Mary Hensley has a recurring dream about her 4-year-old son, Trevor. In the dream, he says to her, "Mama, I got sentenced to five years," and he shows her his arms, which are covered with burns and bruises. "Mama," Trevor says, "I'll have all these boo-boos for 5 years."

Hensley is 23 years old, blonde with carefully made-up blue eyes. She has been incarcerated at the Lakes Region Correctional Facility in Laconia, N.H., for 14 months for selling a controlled drug, possession of a narcotic and a driving offense. For a number of years, she was a heroin addict. She is ashamed of the track marks up and down her own arms, which she calls "disgusting."

She is not sure how to interpret her dream, although she has done some research to try to figure it out. "I think I just feel so much guilt for having abandoned Trevor," she says quietly. As she talks about her history, her voice is wistful, bewildered--she can't quite believe all that has happened to her, and how her life has turned out.

We don't necessarily think of prison as a place where one might establish a loving relationship with a child, or gain self-knowledge. Hensley feels as if she's made progress on both these fronts, for one reason: the Family Connections Program, a collaborative effort among UNH's family studies department, UNH Cooperative Extension's family and youth development program and the New Hampshire Department of Corrections. Since 1998, these groups have been working to maintain or rebuild families from inside the prison's walls.

"They have helped me feel like a human being again. I'm not just my prisoner number," Hensley says. "And they recognize me and respect me as a mother. In my support group, I can talk about my fears and anxieties and learn from other single mothers. They've helped give me the strength to want to change, for Trevor's sake."

The program is offered to any prisoner who is a parent--as are 65 percent of the approximately 340 inmates at Laconia--and has three components. First, participants are required to take an eight-week parenting class. Then, they can choose to be part of a parenting support group. Finally, if their child's caregiver agrees, they can have one-on-one visits with their child in the family-friendly Family Connections facility, which is on prison grounds. These visits are closely monitored by program staff who watch from an observation room, taking notes on the quality of the interaction between parent and child. The visits, which are learning opportunities for the parent, and bonding opportunities for both parent and child, are what make the program unique.

"This is really cutting-edge," says Charlene Baxter, program leader for family development at Cooperative Extension. "We're not aware of anyone else in the world doing this kind of work." Until June of this year, the program was funded by federal funds from the New Hampshire Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention and Recovery. Staff members are searching for other grants to keep the program going beyond June 2004.

It is work that is desperately needed by a population that has largely been ignored by the corrections system. According to the Bureau of Justice, approximately 1.5 million children under the age of 18 in the United States have a parent in prison. Children of inmates are six times more likely than other children to be incarcerated when they get older. They are also more likely to leave school, and to fall prey to depression and substance abuse.

Until recently, according to Kerry Kazura, associate professor of family studies, the prevailing corrections philosophy has been to focus on the inmate separately from his or her family. "In fact, the family has been seen as a distraction from the inmate's rehabilitation," Kazura explains. "As a result, there is very little research on the impact of incarceration on the inmate's children and the family unit as a whole."

The family studies department was attracted to the idea of working with the prison population because, as Kazura notes, "it encompasses everything that family studies as a discipline can do, and unites the different strands of our work." It involves research on people of all ages: the parents of inmates, the inmates themselves, who are largely young adults, aged 18-30, and the children of inmates. "We were also excited about the outreach component, connecting family members with programs in their community," Kazura says. "That is essential to the university's land-grant mission."

Kristina Toth '91, the program's administrator, is very clear about the impact of incarceration on families. In effect, the family also gets sentenced with the inmate, she says. "No one thinks about the children. They are a forgotten population," she adds.

Toth, a tall brunette, became interested in the field of corrections through her uncle, who is an assistant chief at Interpol. At UNH, she majored in sociology with a concentration in justice studies, and as a junior did an internship with the Portsmouth police department, where she was assigned to an officer who specialized in juveniles. "It became clear to me that you could do the most with that population in terms of changing behavior--you could really help prevent them from committing major crimes," she says.

Toth, along with Kazura, Kristine Baber, chair of the family studies department, and Mary Temke, who is now retired from Cooperative Extension, were instrumental in getting the program up and running, begging cast-off furniture from family and friends, creating a parenting library and coordinating volunteers to paint bright murals in the two visiting rooms.

Between 15 and 20 inmates are now receiving visits from their children. The number varies because the child's caregiver must agree to bring the child for visits, and this sometimes turns out to be an obstacle. Often caregivers don't want the children to be anywhere near a prison environment, or their relationship with the inmate is strained. Sometimes, transportation is an issue.

Inmates whose children don't visit but who want to maintain contact are encouraged to write weekly letters to them. If they are part of a support group, they can also participate in a books-on-tape program, where they are videotaped reading a children's book as if they were reading it to their child.

