Incarcerated Parent Research Paper

Since mandatory sentencing began in the mid-1980s, the United States prison system has seen a dramatic upswing in incarceration rates (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008, p. 1). “The United States’ increasingly punitive sentencing philosophy has resulted in an overreliance on incarceration, resulting in an incarcerated population that has soared from approximately 340,000 in the early 1970s to nearly 2.3 million today” (Raeder, 2012). “Parents held in the nation’s prisons—52% of state inmates and 63% of federal inmates—reported having an estimated 1,706,600 minor children, accounting for 2.3% of the U.S. resident population under age 18” (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008, p. 1).

Over the last half-century, the United States has turned more and more frequently to the use of incarceration as a form of punishment. Sentencing policies and stricter laws requiring mandatory minimums for certain offenses, no matter the conditions of the offense, have boosted the incarceration rate in this country to staggering heights. The typical issues that affect America’s prison systems are reflected in Jennifer Gonnerman’s book, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett. Elaine Bartlett’s life, along with the lives of surrounding family and friends, is forever changed by her 16 years of incarceration. Elaine Bartlett is only one of many Americans that have been wronged by the cruel and unusual punishments implemented by a society claiming to have a fair, balanced, and equal justice system. A fair and balanced justice system that convicts people who carries the right amount of drugs in weight to have a mandatory incarceration for a minimum of 15 years to life, yet those who commit murder or rape may receive a lesser sentence. There is also the issue of transitioning back into society after being incarcerated for so many years. Incarceration does not just punish the offender; the offender’s family and friends are also negatively affected by the conviction and imprisonment of a loved one. Children could be put in the system or need to be raised by other members in the family. This could lead the children to deviate down the same path as their parent who

When someone’s parent is put into prison, a new issue is added to the many that are already on that person’s plate. This is illustrated well when Goffman says, “we’re asking kids who live in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, who have the least amount of family resources, who attend the country’s worst schools… were asking these kids to walk the thinnest possible line to basically never do anything wrong”(How we’re). The kids who are dealing with many issues are slowly being crushed by all the issues they go through with one being added each moment. They only do the things that they do to survive and the judicial system is not helping because it seems to target these kids. J. Mark Eddy, a licensed Psychologist, and Jean Mollenkamp Kjellstrand, from Columba University, states that “The incarceration of a parent is not often the start of the problems for a child and family, but rather a continuation… characterized by poverty, social disadvantage, unstable home life, substance abuse difficulties, mental health problems, abuse, trauma, and community violence” (552). This is just saying when kids are put through all these difficulties, they are more likely to fill that hurt with drugs, hurting someone or themselves, crimes, and even suicide. All these things can cause emotional trauma because it was already hard enough to live happy then now their parent went to jail and just made it even tougher. It just seems as if weights are slowly being added to them until they can’t resist to do something illegal. Neglecting the kids that have parents that are in prison will only cause them to replace their parents when the time comes. According to Richard J. Coley, the director of the Educational Testing Service Center for Research on Human Capital and Education, and Paul E. Barton, an education writer and consultant, children who have a parent who is

My papers purpose is to inform the reader of the ever increasing number of U.S children with incarcerated parents. According to Department of Justice data African American children are nine time more likely than white children to have incarcerated parents, A number double that of what was reported in 1991 Most children of incarcerated parents live in poverty before, during and after their paren't incarceration( Johnston 1995).The social consequences of not meeting the need of these children and their non incarcerated parent will come to the attention of social workers in array of fields of practice. This includes child welfare, mental health and child development, crimminal justice , schools and the juvenile justice system.

Studies have shown time and time again that when a parent is sentenced, the child and families are also the individuals who are being sentenced. When the unfortunate process of incarceration begins, the initial procedure of separation creates mental

Over the past forty years the increased of mass incarceration within the Federal Bureau of Prisons has increased more than 700 percent since the 1970’s, between the different type of ethnicity. Billions of dollars have spent to house offenders and to maintain their everyday life from rehabilitation programs, academic education, vocational training, substance abuse programs and medical care. The cost of incarceration climbs according to the level of security based on violent and non-violent crimes. Fewer staff is required in minimum and medium-security prisons that house low-level offenders. Incarceration is likely to serves as one indicator of other co-occurring risks and vulnerabilities that makes families particularly fragile. Mass incarceration is likely to increase if awareness is not implicated to reduce the rate of imprisonment and broken families to take back their communities and reclaim their hope for the future.

