Outcomes for Children of Incarcerated Parents

Benidalys Rivera is one of seven women to give birth while in the Western Massachusetts Regional Women’s Correctional Center in 2013. In 2013, Benidalys was convicted to serve two and a half years in Chicopee jail for trafficking cocaine. She started to have contractions in her cell, late in the evening. One of the male correctional officers immediately put shackles on her hands, and he left the shackles on her in the hospital labor room. He told Benidalys that he would take the off the shackles on her ankles when she reaches active labor. However, she never entered active labor and the shackles never were taken off. The doctors had to perform a caesarean section (Berg). Benidalys walked around the hospital “she felt embarrassed as nurses and other patients looked on” (Berg) while having only her assigned nurse for comfort. Benidalys took care of her infant for only two days before they had to separate. The infant, named E.J. taken with the biological father’s family, and Benidalys taken back to the institution. Growing up for two and a half years without visiting his mother because the father’s family lived far away from the prison (Berg). The Department of Corrections of each state needs to consider the well-being of incarcerated women and their children in order to prevent the poor upbringing of the children, to prevent repeat offenders, and to create laws protecting

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

This article introduces historical accounts and analysis of programs for incarcerated mothers and their children in the United States (Susan C. Craig, 2009).

In the article “Beyond Absenteeism: Father Incarceration and Child Development”, it discusses how father incarceration rates effects children (Amanda Geller, 2012). This was similar to the study above. In this article the analysis came from the Fragile Families study. The Fragile Families studies included around 5,000 couples with children that were born from 1998 to 2000 in twenty fairly large cities within the United States. The parents were surveyed around the time of their child’s birth and then there were follow-ups when the child was one, three, and also five years of age. The findings were tied to aggression from the children. This resembles the above study, where children who were missing their father due to him being absent were more

African American women are a disproportioned population that are faced with more social injustices and inequalities than any other group of women. There is an overrepresentation of African Americans in the judicial system that has broken down the “traditional” family unit. Research and data has proven that African Americans are overrepresented in the judicial system and has contributed to breaking down the “traditional” family unit. When black women are incarcerated or jailed, it leaves a devastating impact on her family and children. She lacks a supportive system that is pivotal during incarceration. Women who are incarcerated leave children behind, and rely on family members or foster care to provide care for the children. An intervention is needed to combat the overincarceration of women, especially black women. African Americans are disproportionate represented throughout the United States judicial system. The Bureau of Justice of Statistics have estimated that a black woman is at a greater

According to statistics on incarceration and families, more than 8.3 million children have one or both parents who are in jail, prison, on parole or probation. Additionally, 62% of women in state prisons and 84% in federal prison are mothers. Not only are these women affected by their incarceration but also their families. These women enter the prison system with disorders such as trauma, substance abuse, and poverty etc. The NIC reported that many of these women suffer from Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although these women try their best to maintain relationships with their children often it does not save them from a stressful life. These children become victims of the lifestyle their forced into. They show signs of depression, anxiety,

Since the mid 80’s, the number of women incarcerated has tripled.The majority of women incarcerated are unskilled, impoverished and disproportionately women of color. As a result, African American children are nine times more likely to have a parent in prison than a White child.

Having a parent in jail also has a significant impact on children. Half of all men were the primary source of income for their children. Stats show that 1.1 million men behind bars are fathers and 120,000 women behind bars are mothers, that equals out to about 1 in every 28 children have a parent current in prison or jail. The Economic Mobility ProJect estimates that two factors influenced by parental incarceration have a direct impact on a child’s future employment status, these two factors are family income and the child’s

    The United States Prison System’s population has increased dramatically since the country’s “War on Drugs” nearly tripling from 585,804 prisoners in 1987 to 1,612,395 in 2010. (Guerino, Harrison , & Sabol, 2011). Women are typically incarcerated at a  much lower rate than men; however, since 1986, the female prison population has grown by 400% (Miller, 2006). These statistics are a direct result of the country’s implementation of harsher crime laws and policies as well as the criminal justice system wanting to have a stringent approach towards crime. The “War on Drug’s” lead to the government passing sentencing reforms which have resulted in longer, more abrasive sentences. Although the purpose of the executing a “War on Drug’s” was to control the crime rate throughout the country, the repercussion that is continually overlooked due to the increased mass incarceration is the growing rate of parental incarceration.

The rate of women being incarcerated in prisons has dramatically risen over the last decade. While these women are being locked up for crimes ranging from drug possession to murder, they often come into the prison system with children or pregnant. Nationwide, nearly 2 million children have parents in prison. The number of those with incarcerated mothers is growing rapidly. A recent report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that the number of minors with mothers in prison increased by more than 100 percent in the last 15 years [ (Schwartzapfel, 2008) ]. While some women must give up their children before or after they enter prison, a handful of women get to keep their children. These women serve their sentences at one of nine

More than 60% of women in prisons and jails in the United States have children under the age of 18. Women who do not have access to a prison nursery system are more likely than men to have their children put into foster care upon their incarceration. 11% of

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.

As the population of incarcerated persons has grown in the United States, so has the number of children who have at least one parent residing in a correctional institution (Johnson and Waldfogel 2002; Miller 2006; Poehlmann, Dallaire, Loper, and Shear 2010). Children of imprisoned parents are often depicted as disregarded victims of imprisonment because they are never considered in the decisions that the justice system imposes regarding their parents sentencing. Once a child’s parent is confined to a prison, their children are undoubtedly affected, usually these effect are adverse. Yet these effects are scarcely ever considered in criminal justice processes. The primary focus of the criminal justice system is the guilt or innocence the individual and

This poster is about the effects on children whose parents were and/or are incarcerated. It consisted of problems such as 2.7 million children have either one or two parents behind bars and that there is a disproportionate population of black parents incarcerated with a major challenge of this being that their children are deprived of parental interaction. Without their parents, these children are more likely to be abused, succumb to crime and/or violence, and/or develop chronic mental illness such as depression. Moreover, the policy recommendations that this group gave was to allow parents more visiting hours with their children in their prisons, create a better way for parents to regain custody, establish programs for parents to recover and reintegrate better after being incarcerated.

times as likely as white children to have had a parent imprisoned. This study allowed us to find out how many people sentenced to life as youth had had a close family member in prison either currently or at some point in their life. More than a quarter of juvenile lifers have had a parent in prison and 59.1% of juvenile lifers have had a close relative in prison. ( Juvenile Lifer, Illinois )Some of these children has to raise by a relative, the welfare system, an agency and some on the street, What this does it is often associated with emotional and behavioral problems to the children, extreme anti social behavior, which leads to violent. Children father that have been incarcerated father express more aggression than other children that