I went into the federal system, not the Arkansas Division of Correction. But I have been to the Arkansas Delta. I know what that land looks like: flat, wide, the sky enormous, small towns with Dollar Generals and shuttered storefronts, the Mississippi and its tributaries threading through bottomland that floods some years and bakes other years. The Cummins Unit sits on 16,500 acres of it, 28 miles south of Pine Bluff, a prison farm that opened in 1902 and where inmates still work the fields. Tucker Unit. East Arkansas Regional near Forrest City. Delta Regional in Dermott. These are not suburban facilities near a highway and a McDonald's. These are remote places in some of the poorest counties in the country, and the children who visit them are traveling into a landscape that carries its own weight before they even reach the gate.
I went in when my kids were 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, and 20. What I want to tell every parent reading this from inside one of those units, and every parent or caregiver holding things together in Little Rock or Jonesboro or Fort Smith or in a small Delta town, is that the landscape does not determine what happens to the children. The choices both adults make do.
The land and what it communicates
The Arkansas prison system has its roots in the prison farm model, and that history is not entirely past. Cummins, Tucker, and the other Delta-area units are agricultural operations as well as correctional facilities. A child who drives down to visit a parent at Cummins is passing through cotton fields and soybean fields to get there. The facility itself looks like what it is: an old farm that became a prison and has been both ever since.
I mention this because the environment shapes what children carry home. A child who visits a parent in a gleaming suburban county jail in a more prosperous state carries a different image than a child who visits the Arkansas Delta. Neither experience is easy. The Delta version carries the weight of the landscape itself, the isolation, the flatness, the distance from the life the family knows. That weight is real, and the incarcerated parent needs to know their child is carrying it.
What the parent can do, inside that visiting room or on the phone from that unit, is make the contact itself something that offsets the weight. A visit where the parent shows up fully, where the child feels genuinely found, does work that overrides the drive and the gate and the landscape. A call where the parent asks the right question and really listens is the call the child carries. The environment cannot be changed. What the parent brings to the contact can be.
The decision both parents have to make in a state like Arkansas
Arkansas has poverty rates among the highest in the country. A significant portion of the families whose loved ones are inside Arkansas facilities are managing not just the incarceration but the economic weight that often surrounds it. The outside parent is holding a household together with limited resources, limited local support in rural communities, and limited access to services that exist mostly in urban centers.
Into that reality, the most important decision is still the same one it is everywhere: both parents have to decide not to use the children as the field where the adults fight their battle.
My wife never said one word against me to our six children during 66 months. She had every reason to. She had six kids in a situation I had created, a financial structure I had blown apart. She chose to keep that from them. She let them love me without a price tag on it. And every relationship I have with my adult children today is the consequence of that choice.
The parent inside an Arkansas facility carries the same obligation from inside. A 30-minute phone call, which is the limit under the ADC rules, is not the place for the conversation about what is not being handled right at home, or for the pressure that comes from fear and helplessness, or for the anger that builds up inside when you cannot be there. The children are on that call, or they are near it, or they find out what was said. Thirty minutes used well builds something. Thirty minutes misused spends something that takes a long time to earn back.
What the ages mean in Arkansas
My children were 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, and 20 when I went in. In the Arkansas context, I think about what those ages mean against this landscape.
The 9-year-old in rural Arkansas who has a parent at Cummins or Tucker is navigating something that their classmates almost certainly also know about, because in small communities, very little stays private. That child is not protected from the social reality by anonymity. They may face questions from other kids, from neighbors, from adults in the church or the school. What they need from the incarcerated parent, before anything else, is something direct and repeated: this is not your fault. You did not do anything to cause this. I love you and I will be home.
Children under 10 build private explanations for things they cannot understand. The explanation they build for a parent's absence is usually the worst available option. They decide it is something about them. That decision settles in quietly and shapes how they see themselves for years. Say it out loud. Say it every time. Make it impossible for the 9-year-old to believe they are the reason.
The 11 and 12-year-old is entering middle school in a state where rural schools are often under-resourced and where the social dynamics of a small community mean that a parent's incarceration is public information in a way it might not be in a large city. That child is building their identity in a place where that fact about their family is visible. The incarcerated parent who tracks the child's life, who remembers what they said last time and asks about it this time, who shows genuine interest in who the child is becoming inside those circumstances, is doing the most important parenting available from inside a cell. That active presence, tracked week by week across phone calls, is what distinguishes a parent from an absence.
