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The challenges of children who grow up with parents whom were incarcerated at some point in their childhood can have a major effect on their life. The incarceration of parents can at times begin to affect the child even at birth. Now with prison nurseries the impregnated mother can keep her baby during her time in jail. With the loss of their parent the child can begin to develop behavioral problems with being obedient, temper tantrums, and the loss of simple social skills. Never learning to live in a society they are deprived of a normal social life. “The enormous increase incarceration led to a parallel, but far less documented, increase in the proportion of children who grew up with a parent incarcerated during their childhood” (Johnson 2007). This means the consequences of the children of the incarcerated parents receive no attention from the media, or academic research. The academic research done in this paper is to strengthen the research already worked by many other people. The impact of the parent’s incarceration on these children can at times be both positive and negative. The incarceration of a parent can be the upshot to the change of child’s everyday life, behavioral problems, and depriving them a normal social life.
There have been many questions raised if the nurseries programs were fair but “the number of women incarcerated in state prisons in the United States (US) has dramatically increased in the past 20 years, and 70% of these women are the mothers of minor children, as of the last Bureau of Justice estimates” (Mumola, 2000). “Allowing women to parent their children within correctional facilities in the US may be “one of the most controversial debates surrounding the imprisonment of women” (Bel...
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Mumola, Christopher J. 2000. Incarcerated Parents and Their Children. Bureau of Justice
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2006. “Disentangling the Risks: Parent Criminal Justice Involvement and Children’s Exposure to Family Risks.” Criminology and Public Policy 5(4).
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Murray, J. (2005). The effects of imprisonment on families and children of prisoners Retrieved from http://www2.bgsu.edu/downloads/cas/file77089.pdf
In their article Doug Hillian and Marge Reitsma- Street examines parents’ involvement in the youth criminal justice system in Western Canada. Their study was conducting on ten Caucasian families nine of which were middle and upper middle class, with sons, involved in the Juvenile Criminal Justice System. The study was to determine the parents place in the judicial system, which appears to make it more arduous for parents, attempting to deal with the difficult task of parenting young offenders, while navigating a system, which labels, blames, and assumes that as parents they are unfit, irresponsible, and uncaring.
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 become handcuffed? In 2007, there was an estimate of approximately 1.7 million children of incarcerated parents in the United States (Poehlmann, Dallaire, Loper & Shear 2010). Of those 1.7 million children, 58% of those children are under the age of 10, with the mean age being 8 (Travis & Waul 2003). The children of incarcerated parents are often moved from one family and one school to the next. The child must cope with this issue in home and in school, and may find it especially hard to cope with during school. Schools, however, can be a safe place for these children. This research explored the psychological effects of parent incarceration on the child, the school-based problems that occur as a result, and what educators can do to support children of incarcerated parents.
Can you imagine having your parents incarcerated? I can, when I was 10 years old my father was incarcerated and at age 23 my mother was incarcerated. Parental incarceration impacts you as a child or a teen in so many ways due to only one parent or grandparent being able to raise the child without the other. Parental incarceration is a very dramatic event in a child's lifespan. Having a parent incarcerated can have an impact on a child's mental health, social life and educational needs. Studies show parental incarceration can be more traumatic to students than even a parent's death or divorce, and the damage it can cause to students' education, health, and social relationships puts them at higher risk of one day going to prison themselves.(Sparks,
In 2007 there were approximately 77,200 fathers and 65,600 mothers incarcerated in the United States (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2007). As our society continues to grow, our jail and prison population are growing as well. When a parent or guardian is taken into custody the juvenile (child) is taken and released to a relative or child protective services. The children are either given to a close family member or a surrogate parent, meaning a foster home. This may have an emotional impact on the juvenile involved, which may lead them to committing delinquent acts. The children sometimes feel they are left to fend for themselves emotionally and the stress of these emotions are left upon the guardian at the time. These intense sufferings sometimes leave the juveniles in a harmful mental state resembling depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and feelings of abandonment from their parents/guardians. Children with incarcerated parents are five times more likely than their peers to commit crimes (Texas Department of Criminal Justice, 2008).
The writer’s main goals was to persuade that mass incarceration is huge problem for the academics of children whose parents are incarcerated. Melinda D. Anderson wrote the article toward the criminal justice system and audience that are against mass incarceration. People who have families that are in jails and unintentional audience who read news regarding this issue. Several different people each day are facing problems regarding incarceration. They’re people who have their parents, brothers, sister in jail. The writer is trying to prove the point that having those people in jail is creating hardship for families and it needs to be stopped. The Students who have their parents in jail is causing them to lose not only their parents but also their life because of that fact without their parents, the children do not have a source of income, which leads to being not able to eat, study or perhaps live in safe
Easterling and Johnson. (2012). Understanding Unique Effects of Parental Incarceration on Children: Challenges, Progress, and Recommendations. Journal of Marriage and Family, 342-356.
