Bella is 29 months old; her mother Natalia is in prison. Natalia's father was incarcerated for most of her childhood; Natalia's mother was a critical and intrusive caregiver and the mother-daughter relationship was strained. For example, when Natalia was raped at 14, she chose not to tell her mother. Soon after the rape, Natalia became involved with a charismatic, gang-affiliated drug dealer at her high school. An honor student and star athlete, Natalia was 17 and two weeks pregnant with Bella when her boyfriend committed a robbery using her car. Natalia was charged and convicted as an accessory to the crime. While in jail awaiting sentencing, she enrolled in the MIRACLE Project, which provides services to pregnant and postpartum prisoners and their infants. Sentenced to 12 years of incarceration, of which she will serve 6, Natalia gave birth shortly after arriving at the prison and has never lived with Bella. She continues to receive MIRACLE services.

Derek is 10. He and his brother Sean were raised by their mother, Jasmine, who was imprisoned for DUI-related manslaughter when Derek was 6. Jasmine is a second-generation prisoner; when she was a young child, her father was incarcerated for sexually abusing her. After Jasmine's arrest, her sons lived with their father Mark, a working alcoholic who has a limited criminal history of domestic violence. Last year, Mark moved to the northern part of the state with Sean, and Derek stayed with his paternal grandparents. The family home is 150 miles from the prison and Derek visits Jasmine once a month in ChildSpace, a mother-child visitation project.

Tiana is 6 and Allonya is 3; their father is deceased and their mother Alyssa is incarcerated for drug possession with a sentence enhancement for gang membership. Alyssa's parents served long prison sentences for robbery and Alyssa was raised by her grandmother. Tiana has lived with Alyssa but Allonya has not. Both girls are in the care of maternal relatives in another state. They have visited Alyssa three times in the last four years. Alyssa, who experiences extreme parenting-related anxiety, participates in classes and groups through the Mothers' Institute.

Two-month-old twins Jade and Jaden are the youngest of seven children born to their mother Dominique. The twins live with their father, who is on parole. Dominique is serving 13 months in prison for petty theft; this is her second prison term but she has served multiple short jail sentences. She was raised by her father and a series of stepmothers. Dominique's children are in four different placements; her oldest son is in prison and the next oldest was released from juvenile detention to a foster home just before the twins were born. Dominique's father brings the twins to visit her in ChildSpace two or three times a month.

By the last half of the 20th century, there was a large body of empirical research documenting intergenerational involvement in the criminal justice system. Studies had established that children of criminal parents were more likely to get arrested or incarcerated than other children and had demonstrated that this phenomenon was likely to occur whether or not the children were raised by their arrested/incarcerated parents.[1] In response to these findings, the Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents was established in 1989 with a mission to prevent intergenerational crime and incarceration.

The Center has pursued its mission through the development of model services for children of prisoners and their families. Over 20 years, the Center has designed and conducted more than 60 educational, therapeutic and family reunification projects. These have included a number of core projects such as MotherRight, FatherRight, MIRACLE and ChildSpace; these programs have offered research-based, relationship-focused services for families, and reflect the empirical and theoretical foundations of the Center's work.

The Empirical Basis for the Center's Work

The Center has served more than 25,000 families over the past 21 years. Our practice experience is consistent with the findings of most empirical research on these children.

Children of prisoners are typically born to parents with histories of traumatic experiences in childhood, as well as limited education and employment histories, substance abuse and dependency, and mental health problems.[2] As a group, children of incarcerated parents are exposed to more developmental insults than other children:

• In the prenatal period, children of women prisoners may experience high levels of stress and may be exposed to drugs/alcohol.[3]

Derek, Sean, Tiana, Allonya and all of Dominique's children were exposed to drugs and/or alcohol in utero. Bella, Allonya and five of Dominique's children were born while their parents were in jail or prison. The mothers of all these children experienced violence as a witness or victim during each of their pregnancies.

• Throughout infancy and childhood, children of incarcerated parents endure multiple parent-child separations, face repeated disruptions in care and multiple changes of caregiver, and typically live apart from at least some siblings.[4]

Tiana and her mother were separated a few weeks after Tiana was born, as Alyssa pursued gang activities. Five months later, Alyssa returned and co-parented Tiana for a year. Tiana was 18 months old when Alyssa first went to jail. When Tiana was 3, her mother briefly returned to their home and then was re-arrested and sent to prison.

