Kentucky bishops back bill to allow ‘alternative sentencing’ for criminals with children

CNA Staff, Feb 20, 2025 / 16:15 pm (CNA).

The Catholic bishops of Kentucky are backing proposed legislation that would require a court to consider alternative sentencing for convicted criminals who have young children.

The measure states that Kentucky wishes to “promote, strengthen, and encourage family life for the protection and care of children” and “maintain the family unit with an emphasis on the parent-child relationship.”

Parental incarceration is classified as an “adverse childhood experience,” the bill notes, which can lead to poor mental and physical health outcomes and increase a child’s chances of criminal activity in turn.

The bill would require courts to consider a convicted criminal’s “status as a primary caretaker of a dependent child” before imposing a sentence. A court would be required to “consider an alternative sentence” in such circumstances while weighing the parent’s criminal history, the seriousness of the crime, and other factors.

Violent offenders would be excluded from the rule, as would criminals whose victims were children as well as those who are ineligible for probation. “Strong consideration” would be given to parents whose children are “infant, preschool, or school-age.”

Convicts will be allowed to present alternative sentence proposals to the court as well as read a family impact statement before the judge. The court, meanwhile, may “require the defendant to participate in programs or services with a focus on parent-child unity or supporting the parent-child relationship.”

In an alert to supporters this week, the Catholic Conference of Kentucky said the state “ranks second in the nation in the percentage of children with an incarcerated parent.”

“Sometimes, a parent may be a risk, and separation is necessary, but often it is not, and it leads to negative outcomes for the children involved,” the conference said. “It also puts a significant strain on our foster care system.”

Catholic Conference of Kentucky Executive Director Jason Hall said that “keeping families together is something we value very highly.”

“When you have a person who is a primary caregiver of a child and that person is incarcerated, if they don’t have another family member who can take them, that child ends up in the foster care system and that can be traumatic,” Hall told the Record, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville. “You see negative outcomes for those children.”

He said the bill is meant to “do right by Kentucky’s kids.”

“Our view is the criminal justice system exists to keep people safe,” he told the paper.

“Incarcerating a parent and putting a child into the foster care system in a lot of cases does not lead to improved public safety down the road; it does harm to Kentucky’s children.”

This is not the only prison-related measure recently backed by Catholics. The Missouri Department of Corrections recently launched a nursery program for incarcerated mothers who have children while in prison. The Missouri Catholic Conference had supported the measure when it was first proposed.

Eligible mothers in that program are allowed to stay in a special unit with their babies for up to 18 months and attend family and parenting classes while there.

The Kentucky Catholic Conference is backing several other bills this session, including one that strengthens religious liberty protections in the state and one that requires hospitals to offer palliative care services to women who receive a diagnosis indicating that their baby may die before or shortly after birth.