Sherine Sewell is miserable, angry, frustrated and fed up about being in prison and unable to communicate or have a relationship with her six children.

Sewell, 34, said she has been incarcerated at the Fort Augusta Correctional Centre since 2006 for assault charges faced for protecting her sons.

She was accustomed to being with her children but now she wonders if they feel abandoned and she worries about the kind of relationship they have with each other.

Leroy Simmonds, 60, has been at the St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre for a murder he committed in Westmoreland in the 1980s. He spent more than eight years on death row.

Commuted to life

However, his death sentence has been commuted to life behind bars.

The thought of being strangled to death by a rope around his neck was as crippling as the 22 years he has spent away from his five boys.

Simmonds is devastated.

At the time of his arrest in 1986, his younger sons were 10 months and three years old, respectively. He did not see them until more than 10 years later. Not seeing them and being unable to communicate with them made his stay in prison hellish.

Sewell and Simmonds are among the many parents in prison who agonise about what the separation has done to their families and the impact on their children.