Sean and Derek lived with their father after their parents separated. Following several months of custody hearings, they were placed with their mother, Jasmine. Two years later, Jasmine was arrested for drunk driving and the boys went to live with their maternal grandmother for 5 months while Jasmine was in jail. When Sean was 9 and Derek was 6, Jasmine was arrested and sent to prison. One year later, the boys were separated and they no longer live together.

None of Dominique's children have lived with her continuously. Dominique's oldest son has been separated from her for 10 years, while the 2-month old twins have been separated from her since birth. As an adult, Dominique has been incarcerated for a total of 15 months; most of the time she was separated from her children, living on her own, and involved with drugs and petty crime.

• Children of incarcerated parents are more likely than other children to be insecurely attached to their parents and caregivers, and they often demonstrate the consequences of insecure attachment, including difficulties in family and peer relationships.[5]

Bella is confused. Since she was born, she has spent days at her grandmother's house with her 6-year-old uncle and two preschool cousins, and nights at her aunt's house. She has called both her grandmother and her aunt "Mama," like her uncle and cousins do. Until recently, she referred to her mother as "Natalia." She is the most difficult to soothe and most aggressive of the children in her grandmother's care, often pushing and hitting the others when there is a conflict.

• The families of prisoners' children are often unable to provide adequate emotional and material support for child development, and are typically unable to protect children. As a result, children of prisoners' have typically had multiple traumatic experiences.[6]

Bella and Jaden have experienced medical trauma. Sean, Derek, Tiana, Allonya and all of Dominique's older children witnessed violence in their homes. Sean and Dominique's older children witnessed or participated in violence in the community. Derek, Tiana and Allonya have experienced the death of a parent and/or sibling. Tiana, Allonya and three of Dominique's children have been neglected and/or experienced physical or sexual abuse by their caregivers. Sean, Tiana and two of Dominique's children have witnessed parental arrest.

The Minnesota Parent-Child Project found that children who experience high levels of developmental stressors and insults in the face of inadequate developmental resources and supports will demonstrate the most negative outcomes. In prisoners' children, these circumstances lead to school behavior and performance problems, mental health problems and the childhood prototypes of adult criminal behavior—fighting, lying and stealing.[7] Children with these behaviors are more likely to experience school failure, associate with antisocial peers, engage in delinquency, and become involved in the juvenile or criminal justice systems.[8]

Most children of women offenders are at greater disadvantage because they have two parents entangled in the criminal justice system.[9] As a result, these children are more likely to have two absent parents and both sides of their family involved in drugs and/or crime. Such circumstances significantly reduce the resources available to support child development.

When Natalia gave birth while incarcerated, the Child Protective Services refused to approve the baby's placement with Natalia's 27-year-old sister because the sister had been convicted of trespassing at age 18. The baby was placed with Natalia's mother, who had initially refused to take her.

Their maternal grandfather Reggie regularly brought the twins to visit with Dominique in ChildSpace. When Reggie failed to renew his visitor permit in a timely manner, he was prohibited from coming into the prison. The ChildSpace Coordinator attempted to find another adult caregiver to bring the babies to visit but none of their local maternal or paternal relatives could be cleared to enter the prison because all had been arrested within the previous 10 years.

It's important to note that there is no reliable evidence that parental incarceration itself creates negative developmental outcomes among prisoners' children. About 40% of these children have never lived with their parents who have been incarcerated, and the direct effects of parental crime, arrest and incarceration on their lives are minimal.[10] Large-scale studies suggest that the outcomes seen among children of criminal offenders are attributable to the caregiving they receive and childhood experiences their caregiving engenders.[11]

The Conceptual Basis for the Center's Work

At the time the Center was founded, few agencies working with children of incarcerated parents had identified a theoretical foundation for their work. It was widely assumed that the children had been in the primary care of their parents prior to parental arrest[12] and that the effects of the arrest/incarceration of their parents led to their outcomes,[13] but there was no empirical support for those propositions. Theories from the fields of criminology and sociology seemed no better at explaining intergenerational crime and incarceration.

