About this Issue
Reading The Scholar and Feminist Online issue
"Women, Prisons and Change,"
(S&F Online Issue 5.3, Summer 2007), left us moved and thrilled:
moved because the images and text on women were thought-provoking and
smart; thrilled because an interdisciplinary feminist journal was
addressing the issue of incarceration and analyzing the race, class and
gender bias embedded within the "prison industrial complex." We knew the
time was right to further address the ways in which incarceration
unravels entire communities, the way it dismantles and fragments
families, and, specifically, the ways in which it devastates the lives
of children.
Despite the over two million children whose parents are incarcerated
on any given day, the majority of people who are not directly affected
by this issue remain unaware of this significant challenge to children's
well-being. The invisibility itself is damaging, but visibility that
comes without safety and understanding can be even worse. In this issue,
children and young people share stories of losing friends and being
accused of any wrongdoing in their communities once they reveal their
parent's circumstances; they share about the support and encouragement
received from some nonjudgmental adults and, conversely, about the
alienation caused by nosey, assuming ones.
As many of the contributions reveal, our prison system is designed
in a way that ignores the presence of children in the lives of
prisoners. When a parent is sent to jail, a child is often left
isolated and vulnerable even though the punishment was intended solely
for the adult. While society relies on the institution of the family
to provide the care and nurturing that children require, we incarcerate
parents with little regard to the impact of this decision on their
children. As our contributors show, the lack of thoughtful policies
regarding children of incarcerated parents compounds the trauma and
stigma that children face when a parent is incarcerated.
From the vantage point of recidivism rates our prison system seems to
be set up as a revolving door. However, the children of incarcerated
parents are not all doomed to fail. This volume does not shy
away from the true nature of this complicated issue: some children are
flourishing, hidden on college campuses, among fellowship recipients,
traveling around the world, making a positive difference in diverse
ways; others are locked up in juvenile facilities or in foster care;
most are somewhere in between. Our policy and practice approaches must
address children's diverse needs in a way that is strengths-based and
full of hope; they do a disservice if they focus only on children's
potential to march into the prison cells they inherit from their
parents.
In addition, this issue serves as a reminder that the children of
incarcerated parents must also not be viewed as isolated entities,
orphans without parents or strong connections. They are part of
families, and communities, large and small. As practitioners, policy
makers, and community members, we must take a holistic approach to
promote the well-being of children by working to improve all of
the component parts of a child's world, including their incarcerated
parents, no matter how 'deserving' we may deem them to be. If
children's well-being is understood to be tied to their relationships
with their parents, we must not only promote contact, but rather remake
our systems in a way that promotes these attachments, instead of letting
them fall by the wayside as the flotsam and jetsam of 'criminal
justice.'
As many before us have pointed out, the true measure of democracy and
society is the level of support provided to the most vulnerable among
us. It is our hope that this journal issue will contribute to the
transformation of our 'criminal justice system' and the way we respond
to those within it so that children can grow and thrive, including being
supported in maintaining and strengthening their relationships with
their parents during and after the period of incarceration. We are
particularly pleased that this issue is a mix of academic analysis, best
practices, and reflection. We hope "Children of Incarcerated Parents"
helps readers to learn about children's needs without exploiting their
predicaments. We view this edition as a way to start a
conversation, and let others continue to strategize and implement ways
to help the more than two million children whose parents are currently
incarcerated in the United States. We hope it helps to raise awareness
about the complexities of this issue and contributes towards a better
understanding of the experiences of children and parents, as well as
what can help them, and thus create a healthier society. Finally, we
thank Gisela Fosado and Janet Jakobsen, the Editors of The Scholar &
Feminist Online, for agreeing with us, and for giving us this forum
in which to bring this issue to light.
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