"The books-on-tape piece encourages literacy while helping the child to maintain contact with their parent," Toth says. For her, the bigger picture is stopping children from eventually becoming inmates themselves. "Ninety percent of Laconia's inmates are men, and probably about 50 percent of them are fathers," she says. "Research has shown that an absent father often leads to early delinquency, early pregnancy and poor academic skills. The program helps children of inmates by giving them the opportunity to have their dad or mom in their lives." She adds, "If a child comes here and has a good visit, a healthy visit and is shown love, then it's all worth it."

It's a Friday morning, and 10 fathers are sitting around a table talking about being parents. Lin Crowley, a warm woman in her 50s, is facilitating the support group. Crowley, who has a master's degree in counseling, insists that her best credentials are her three children, the youngest of whom is a junior at UNH.

The state prison at Laconia is a medium-security facility, and these fathers all wear prison drab and live within the razor-wire fence. Laconia primarily serves nonviolent offenders, and approximately 85 percent of the inmates have committed crimes associated with drugs and alcohol.

These men talk a lot about the person they were when they were drunk or high, and the person they are without drugs or alcohol. The program also offers classes on issues related to parenting, such as anger management and family finance, and these components have clearly left an impression.

In the rest of the prison, inmates are addressed by the prisoner number on their uniform: here, in the program's classroom, they are addressed formally---Mr. Libbey, Mr. Harrison, Mr. Laraway---as befitting men who are trying to better their lives. They mill about freely before the group begins, getting coffee and chatting with the staff.

When the men talk, it becomes clear that they face a substantial handicap when trying to learn to be good fathers, since most of them are products of poor parenting themselves. Jeffrey Libbey is 37 years old and is serving two to five years for second-degree assault. A short, compact man with close-cropped hair, he has an air of determined resignation about him. The program, he says, has taught him patience. "Any time I'm pissed off, instead of going off, I think of my kids and how I need to get the hell out of here," he says.

Libbey has four children, ages 9 to 15 years. He remembers his own childhood as very lonely. "My parents were basically absent, and when they were around, they ignored their kids," he says. "My father never showed any emotion except anger--he was very demanding and everything had to be his way or no way. As I look at it now, he never considered my feelings or needs. With my kids, I'm trying to be more aware of their emotional needs. As Mrs. Crowley says, they're little people, and you need to pay attention to what you show them."

Libbey's children visit him in prison, and he enjoys reading to them, playing games, drawing and doing crafts. By participating in the program, he's realized that he never kisses his 15-year-old son, and he is contemplating how that lack of affection might make his son feel.

Chris Harrison, 25, is serving one to three years for driving violations. He has a boyish, open face and clear blue eyes. He has lost 100 pounds in prison, and is both perceptive and well spoken. His 3-year-old daughter visits him regularly, and while the program is making a difference in helping them maintain a relationship with each other, he believes that it has taught him the most about himself, a lesson that seems to have become part of his parenting. "My mother was raised in a strict home, so when I came along, she did the exact opposite," he explains. "I was basically free to experience childhood, and I had no discipline or boundaries. I've learned that children need boundaries to feel safe and protected."

Perly Laraway is also 25, and is serving one to three years for second-degree assault and criminal mischief. He and Harrison have known each other since they were 10, when they both started in the corrections system. Laraway has a body builder's physique, and in the past his physical strength was a particular source of pride. He has two children, a 14-month-old daughter and a 4-year-old son. So far, his children's caregivers have not agreed to bring them for visits.

One of Laraway's earliest memories is of sitting on his father's lap, steering the family truck home from a friend's house because his dad was too drunk to drive. "Alcohol totally ruined my family," he says. "I remember never wanting to be home. My dad was a nasty drunk and I hated him for treating me the way he did. He used to wake me up and accuse me of trying to kill my mother because she almost died when I was born."

Laraway, who inherited his father's addiction to alcohol, says that he is useless when he drinks. But he also says that he is sick of being an irresponsible dad. He is working on his GED and hopes to pursue a career in hotel and lodging management when he gets out of prison. He sends cards to his kids every week.

Libbey says the visits from his children help take the sting out of the separation. "You don't realize how much you love your kids until you can't see them every day," he says.

Like Libbey, Laraway credits the program with helping him manage his anger. And, like others in the program, with giving him a goal of becoming a better person once he's "outside" again.

"I've learned how to communicate better when I get angry," says Laraway. "For a long time, my source of pride was being able to fight. I was good at it. But if I keep drinking and fighting, I'm either going to be dead or locked up. My kids are my inspiration now." ~

Anne Downey '95G is a freelance writer who lives in Eliot, Maine. She received her Ph.D. in English from UNH.