About 200,000 children currently have a parent in a California state prison. It is difficult to determine how old these children are and where they are living; police, courts and prisons are not required to ask those they arrest, sentence and detain about the status of their children. But nationwide, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 58 percent of the 1.5 million children of incarcerated parents are younger than 10 years old. A survey of visitors to three California state facilities found that 55 percent of visiting children were 6 or younger, and 34 percent were 3 or younger.

It is for the very young that touching, being held and listening to a mother's voice are crucially important to development. "If you're talking about children under a year of age, your main means of communication is touch," says Barbara Howard of Johns Hopkins. "Yes, we encourage people to talk to babies and read to babies, but babies don't really understand what you're saying. They respond to eye contact and the rhythm of your voice."

Denise Johnston, M.D., director of the Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents in Pasadena, Calif., conducted a study of county jail visiting environments at 57 facilities and found that, when viewed from a child's perspective, they were hostile and confusing.

"There are things people normally don't think about," says Johnston, a pediatrician. "Cement floors, concrete walls, a steel counter in front of the window, plastic or metal chairs -- that seems so irrelevant, but in fact for small children, the amount of the surface of their body that comes into contact with this cold environment is huge compared to adults. There can also be aural distortions, and they often can't hold the phone correctly because they're little."

Johnston recalls one young girl who was so confused by visiting her mother through glass that when her mother called the next day, the girl asked her, "Are you dead, Mommy?"

When her mother reminded her that she had just visited the day before, the child replied, "It's like TV in there -- I'm not sure it's really you."

Researchers David Fanshel and E.B. Shinn, authors of the 1978 book "Children in Foster Care," found that children who regularly visit with parents from whom they are separated show better emotional adjustment, higher I.Q. scores and more improvement in behavior than those who do not. A 1972 study of California prisoners -- still the most frequently cited in the field -- found that inmates who had regular, ongoing visits were six times less likely to reenter prison during their first year out than those who had no visitors.

These findings, wrote researchers Norman Holt and Donald Miller in "Explorations in Inmate-Family Relations," a 1972 report from the research division of the California Department of Corrections, suggest that "it might be well to view the inmate's family as the prime treatment agent and family contacts as a major correctional technique."

Additional studies, including one conducted by the New York state Department of Correctional Services in the early 1980s, found that family visits improved offender behavior -- in prison and after release. A 1985 study by the Massachusetts Department of Corrections concluded that corrections programs that worked to support social bonds, including those to family, decreased recidivism.

Nonetheless, under the proposed regulations for California prisons, contact visits will be denied to all drug offenders, with the exception of those convicted of simple possession. Those convicted of other crimes, including murder, will still be eligible for such visits. The rationale for singling out this population, as spelled out in the CDC's notice of proposed regulations, is that contact visits may provide drug offenders with a means of "continuing their enterprise."

The presumption that contact visits facilitate drug smuggling, says CDC spokesperson Russ Heimerich, is based on experience. Of 800 documented drug-related incidents in state prisons last year, he says, 150 involved visitors, accounting for more than half the total amount of drugs coming in. (The rest, he says, enter via packages, mail and "miscellaneous"). While the CDC does not keep track of how many such incidents involve children, he says there is plenty of "anecdotal evidence" of visitors using children to ferry drugs inside -- even going so far as to hide drugs in a soiled diaper.

Although drug offenders are not the only ones who receive drugs from visitors, adds Heimerich, "We clamp down as tightly as possible especially on those who are drug offenders because it gives them a way to clean up."

The CDC figures on contraband come from incident reports rather than a systematic statewide study. But a recent report to the Florida Legislature by the Justice Council Committee on Corrections -- which did conduct a statewide study -- contained an illuminating finding: While 46 percent of corrections officers surveyed believed that most contraband came from visitors, only 2.5 percent of contraband incidents statewide in fiscal year 1997-1998 were actually attributable to visitors.

"Security measures which are overzealously applied, resulting in only a small improvement in institutional safety and which extract a huge toll in disenfranchising families," the Florida committee concluded, "must be revisited and reevaluated."

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