Without CAMPP, Maw family members now interact with Maw V via regular prison visits, which require inmates and guests to follow strict protocol that limits physical contact. The video calls the family uses now are also a step down for the family, they say. In contrast, over three in-person CAMPP sessions spread across three years, the father-son pair flew kites, played soccer, built snowmen, hunted for Easter eggs, fed farm animals and tie-dyed shirts. During the CAMPP-sponsored video visits, Maw V would sometimes read a book that had been sent to his son by mail.
The state budget with $120,000 annually for a parenting program for prisoners went into effect July 1. Corrections spokesperson Alex Klapmeier said on Sept. 22 that the department did not have details yet on how it would spend the money.
“The department is in the process of developing a parenting program for inmates. The [Department of Corrections’] intent is to deliver a program that serves a wider group of inmates than the CAMPP MT program did, offer greater consistency in programming throughout the department, and define clear measurables to determine the efficacy of the program,” Klapmeier wrote in an email to Montana Free Press
During a Feb. 25 budget subcommittee meeting during the legislative session, lawmakers approved money for the parenting program. In a document describing the version of the state budget, House Bill 2, that ultimately passed the Legislature, the language still defined the money as “for the continuation of the Connecting Adults and Minors through Positive Parenting,” a program that “had been funded by federal grant funding which is slated to end in September of 2025.”
During a Sept. 17 legislative interim budget committee meeting about funding for the state’s law enforcement agencies, the department’s Education Services Bureau Chief Travis Anderson said any new parenting program the department would start at the state prison for men in Deer Lodge will aim to lower the cost per inmate from $4,500 to about $1,500 — an attempt to mirror the costs of a similar initiative at Montana Women’s Prison in Billings.
“We want the underlying program to be much more similar across facilities because it is an institutional program that does parenting training for any adult,” Anderson said to the committee. Anderson said the agency also plans to offer the new program to individuals at higher custody levels than CAMPP.
Without plans to continue virtual or in-person components of the CAMPP program, the unspent federal money will be returned this month to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, a subdivision of the U.S. Department of Justice. OJJDP did not respond to request for comment from MTFP.
The excess funds were partly explained by communication mishaps, emails provided by the corrections department show. Anticipating the grant would expire in September 2024, Corrections did not rehire the CAMPP coordinator position after their departure in March 2024.
According to internal emails sent by Anderson, the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention then notified the state agency in January 2025 that the grant period had been extended. Without a full-time coordinator, staff organized and executed the program’s final in-person session in April 2025, which marked the grant’s final programming.
Some CAMPP participants told Montana Free Press they were sad to see the program end, but they were grateful for what it provided for their family.
“Boys need their dads,” said Jessica Nyemaster, whose youngest son was 2 weeks old when his dad, Greg Nyemaster, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The family had participated in CAMPP for three visitation sessions.
During CAMPP video visits, her youngest played Battleship with his incarcerated father. In 2022, when Maddox was 5, he spent time outside with his father for the first time.
“It was an amazing experience. We loved every bit of it,” Nyemaster said.