After her arrest, a social worker at the jail told Natalia that it would be better for her baby to go to a foster home after birth. "Your father was a criminal and you learned from him. Now you've ended up having a baby in jail," the worker said to Natalia. "Don't you think your baby deserves a chance to learn something else?" Natalia told the social worker that she had never lived with her father and had learned almost nothing from him.

Originally housed at and influenced by the approach of Pacific Oaks College, an upper division and graduate institution in Pasadena, California specializing in child development and early childhood education, the Center chose to ground its work in developmental and specifically attachment theory. Applied to criminal justice populations, these theories have improved our understanding of the outcomes seen among prisoners' children, including intergenerational crime, arrest and/or incarceration. We have applied the following concepts to our work:

• Development occurs through successive adaptations to the environment.[14] At each stage of development, developmental outcomes are the result of children's cumulative history plus the effects of current challenges and supports.[15] This means that children's experiences are highly important and have lasting developmental significance.
• Among the most critical experiences in development is the primary attachment relationship between infant and caregiver, usually the mother. Early attachment is categorized by the way infants organize their attachment behaviors; these categories are reflected in children's developmental pathways from birth through adulthood.[16]
• An infant's capacity for attachment at one-year can be predicted prior to birth from the mother's state of mind with respect to her own primary attachment relationships in childhood.[17] Children's later developmental outcomes can be predicted from their primary attachment experiences, the quality of later care they receive from their caregivers, the context of that care (i.e. stressors and supports experienced by the caregivers) and the quality of the children's relationships with peers.[18] While emerging issues at each stage of development offer the possibility that outcomes can be changed, a child's early relationships and continuing care are most significant in determining who the child becomes.
• The developmental process is characterized by the interplay of children's experience and their representations ("working models") of that experience. Children's representations of their experience guide their future expectations.[19] For example, from their earliest experiences with primary caregivers, children develop "working models" of how humans function in relation to one another; these models then guide children's future expectations of themselves and others in relationships.
• Parents' "state of mind with respect to attachment," or internal working models, can be changed by healthy, appropriate relationships with other adults.[20] In addition, their ability to provide responsive care for their children can be improved by reducing parent stressors and providing parent support.[21]

Applying a developmental perspective that included many of these principles, the Center conducted a series of research projects examining the lives and experiences of the children of criminal offenders in the communities where they lived.[22] These investigations produced different information than most previous studies on children of incarcerated parents, finding the major influences in the lives of the children of criminal offenders to be: 1) an inadequate quality of care, largely due to the effects of poverty; 2) a lack of emotional and material supports, due to high levels of family stress; and 3) traumatic experiences. We did not find parental incarceration to be a critical or distinguishing feature of these children's lives.

The findings of this research were and continue to be consistent with both developmental theory and the experience of Center practitioners with their clients.

Putting Research and Developmental Concepts into Practice

A developmental perspective recognizes that child development normally occurs and is most successful within a nest of healthy human relationships. It leads to the conclusion that services intended to improve children's outcomes will improve the quality of children's care and relationships, and so should be focused on parents/caregivers or the parent/caregiver-child relationship, rather than on children alone.

Michelle and her baby visiting in ChildSpace.

Jennifer and her son visiting in ChildSpace.

Relationship-based practice is an approach to service delivery that encompasses these characteristics.[23] Pawl, quoted in Copa, Lucinski, Olsen, and Wollenburg (1999), defined relationship-based practice as "doing onto others as you would have others do onto others".[24] With this approach, the practitioner provides for the parent/caregiver what she wants the parent/caregiver to provide for the child, i.e. a responsive, nurturing relationship. This approach is particularly useful for parents whose own attachment experiences and early care were not optimal and whose individual needs are unmet.

Estranged from her family and cut off from Bella's father during pregnancy, Natalia suffered from serious postpartum depression. At their first ChildSpace visit, Natalia was stiff and awkward, carrying 2-month-old Bella out in front of her like an object. After the visit, she cried, "I can't do this, I can't be a mother!" and talked about asking her sister to adopt Bella. Concerned, Natalia's MIRACLE Advocate increased the frequency and intensity of their sessions and encouraged more ChildSpace visits. Using her Advocate's nurturing as a model, Natalia slowly became more responsive to Bella, began to enjoy their visits, and developed parental competence. This work took place over an extended period of time, as Natalia learned to trust others to be aware of and responsive to her needs.

