Serving the Innocent Children of Incarcerated Parents

This column is part of Times Opinion’s 2024 Giving Guide. Read more about the guide in a note from Times Opinion’s editor, Kathleen Kingsbury.

Deonte Smith was just 3 years old, and his brother just a baby, when their mother, Yolanda Diamond, was incarcerated. She faced consecutive life sentences plus 25 years after crashing into another vehicle while fleeing the scene of a burglary, killing two sisters, one of whom was pregnant, and a child.

Smith, now 34, remembers family and friends occasionally taking him, as a small child, to see his mother. On those early trips, she was able to briefly hug and kiss him before they had to be seated on opposite sides of a table for the rest of their short visits — prevented from having the physical contact that would be natural and normal for young children and parents: sitting in her lap, resting his head on her chest, her rubbing his cheek and feeling his breath.

But when Smith was about 8, he told me, his mother entered the Foreverfamily program and things began to change. Foreverfamily is an Atlanta-based organization founded in 1987 by the attorney and activist Sandra Barnhill to serve the children of incarcerated parents, helping those children maintain regular, meaningful connections with their parents.

Foreverfamily would bring Smith and his brother to see Diamond, and she was able to visit with them for six hours at a time in a family center on prison grounds that was decorated to look more like a day care than a prison visitation area, complete with holiday decorations depending on the time of year.

Diamond lit up when she described it to me: “It had books. It had games. You could go outside. I mean, it was a full open space. You could get in the floor. You could just get in the rocking chair.”