The 15-year-old will see through obligation immediately. A teenager in Arkansas whose parent calls because they feel they should will notice it. A teenager whose parent calls because they are genuinely curious about that teenager's specific life will notice that too, and will respond to it differently. Ask more than you tell. Listen more than you instruct. The 15-year-old who still answers the phone by the end of the sentence is the 15-year-old who believed the parent was real with them.
The 18 and 20-year-old is making a decision about what kind of relationship to carry forward. That decision will be based on the evidence of this period. Show up in a way that makes the decision easy.
What the outside parent carries in the Delta
If you are the caregiver outside, holding together a household in Jefferson County or Lee County or Chicot County while someone you love is inside an Arkansas facility, you are doing something genuinely hard. You are managing the economic pressure, the children's grief and confusion, the community's awareness of your situation, and your own processing of everything, simultaneously and without much institutional support.
What you need from the incarcerated parent is acknowledgment. Not instructions about what to do differently. Not pressure about what is missing. Acknowledgment that the person inside the fence sees what you are carrying, is grateful for it, and is doing the work of being someone worth coming home to. One sentence, on a call or in a letter, that names specifically what you see the outside parent doing and says thank you, is one of the most useful things an incarcerated parent can do. It costs nothing. It holds a great deal.
For the outside parent: what you say about the incarcerated parent in front of the children shapes those children's relationship with that parent for decades. You do not have to pretend the situation is not what it is. But the children need to be able to love both of their parents without guilt, and that is a gift only you can give them. My wife gave that gift to six children for 66 months. What I have with those children today is the proof of what it was worth.
Treating every contact as the one that matters
Inside a Delta unit in Arkansas, phone calls are 30 minutes maximum and everything except attorney calls is recorded. I learned inside the federal system to treat every call and every letter as if it might be the last for a while. I asked the questions I would want answered if I did not get another chance. I listened to the answers as if I had to carry them for months. That discipline changed what I built during my sentence.
At 30 minutes, you have more time per call than a lot of states allow. Use it. Do not spend the first five minutes on the facility news and the last five minutes on the money situation. Spend the middle on the child. Ask about the specific things you know are happening in their life. Remember what they said last time. Ask about it by name this time. That continuity is the proof that you are paying attention from wherever you are, and that proof is what keeps a child in a relationship with a parent they cannot be near.
How communication works in Arkansas: the practical piece
The ADC Division of Correction uses Securus Technologies for phone services. Set up an AdvanceConnect prepaid account at the Securus website or call 1-800-844-6591. Phone deposits by automated phone are available at (866) 250-7697. Calls are limited to 30 minutes. Three-way calling and call forwarding are prohibited and can result in loss of phone privileges.
For tablets, eligible Class I and II inmates can access Securus SecureView tablets, leased on a monthly basis. Tablets allow phone calls, music, books, and job searching under the same phone rules. Family members initiate the tablet program through the Securus SecureView website.
For electronic messaging, Securus provides an eMessaging service accessible through an account with a monthly fee. This allows family members to send messages to inmates without the cost of a phone call.
For in-person visits, appointment requests are made online at telegov.egov.com/docrequest. All prospective visitors must complete a visitation application, including for children; criminal background checks are conducted on all adult visitors. Children under 18 may visit with parent or guardian permission. All of an inmate's children plus two adults may visit simultaneously. Return completed visitation forms by mail to the unit's visitation clerk, not to the inmate. ADC general number: (870) 267-6999; doc.arkansas.gov for facility-specific contact information.
Physical mail is still accepted. Paper money orders are no longer accepted after May 31, 2025; use online deposit at doc.arkansas.gov or phone deposits.
Two federal facilities also operate in Arkansas: FCI Forrest City Low and FCI Forrest City Medium, both in Forrest City in St. Francis County. Federal inmates at these facilities communicate through BOP systems: TRULINCS for email via CORRLINKS, TRUFONE for phone. The same FCC rate caps apply. Inmates enrolled in First Step Act programming may receive 300 free phone minutes per month.
Where this leaves you
Arkansas's facilities sit in a landscape that carries its own history and its own weight. A child who makes the drive to Cummins or Tucker or East Arkansas Regional is not making a neutral trip. They are traveling into the Arkansas Delta, into the specific gravity of those places. What the incarcerated parent brings to that visit, to that phone call, to that letter, determines whether the child carries the weight of the place or the warmth of the contact. Both adults deciding to protect the children from the war between them is the foundation on which every phone call and every visit either builds or fails. That decision is available from inside any of these units. Make it and keep making it.