In 1985,
Andrea Payne became one of the thousands of forgotten victims. Those left behind after a family member goes to prison. Andrea's husband was convicted of armed robbery and murdering a police dog and sentenced to life in prison, leaving her and her child alone. While visiting him at Mark H. Luttrell Reception Center, she met Yvonne Howard who was also visiting her husband. What accidentally began as a informal support group of two soon became a support group of twenty. They became so concerned with the problems of the inmates' families that they formed Families of Incarcerated Individuals in 1989.
During one of the nightly support group meetings, two of the children began to fight. After stopping the fight, they were asked why they were fighting. The response they gave was not only frightening but eye opening. The children said they were fighting over whose father had committed the worst crime. That's when Andrea and Yvonne realized that it was never about them but about the children. At that point the direction of the support group shifted. All of the groups efforts were put into supporting the children first. Providing them with mentors, tutoring, anger management, and anything else that they could think of which would provide them with the needed tools to make life normal.
In 1994 Senate Joint Resolution No. 319 was adopted. This resolution recognized the families of inmates as "victims" suffering the effects of crime and incarceration due to no fault of their own, and urged the Department of Corrections, the Department of Youth Development and the Board of Paroles to encourage programs that enable family bonding and to make visitation a priority for Tennessee correctional institutions. Today, there are over 7,000 children in Shelby County and more than 150,000 in the state of Tennessee who is impacted by incarceration. It is our stated goal and purpose to reach these children and their families and to provide variety of community based programs and services designed to foster positive values and cultivate opportunities for self-sufficiency and citizenship among individuals affected by incarceration.
