First of all, this option is known by Google. Matt Cutts addressed a video to webmasters a while ago entitled “Do multiple links from one page to another page count?”. This video answered the concerns of people who add a sitewide link in the footer to a different website. According to Matt Cutts, it is confirmed that this practice isn’t penalized by Google. Then, it would be another story if the website that receives the links also has the backlink in the footer to the primary website. There would be two reciprocal links on both sides. We heard by the past of websites getting penalized, However, we didn’t find any confirmations from Google saying that this practice was forbidden. However, in the google webmaster guidelines, Google forbid link schemes and it states:
Excessive link exchanges (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en