A critical element of relationship-based practice is the quality of the practitioner. Practitioners who deliver relationship-based services must:

• Be capable of healthy relationships
• Have a stable sense of identity
• Have an appropriate motivation for the work
• Understand that who they are will affect the work that they do
• Have the ability to manage the effects of the work on themselves as individuals and as practitioners

These requirements demand an increased investment in the recruitment, screening and training of practitioners. But this investment is worthwhile because the relationship-based approach significantly increases the effectiveness of parent, child and family services.[25]

For the past 20 years, the Center has used relationship-based practice in services for criminal offenders and their children.

How It Works

The Center's recent efforts in correctional mother-child reunification programs illustrate how the Center brings together client characteristics, developmental concepts, and relationship-based practice to deliver effective services for children of incarcerated parents.

Service Design

The Center has implemented the following major service projects in one or more correctional facilities:

• The MIRACLE Project serves pregnant and postpartum prisoners, offering: 1) prenatal risk assessment; 2) weekly, home-based prenatal and infant development education sessions focused on establishing healthy maternal-infant bonds; 3) intensive case management, including work with infants' caregivers; and 4) a minimum of 5 years of home-based services in the community following the mother's release. Each participating mother is assigned a Family Advocate who is part of a team of practitioners supervised by an expert in relationship-based practice. MIRACLE has been offered in Southern California jails and prisons since 2001 and has served more than 600 mothers and their families.

Tiffany, a MIRACLE Mother, and her baby.

MIRACLE Mother Nancy with her daughter.

• The Mothers' Institute offers imprisoned mothers 20 hours of activities each week in three 6-month cycles. Services include: 1) psychoeducational parent education and family life education classes; 2) prenatal, infant and child development classes; 3) classes in family resource management; 4) mothers' support groups; 5) reproductive issues groups; 6) family reunification activity groups; 7) "alternative therapies" including yoga, sensorimotor interventions, meditation and mindfulness activities; and 8) transitional groups for mothers preparing to be released. Over 200 mothers have participated in the Institute since 2006.

Mothers' Institute Participants (clockwise from top right: Alana, Dianna, Michelle, Nancy and Angel).

• The ChildSpace Project offers intensive mother-child visitation in a specially-designed, developmentally-appropriate environment. This project includes extended-contact visitation for mothers and children from birth to 15 years of age; mediated visitation, facilitated by a developmental psychologist, for mothers and their children 13-17 years of age; and support services for families and caregivers of visiting children. ChildSpace was offered beginning in 2006 and has served more than 1200 children.

ChildSpace visiting, main room.

Jennifer and her son having a ChildSpace visit.

In each of these projects, services are focused on enhancing the responsiveness of mothers to their children. Major efforts are exerted to secure post-release placements for families in structured settings, like residential drug treatment programs, that will minimize family stress and support the mother-child bond. As in all of the Center's intensive services, the staff in each of these core projects focus on developing healthy, appropriate relationships with participating mothers, with the goal of serving as supplemental attachment figures in their lives.

While the Center emphasizes relationships in service delivery, project operations are also important in increasing the effectiveness of services. Operations in the Center's intensive service projects are characterized by features identified by Sambrano, Janson and O'Neill (1998) as hallmarks of effective services for high-risk populations, including: 1) high intensity, with a minimum of 3 hours of participant-staff contact per week; 2) a relational or connection-building focus of activities; 3) an emphasis in all activities on behavioral change; and 4) coherent implementation and execution of services.[26]

After having visits with the twins twice a week for 5 months, Dominique was abruptly transferred to a temporary work assignment where she could not participate in ChildSpace. Project staff objected that the change would be detrimental to the infants. "I don't see the problem," the correctional supervisor responded. "They've been having visits and it's not like she is being permanently reassigned. Aren't some services better than no services at all?"

The most challenging operational issue for Center staff in MIRACLE, the Mothers' Institute, and ChildSpace Projects was achieving coherency and consistency of services for children in correctional settings.

Participants

These three core projects have served more than 1400 families. Participating mothers had an average of 2.6 minor children each. The children had a mean age of 5.0 years and approximately half were biracial or multiracial. A slight majority had been living with their mothers immediately prior to maternal incarceration. Most were in the current care of their maternal grandmothers or birth fathers. About one in five children were under the supervision of the foster care system.

