Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi on Monday set the lowest age in California for children visiting parents on their own at San Francisco County Jail, in an effort to make in-custody visits easier for families — something that studies have shown to be beneficial for both the kids and the inmates.
The sheriff’s new policy will allow 16-year-old children to make solo visits with loved ones in county jail, making San Francisco the first jurisdiction in California to drop the age limit for such visits below 18.
Mirkarimi said he decided on the policy change after consulting advocacy organizations for incarcerated parents and their children, as well as seeing the results of a systemwide survey of inmates that found that at any given time, there are more than 1,000 children in San Francisco with a parent in county jail.
[For more of this story, written by Vivian Ho, go to http://www.sfgate.com/crime/ar...rnia-for-6314880.php]
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