We know that intact families are a strong contributing factor to prisoners successfully re-entering society. We know that children who are provided a measure of safety, security and stability generally grow into productive happy adults. The prison system, as I have experienced it, works completely to undermine both of these ideals. …We were undone—as people, as a family—by the rules selectively enforced by guards—so selective that you don't know they ever existed, or else by the sudden capricious new rulings that guide a prisoner's interaction with his or family.

For example, there may be a sudden change in dress code for family members and what you wore last week might this week be deemed unacceptable. The manner in which you are told by a guard that you appear "unacceptable" is often humiliating and has the collateral consequence of making a vulgar sexual implication about you. As hard as this was to take prior to becoming a mother, it was nearly impossible to take once I became a mother. …This fear envelopes me every time I make my way into a prison: that my daughter will learn that it is okay to be humiliated, okay to have her "private" parts openly discussed and disparaged….

I will never be convinced that this made the facility more secure. Indeed, the treatment of family members has the potential to make a facility less secure, because it can lead to severe tension between a prisoner and the guard who humiliated or otherwise violated his wife. As a result, I often chose not to tell my husband the many indignities, but how did they change me? I am still discovering that.

Excerpted from a written statement submitted to the Commission