In any given year now, incarceration rates has tripled with approximately 13 million people introduced to American jails in any given year. This increase in the prison population far outpaced the crime rate and the US population growth. Today, America has around 5% of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s prison population.

In reading and dissecting Nell Bernstein’s All alone in the world: Children of the incarcerated, many social issues and issues within current policies involving the incarcerated population were discussed. It is no secret that for some time now, the United States’ criminal justice system has been majorly flawed in more ways than one. Bernstein focuses and creates conversation around several difficulties that children of the incarcerated population experience. The central social problem presented in Bernstein’s novel is that children are being separated from their parents at crucial developmental stages in their lives. Many of the children experienced their parent(s) being incarcerated at very young ages; ages where having a parent to interact with on a daily basis is imperative, not only for developmental growth, but for emotional and social aspects as well. At these young ages, children are unable to understand and process what exactly is occurring and more importantly why their parents are being taken away from them.

Since the 1970s, America’s prison population rate has risen 700%. Despite the U.S. comprising only 5% of the world’s population, it is the largest jailer with 25% of the world’s prison population with one in 99 adults in prison and one in 31 under some type of correctional control (Mass Incarceration Problems, 2014, p. 1). According to 2013 data, 2.2 million are currently incarcerated in U.S. prisons or jails (Incarceration, 2013, para. 1), a figure that indicates a rising problem with prison overcrowding. While prison overcrowding increases the economic burdens on local and state governments, common factors leading to the high prison population is linked to the need for improved juvenile programs that deter criminal behavior and fund for rehabilitation for reentry into mainstream society. With effective programs to deter juvenile crime and to aid in offender reentry coupled with sentencing reforms, overcrowding in the nation’s prisons would decline.

“Every year, 641,000 people walk out of prison gates, but people go to jail over 11 million times each year” (Rabuy). Within the United States, the incarceration rate is extremely high. For those who are incarcerated the percentage of people with a mental illness is remarkably prominent. For some offenders, there is another route out there such as diversionary programs which have a positive outcome. Diversionary programs such as The Choice is Yours is a beneficial route for first-time nonviolent felony drug offenders.

When a person becomes a parent, their role in life undoubtedly changes. The person must become a teacher, a guide, and a helping hand in the life of the child. Research has shown that there is a distinct connection between how a child is raised and their overall developmental outcome. John Bowlby’s attachment theory emphasizes the importance of the regular and sustained contact between the parent-infant or parent-child relationship (Travis & Waul 2003). Yet, what happens when the only physical contact a child can share with their parent is a hand pressed on the shield of glass that separates the two? What happens when the last memory of their mother or father was from the corner of their own living room as they watched their parent

Over the last decade the prison population in the United States has increased but the total admissions has decreased. In 2004, the national statistics for the prison population showed 1,497,100 persons to be incarcerated from Federal Institutions to State Institutions. Ten years later in 2014, the prison population increased to 1,562,525. This increase in population is not as dramatic when it comes to comparing 2004 and 2014. However, comparing 2014 to 1978 there is a tremendous increase in population, the total population in 1978 was 307, 276. From the war on drugs to the increase numbers of homicides, in 36 years we have incarcerated over one million additional people. In one year, the justice system admitted 631,

Assessing the consequences of our country’s soaring imprison rates has less to do with the question of guilt versus innocence than it does with the question of who among us truly deserves to go to prison and face the restrictive and sometimes brutally repressive conditions found there. We are adding more than one thousand prisoners to our prison and jail systems every single week. The number of women in prisons and jails has reached a sad new milestone. As women become entangled with the war on drugs, the number in prison has increased if not double the rate of incarceration for men. The impact of their incarceration devastates thousands of children, who lose their primary caregiver when Mom goes to prison.

The purpose of the juvenile incarceration project is to gain insights into whether or not parental incarceration is related to juvenile incarceration. The research problem is the loss is the cost of incarceration to the state or society. Incarceration is expensive with costs to society for the crimes committed and the resulting confinement of the convicted offenders. This research hopes to diminish this problem by determining a correlation between juvenile offenders and whether or not their parents were previously or

Being the child of an incarcerated parent has substantial amounts of negative influences on youth today. As young children, many consider their parents as role models. Someone who they can confide in, someone who will preserve them, and someone who will guide them through life. For most youngsters having an incarcerated parent, means that their admirable example in life is absent. Not having a parent present in one's childhood leads to innumerable negative outcomes and impacts.