The mean age of participating mothers was 27 years for all projects. Participants were generally representative of the larger correctional population of their facilities in race/ethnicity, with somewhat lower proportions of Black and White mothers and higher proportions of Latina and Native American mothers in the Mothers' Institute and ChildSpace. The majority of participants had served previous incarceration sentences. Mothers from all custody classification levels were accepted for participation and participants' criminal justice profiles—including offense histories, instant offenses, sentences and time served—reflected the profiles of all prisoners in a given institution.

Staffing

Staffing is perhaps the most critical element of the Center's intensive services. Preference in hiring is given to qualified practitioners who are formerly incarcerated parents and/or the adult children of current or former prisoners. Staff in all projects is reflective of the Center's service population in race/ethnicity. The Center's staff usually includes about 40% former prisoners, about 20% adult children of current or former prisoners, and about 20% who are both children of prisoners and formerly incarcerated.

Alyssa's first ChildSpace session with her daughters was stressful because they had not seen each other for more than a year. Their conversation started, stuttered, and stopped again and again. During snack time, a ChildSpace worker talked with the girls about her own experience visiting her father in prison as a child, while the Coordinator talked with Alyssa about how he felt receiving a child's visit while incarcerated. After snack, Alyssa and the girls had visibly relaxed and were comfortable resuming the visit.

Most Center practitioners have credentials in child development or behavioral science. The Center requires practitioners to have a minimum of two years of prior experience working with parent-child correctional populations. This approach reduces training and orientation time, increases staff retention and improves the ability of practitioners to recognize and meet clients' needs. Between 2006 and 2009, staff in MIRACLE, Mother's Institute, and ChildSpace Projects had an average of 12 years of experience serving mother-child correctional populations.

All Center staff participate in a minimum 48 hours of training before providing services and receive a minimum of 4 hours of training per month while providing services. All staff also take part in weekly group supervision and biweekly individual supervision. As a relationship-based practice agency, the Center utilizes reflective supervision to help practitioners establish and maintain clarity of purpose in their work, recognize and address the ways in which their personal characteristics and behaviors affect the services they deliver, and recognize and address the ways in which the work is affecting them.[27]

Outcomes

The three intensive service projects described have produced the best outcomes of all Center services:

• The MIRACLE Project was extremely successful. Outcomes included an increased rate of kinship placements among infants born during maternal incarceration, and post-release mother-child reunification in more than 90% of mothers released to the community. Mothers reunited with their infants following release demonstrated an increase in responsive parenting. Outcomes of pregnancy for MIRACLE participants included less than 2% congenital disabilities, low birth weight, prematurity, or neonatal hospitalization among participating infants. Among mothers released from incarceration, only 1% became pregnant again within 12 months of delivery of their first MIRACLE baby, less than 2% had their infant removed from their custody and placed in foster care, and less than 5% have been rearrested.

MIRACLE Mother Alana and her baby at a last visit before Alana's release.

• Mother's Institute outcomes included post-services increases in objective knowledge of parenting, family life issues including sexual relationships and reproduction, family resources management and child development topics among 72-100% of participants. Other short-term outcomes included increased maternal utilization of community resources and decreased maternal stress. About half of all participating mothers elected to be released to residential, mother-child drug treatment programs. Most Institute mothers reunited with their children shortly after returning to the community; among Institute graduates who have been released from incarceration, 87% reunified with at least one child and 68% reunified with all of their children within three months of release. More than 91% of released Institute mothers remain in the community—including 82.6% who have completed parole and 8.7% who are still on parole. Only 8.7% of Institute participants have been rearrested.

• Measurement of ChildSpace outcomes was difficult due to variable levels of participation. For example, the range of visits per family was one to 112. In addition, ChildSpace was utilized by the Child Protective Services to conduct Court-ordered visits for families prior to terminations of parental rights, making simple counts of mother-child reunification impossible. Outcomes for families that participated in two or more visits included a decrease in parenting stress among mothers; decreased perceived stress and increase in utilization of community resources by children's caregivers; and increases in positive maternal-child interactions in proportion to the number of family visits.

Michelle was reunited with her children following release from prison.

While the grants and contracts that supported these projects did not fund formal evaluations or allow measurement of long-term effects, the projects' short-term and intermediate-term successes suggest that the services rendered will significantly improve long-term outcomes for participating children.

