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Detention center start parenting class

Messenger-Inquirer - 7/19/2021

Jul. 19—Last week, the Daviess County Detention Center held its first parenting class for a group of women inmates.

The class, which is part of the jail's moral reconation therapy program, is not limited to only women inmates. The plan, instructor Cathy Kramer said, is to start holding the classes for male inmates this week.

There's an incentive for the inmates — completion of the course results in an inmate receiving 90 days of credit toward their sentence. But the goal of the program is to teach inmates ways to handle parenting challenges while helping their kids be confident and to make sound choices.

"It's a way of offering a new way (to parent) without making them feel like they were bad or wrong," Kramer said. "This class is not telling them how wrong they are."

Kramer, who has worked in pastoral ministry and addiction counseling, has been teaching moral reconation therapy classes at the jail for several years.

The class is not the kind of information new parents might receive about feeding, bathing and caring for newborns.

"This is more parenting and family values," Kramer said. "It gives the individual parent or guardian the opportunity to look at their own childhood. That's where we draw our (parenting ideas) from."

Part of the class focuses on how to address certain parenting problems while helping class members identify their own values, such as how they want do things like celebrate holidays with their children, Kramer said.

Learning how to appropriately discipline children is also part of the class. "It tries to remind you that any kind of physical contact is not the answer," she said. "They don't understand they don't have to react the way their parents reacted.

"The majority of these programs are really programs that anybody can use and get something out of. We can all improve, and that's what I tell them."

Inmates who receive parole can complete the class virtually, Kramer said. Completing some classes, such as MRT, can be listed as a condition of parole. That's not true with the parenting class, but it could be added in the future, Kramer said.

The class, which Kramer said she expects to last from 13 to 16 weeks, is not a series of lectures.

Inmates are expected to come to classes having done the reading in the workbooks and with the assignments completed. The class has several sections on parenting and several on family support, which deal with the importance of paying child support.

"Each module does have homework," Kramer said. "They do the steps before they come to class," which gives the class the opportunity to discuss their answers and share ideas.

"We have some amazing conversations" in class, she said.

Jailer Art Maglinger said adding a women's parenting class is a way to expand programs for female inmates, and teaching parenting skills could help families be more successful.

"I think a breakdown of the family unit is responsible for an increase in criminality," Maglinger said. "I think (the class) addresses that because it gives inmates more resources. It's a program that could benefit them in a real way and make their family stronger.

"The children are the unintended victims of incarceration," Maglinger said.

"If this helps a few individuals get released and go back to their families and have a more solid foundation ... it's a benefit to the community as a whole."

James Mayse, 270-691-7303, jmayse@messenger-inquirer.com, Twitter: @JamesMayse

James Mayse, 270-691-7303, jmayse@messenger-inquirer.com, Twitter: @JamesMayse

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