CTCIP and the Connecticut Department of Correction (CTDOC) have been collaborating to improve visitation areas within nearly a dozen institutions statewide.
IMRP Director Andrew Clark moderated the final panel, featuring CTDOC personnel comprising deputy wardens, wardens, and district administrators. Panelists discussed ongoing efforts to improve support for families at correctional facilities and the need for greater collaboration across systems.
“It isn’t an us against them,” District Administrator Eulalia Garcia said, challenging common portrayals of corrections in the media. “We do care, we do want family involvement. We will go above and beyond to make that happen so long as the support system wants to be involved.”
Garcia pointed to special events inside facilities, including “Playdates with Dad,” and other child-friendly programming. She also described the many roles correctional officers take on to provide both security and support.
Partners were asked to help secure additional funding, legislative support, and input to “help think outside the box” and see things from a different angle.
“One solution does not fit all,” said Peck’s-Agaya. “As we’re thinking about solutions and the importance and benefits of maintaining connections for kids while a parent is incarcerated, we need to think about the unique needs of children in that population.”
Panelists and attendees agreed that the trauma of parental incarceration is not only felt when visiting a parent but often extends to other areas of a child’s life including housing, education, and social services, and has financial and behavioral impacts for kids.
“For our team, it was important that folks leave with tangible actions or new connections, and I can proudly say that we accomplished that,” summarized Peck’s-Agaya. “Beyond the new connections we made, I heard attendees making plans to connect and strategize about how they could carry what they learned into their work. I hope we can build upon that momentum.”
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Video and photos from the event will be posted when available.