A Developmental Approach to Working with Children of Incarcerated Parents

Over the last three decades, although little was known about their development, children of prisoners became recognized as a group with special needs arising from the current status of their parents. This focus obscured the nature of the challenges they face and the actual causes of their long-term outcomes, which have only recently begun to be identified by large-scale studies.

Taking a developmental approach throughout the same period, the Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents has applied the following research-based, child-focused principles to delivery of services in order to improve the outcomes of prisoners' children:

• As with all children, the lives and outcomes of prisoners' children are determined by their experiences. Consequently, efforts to assist these children must begin with thorough assessments that explore and document their significant life experiences and their representations of those experiences.
• To be effective in improving children's developmental outcomes, including the outcomes of prisoners' children, services must increase children's good experiences (developmental resources/supports) or decrease children's bad experiences (developmental insults), or both.
• Outcomes for the large population of prisoners' children appear to be due to high levels of family stress, low levels of parental education and related unemployment/underemployment, parental mental illness, and/or parent substance dependency. All of these circumstances can be improved by appropriate services.
• Development of the person is built, stage by stage, on the foundation laid down in previous stages. While on-going care and experiences are important in determining children's developmental outcomes, they are always built upon the experience of children's earliest care and their primary attachment relationships with parents and caregivers. As a result, services that are delivered early in the lives of prisoners' children and address their caregiving relationships will have the greatest effect on child development and child outcomes, including intergenerational crime and incarceration.

Playing with dolls during a ChildSpace visit, Bella says, "This one is the mommy doll. Her name is Natalia. This one is the baby doll, her name is Bella. They don't have a house yet, but they will."

Alyssa had a clean disciplinary record for 7 months prior to release, her longest period of good behavior in all four of her incarcerations. Adamant at enrollment in the Institute that she would be released to the home of her girlfriend, Alyssa instead entered a residential parole program that would allow her to have overnight visits with her children.

Natalia and Jasmine enrolled and excelled in the Mothers' Institute. They completed the basic Empowerment cycle of services, as well as Leadership and Advocacy cycles, over a period of 18 months. They subsequently became Peer Counselors for the Program. Exemplary prisoners with no disciplinary history in spite of extensive friendships with women who remain in the mix, Natalia and Jasmine have become effective parent models and advocates for other incarcerated mothers.

Dominique refused to be placed in a drug treatment program and returned home after her release. Two weeks later, she asked her parole officer for a placement. "I could see the difference in the twins, the way they related to me after I started using again. I could never see that with my others, but I guess I know these babies better because of ChildSpace."

Jasmine's son Derek says, "Me and my mom are doing good. We had bad things happen to us but we got over them. We're still a family."

Endnotes

1. A. Blumstein, J. Cohen, J. Roth, and C. Visher, Criminal Careers and "Career Criminals" (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1986); D. Johnston, Children of Jailed Mothers (Pasadena: The Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents, 1991); J. McCord, "A Comparative Study of Two Generations of Native Americans," in R.E. Meier, ed., Theory in Criminology (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1977); S. Otterstrom, "Juvenile Delinquency and Parental Criminality," ACTA Pediatrica Scandinavica 33.5 (1946): 1-326; L. N. Robins, "Sturdy Childhood Predictors of Adult Outcomes," in J.E. Barratt, R.M. Rose & G.L. Klerman, eds., Stress and Mental Disorder (New York: Raven Press, 1979); L.N. Robins, P.A. West, and B.L. Herjanic, "Arrests and Delinquency in Two Generations: A Study of Black Urban Families and Their Children," Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 16 (1975):125-140; Task Force on the Female Offender, The Female Offender: What Does the Future Hold? (Arlington, VA: American Correctional Association, 1989); J.Q.Wilson and R. Herrnstein, Crime & Human Nature (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985). [Return to text]

2. B. Bloom and S. Covington, "The Gendered Mental Health Needs of Women Offenders," Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society Of Criminology, Atlanta Marriott Marquis, Atlanta, Georgia, 2003; L.E. Glaze and L.M. Maruschak, "Parents In Prison and Their Minor Children," Publication NCJ222984, Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2008; T.E. Hanlon, R.J. Blatchley, T. Bennett-Sears, K.E. O'Grady, M. Rose, and J. Callaman, "Vulnerability of Children of Incarcerated Addict Mothers: Implications for Preventive Intervention," Children and Youth Services Review 27.1 (2005): 67-84; C. Mumola, "Incarcerated Parents and Their Children," Publication NCJ182335, Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000; S.D. Phillips, A. Erkanli, G.P. Keeler, E.J. Costello, A. Angold, "Disentangling the Risks: Parental Criminal Justice Involvement and Children's Exposure to Family Risks," Criminology and Public Policy 5.4 (2006): 677-702. [Return to text]

