This article introduces a successful reading program, Family Connections, for incarcerated parents and their children. A comprehensive review of the literature supports the need to implement prison programs from an ecological perspective, in which the needs of inmates and their families are considered. More specifically, the benefits of directing…

The Lancaster Visiting Cottage Program, located at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Lancaster, was implemented to allow children to visit overnight with their incarcerated mothers. It was hoped that the program would reunite mothers with their children, help them to maintain or re-establish close ties, and prepare mothers for their…

This report presents the results of a process evaluation of the first year of the Lancaster Visiting Cottage Program, a program developed by the Massachusetts Department of Corrections to provide overnight visits between children and their incarcerated mothers. Chapter I provides an introduction to the report. Chapter II reviews the literature on…