Not only is prison ineffective in preventing reoffending in women and is expensive, it can be extremely damaging to the female’s well-being and their families. The effect that a custodial sentence has on women is arguably far worse than for men. Women are often not prepared or equipped for their life following their prison sentence; due to the fact that women are more likely to be lone parents before prison (Social Exclusion Unit, 2002), are more likely to leave prison homeless and unemployed (Wedderburn, 2000), and are more likely to lose access of their children whilst serving their sentence (Corston, 2007). Statistics from 2010 showed that around 17,000 children become separated from their mother by imprisonment (Wilks-Wiffen, 2011). This can be absolutely devastating to not only the female offender, but to their innocent children too. Moreover, due to the small number of women’s prisons, the average distance that women are sent away from their homes is around 60 miles (Women in Prison, 2013). Therefore, even if the women are lucky enough to keep in contact with their children, it can be tremendously hard to organise visitation and uphold
It is undeniable that mass incarceration devastates families, and disproportionately affects those which are poor. When examining the crimes that bring individuals into the prison system, it is clear that there is often a pre-existing pattern of hardship, addiction, or mental illness in offenders’ lives. The children of the incarcerated are then victimized by the removal of those who care for them and a system which plants more obstacles than imaginable on the path to responsible rehabilitation. Sometimes, those returned to the community are “worse off” after a period of confinement than when they entered. For county jails, the problem of cost and recidivism are exacerbated by budgetary constraints and various state mandates. Due to the inability of incarceration to satisfy long-term criminal justice objectives and the very high expenditures associated with the sanction, policy makers at various levels of government have sought to identify appropriate alternatives(Luna-Firebaugh, 2003, p.51-66).
A deep look into juveniles in adult prisons. Touch bases on several smaller issues that contribute to juveniles being in and effects of adult prisons. The United States Bureau of Prisons handles two hundred and thirty-nine juveniles and their average age is seventeen. Execution of juveniles, The United States is one of only six countries to execute juveniles. There are sixty-eight juveniles sitting on death row for crimes committed as juveniles. Forty-three of those inmates are minorities. People, who are too young to vote, drink alcohol, or drive are held to the same standard of responsibility as adults. In prisons, they argue that the juveniles become targets of older, more hardened criminals. Brian Stevenson, Director of the Alabama Capital Resource Center said, “We have totally given up in the idea of reform of rehabilitation for the very young. We are basically saying we will throw those kids away. Leading To Prison Juvenile Justice Bulletin Report shows that two-thirds of juveniles apprehended for violent offenses were released or put on probation. Only slightly more than one-third of youths charged with homicide was transferred to adult criminal court. Little more than one out of every one hundred New York youths arrested for muggings, beatings, rape and murder ended up in a correctional institution. Another report showed a delinquent boy has to be arrested on average thirteen times before the court will act more restrictive than probation. Laws began changing as early as 1978 in New York to try juveniles over 12 who commit violent crimes as adults did. However, even since the laws changed only twenty percent of serious offenders served any time. The decision of whether to waive a juven...
This article describes the similarities and parallelism of the foster system to the prison systems and how they perpetuate and are influenced by each other. It describes how these systems commodify and dehumanize these human beings, especially women who receive long, severe sentences for minor offenses and are thus denied ability to parent their child from behind bars. This, thus, affects the child in the short and long term because these children are taken from their mothers by the state, often put into foster care, in which the state then refuses to take care of these motherless children. This then leads to social workers developing more aggressive and hostile tactics when dealing with these types of cases, because often the children must scavenge the streets in order to survive and become troubled by the social realities they face. The author then begins to discuss how the welfare system becomes heavily involved with these families, along with the stigmatizations government assistance is attached with. . It is unfortunate that this article only very briefly discusses pregnant, black incarcerated women, and the lack of prenatal care they are provided with during
While most expectant mothers are planning for baby showers, shopping for maternity clothes and preparing the baby’s nursery, the incarcerated mother-to-be has to remain in a constant state of alertness and preparedness for situations that can put her and her unborn baby at risk, in an environment that is both intimidating and routinely violent. (Hutchinson et. al., 2008)
This time together in prison aids with the early mother-child bonding which is paramount for the lifelong success of the child. It helps the mother be more maturing while reducing their recidivism rate, and because the mothers can raise their children in a safer environment compared to the streets with no assistance. The mother-child bond is a uniquely powerful bond that must be established for the ultimate well-being of the child. Through these means, allowing mothers to serve time with their babies in prison is a beneficial alternative than raising them on the cold, dangerous, and rough streets. In the end, what is best for the child must be the primary goal, and mothers know
In the reading by Lynne Haney, “Motherhood as Punishment: The Case of Parenting in Prison”, Haney decided to focus on analyzing a facility that allows mothers to parent from prison. She analyzed what it meant for mothers to have to parent in prison. Specifically she wanted to investigate why it seemed that this program seemed to promise a new alternative, in order to reunify family. However, through her observations she saw that motherhood was being undermined and if anything the mothers had less power, even though the program promised more. She specifically discusses four main points in the article that are as follows: Motherhood is undermined, subsumed, punished, and finally how she observed parenting from mass incarceration.
Loeber, R and Farrington, D (2000). Young children who commit crime: Epidemiology, developmental origins, risk factors, early interventions, and policy implications. Development and Psychopathology, , pp 737-762.