3. C.C. Egley, D.E. Miller, J.I. Granatos, and C.I. Fogel, "Outcome of Pregnancy During Imprisonment," Journal of Reproductive Medicine 37.2 (1992):131-134; D. Johnston, Children of Criminal Offenders (Pasadena: The Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents, 1992); C. McCall and N. Shaw, Pregnancy In Prison: A Needs Assessment Of Prenatal Outcomes In Three California Penal Institutions (Sacramento, CA: Department of Health Services, Maternal and Child Health Branch, 1985); B. Shelton, F. Armstrong, and S.E. Cochran, "Childbearing While Incarcerated," American Journal of Maternal Child Nursing 8.23 (1983); J. Wismont, "The Lived Pregnancy Experience of Women in Prison," Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health, 45.4 (2000): 202-300. [Return to text]

4. P.J. Baunach, "Mother from Behind Prison Walls," Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology: Philadelphia, PA, November 1979; D. Johnston (1991); D. Johnston (1992); L.A. Koban, "Parents in Prison: A Comparative Analysis of the Effects of Incarceration on the Families of Men and Women," Research in Law, Deviance and Social Control 5 (1983): 171-183; B.G. McGowan and K. Blumenthal, Why Punish the Children? (Hackensack, NJ: National Council on Crime & Delinquency, 1978); A. Stanton, When Mothers Go To Jail (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1980); S. Zalba, Women Prisoners and Their Families (Sacramento, CA: California Department of Corrections and California Department of Social Welfare, 1964). [Return to text]

5. D. Johnston, "Effects of Parental Incarceration," in K. Gabel and D. Johnston, eds., Children of Incarcerated Parents (New York: Lexington Books, 1995); J. Poehlmann, "Representations of Attachment Relationships in Children of Incarcerated Mothers," Child Development 76 (2005): 679-696. [Return to text]

6. A. Adalist-Estrin, "Parenting... from Behind Bars," Family Resource Coalition Report 5.1 (1986): 12-13; J.E. Blackwell, "The Effects of Involuntary Separation on Selected Families of Men Committed to Prison from Spokane," Unpublished Dissertation, State College of Washington, 1959; B. Bloom and D. Steinhart, Why Punish the Children? A Reappraisal of the Children of Incarcerated Mothers in America (San Francisco: National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 1993); E.I. Johnson and J. Waldfogel, "Children of Incarcerated Parents: Cumulative Risk and Children's Living Arrangements," Working Paper 306, Chicago: Joint Center for Poverty Research, 2002; D. Johnston (1992). [Return to text]

7. D.P. Farrington, "Early Predictors of Adolescent Aggression and Adult Violence," Violence and Victims 4 (1989): 79-100; S. Friedman and T.C. Esselstyn, "The Adjustment of Children to Parental Absence Due to Imprisonment," Federal Probation 29 (1965): 55-59; D. Johnston (1995); L.A. Sroufe, B. Egeland, E.A. Carlson, and W.A. Collins, The Development of the Person: The Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth to Adulthood (New York: Guilford Publications, 2005); S. Phillips, and J.P Gleeson, "What We Know Now That We Didn't Know Then About the Criminal Justice System's Involvement in Families with Whom Child Welfare Agencies Have Contact," Children, Families and the Criminal Justice System Research Brief, Chicago: University of Illinois at Chicago, July 2007; J.P. Murray, C. Janson, and D.P. Farrington, "Crime in Adult Offspring of Prisoners: A Cross-National Comparison of Two Longitudinal Samples," Criminal Justice and Behavior 34.1 (2007): 133-149; W.H. Sack, J. Seidler, and S. Thomas, "Children of Imprisoned Parents: A Psychosocial Exploration," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 46 (1976): 618-628; A. Stanton (1980); A.D. Trice and J. Brewster, "The Effects of Maternal Incarceration on Adolescent Children," Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology 19 (2004): 27-35. [Return to text]

