by Silva Payne

Created on: November 15, 2008   Last Updated: August 14, 2009

To address the 'tour' part of the question first, very young children do not need to be taken on a tour of a prison. It is far more important for 4 and 5 years olds to be taken to a working farm and learn that milk comes from cows and not bottles, than it is for them to see how we treat the incarcerated. Take them to a power plant, a recycling centre, a sewerage works or anywhere that they can learn to understand about their world as it is, but tours should be fun things at that age and going to prison is not fun and should never be seen as such.

However, for older children, perhaps of 8 and over, a prison tour could be a valuable tool if conducted appropriately. Again, it should never be glamourised: there is nothing good about being incarcerated and as adults it is our responsibility to try and make children understand this. No one has a crystal ball, no one can predict which child may end up in prison in the future, and in some states it is a high possibility that the majority of children now will pass through a prison at some point in their lives. Children need to be aware that bad behaviour has consequences, preferably before they exhibit bad behaviour themselves. Waiting until the act has already happened, or allowing them to believe that only other people get caught and go to prison, in my opinion can be more damaging in the long run than taking a 10 year old to the local jail on a supervised tour and shown how inmates are restricted and processed.

Tours can be fun, even to prisons, but they need to be memorable and the best way to do that is the use of 'props'. Most children will enjoy having their finger prints taken, or being put into handcuffs. Some might find it a little scary to be inside a cell, but that fear is a good thing because it may just be what keeps them from returning to that cell later on.

Visits can be a completely different experience for children if one of their parents is incarcerated. There have recently been new procedures introduced in Texas prisons where everyone over the age of 17 is pat-searched when they enter a prison to visit an inmate. Some guards have expressed concern that if they cannot search under-17s, then under-17s should not be allowed entry. Some have even stated that they do not see why children should be allowed into a prison at all (and some go further and state that inmates should not receive visits from anyone, but these, thankfully, are in the minority). Security issues aside, the benefits of allowing

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