8. M. Giulliom and D. Shaw, "Codevelopment of Externalizing and Internalizing Problems in Early Childhood," Development and Psychopathology 16 (2004): 313-334; R. Loeber, "Development and Risk Factors of Juvenile Antisocial Behavior and Delinquency," Clinical Psychology Review 10 (1990): 1-41; R. Loeber and T. Dishion, "Early Predictors of Male Delinquency," Psychological Bulletin 94 (1983): 68-99; T. Moffitt, "Adolescence-Limited and Life-Course-Persistent Antisocial Behavior: A Developmental Taxonomy," Psychological Review 100 (1993): 674-701. [Return to text]

9. D. Johnston, "What Works: Children of Prisoners," in V. Gadsden, ed., Heading Home: Offender Reintegration in the Family—What Works (Lanham, MD: American Correctional Association, 2002); S.D. Phillips, et al. (2006). [Return to text]

10. D. Johnston (2002). [Return to text]

11. S.A. Kinner, A. Alati, J.M. Najman, and G.M. Williams, "Do Paternal Arrest and Imprisonment Lead to Child Behavior Problems and Substance Use? A Longitudinal Analysis," Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 48.11 (2007): 1148-1156; S.D. Phillips, et al. (2006). [Return to text]

12. L.J. Bakker, B.A. Morris, and L.J. Janus, "Hidden Victims of Crime," Social Work 23 (1978): 143-148; B.G. McGowan and K. Blumenthal (1978). [Return to text]

13. E. Barry, "Women in Prison," in C. Lefcourt, ed., Women and the Law (Deerfield, IL: Clark, Boardman & Callahan, 1990); P.J. Baunach (1979); T.A. Fritsch and J.D. Burkhead, "Behavioral Reactions of Children to Parental Absence Due to Imprisonment," Family Relations 30 (1982): 83-88; W.H. Sack, et al. (1976). [Return to text]

14. J. Bowlby, A Secure Base (New York: Basic Books, 1988); L.A. Sroufe, "Attachment and Development: A Prospective, Longitudinal Study from Birth to Adulthood," Attachment and Human Development 7 (2005): 349-367. [Return to text]

15. L.A. Sroufe (2005). [Return to text]

16. M.D.S. Ainsworth, M. Blehar, E. Waters, and S. Wall, Patterns of Attachment (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1978); M. Main, "Recent Studies in Attachment," in S. Goldberg, R. Muir, and J. Kerr, eds., Attachment Theory: Social, Developmental and Clinical Perspectives (Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, 1995); L.A. Sroufe, et al. (2005). [Return to text]

17. S. George, N. Kaplan, and M. Main, "Adult Attachment Interview Protocol," Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Berkeley, 1985. [Return to text]

18. L.A. Sroufe (2005). [Return to text]

19. J. Bowlby, Attachment and Loss, Volume 2: Separation (New York: Basic Books, 1973). [Return to text]

20. C. Hamilton, "Continuity and Discontinuity of Attachment from Infancy Through Adolescence," Child Development 71 (2000): 690-694; E. Waters, K. Kondo-Ikemura, and J. Richters, "Attachment Security in Infancy and Early Adulthood," Child Development 71 (1990): 684-689. [Return to text]

21. L.A. Sroufe, et al. (2005). [Return to text]

22. D. Johnston (1992); D. Johnston (2002). [Return to text]

23. R. Parlakian, Look, Listen, And Learn: Reflective Supervision And Relationship-Based Work (Washington, DC: Zero to Three, 2001). [Return to text]

24. A. Copa, L. Lucinski, E. Olsen, and K. Wollenburg, Promoting Professional and Organizational Development: A Reflective Practice Model (Washington, DC: Zero to Three, 1999). [Return to text]

25. A. Copa, et al. (1999). [Return to text]

26. S. Sambrano, M.A. Jansen, and S.J. O'Neill, "Emerging Findings from High-Risk Youth Prevention Programs," Journal of Community Psychology 25.5 (1998): 371-373. [Return to text]

27. E. Fenichel, Learning Through Supervision and Mentorship to Support the Development of Infants, Toddlers, and Their Families: A Sourcebook (Washington, D.C.: Zero to Three, 1992); R. Parlakian (2001). [Return to text]