Introduction

In many ways this issue of The Scholar & Feminist Online involves the type of knowledge dissemination and scholarship endorsed by the roundtable participants. It provides a forum for enhancing understanding of family dynamics and issues involved in criminal justice processing. The issues of children whose parents are incarcerated are seldom the focus of scholarly inquiries, public discourse, or social policies. Yet, the number of these children is huge and steadily growing. At any given time, millions of children have a parent in prison or jail; millions more have had a parent incarcerated at some point during their childhood, and millions grow up while their parents are in prison.

Although intended as individual punishment, incarceration is a family matter. Involvement in the criminal justice system affects not only individuals but also can be devastating for their children and families and their broader community. Notwithstanding the fact that some parents were absent or not parenting in the most responsible way at the time of their arrest, parental incarceration creates disruptions in children’s daily lives. Numerous children must move to other homes when their parents are sent away, often facing great challenges and risks throughout the process. National statistics indicate, for example, that 40% of mothers in prison and 15% of fathers were their child or children’s sole caregiver prior to incarceration. Other children, though able to remain in the same home, may be emotionally or financially deprived of the care previously provided by the now absent parent. Even parents who did not live in the same home with their children often contributed to their care.

Research on parenting during and after incarceration and children’s responses to having an incarcerated parent is not extensive. The studies that have been conducted usually point to negative consequences for prisoners’ children. Problems noted include emotional difficulties, disobedience and acting out, and engagement in delinquent behavior. More so than other children, they also experience problems in school, including suspensions and grade failure. Research and professional observations generally indicate that children do better when they are able to maintain relationships with their incarcerated parents and participate in extended family networks; their caregivers maintain a stable and caring home environment; and they are able to talk about what is happening to them and to their parents in a safe place. They also fare better when they are viewed as normal children with special challenges, rather than as potential risks for becoming “just like their fathers or mothers.”¹

The Scholar & Feminist Online is an appropriate venue for critically examining, through multiple lenses, the topic of parental incarceration and children. The issues raised by incarceration and the justice system’s impact on women’s caregiver roles are feminist issues, and a feminist perspective and examination can contribute not only to new understandings of these issues, but can also result in progressive action. Rarely acknowledged, incarceration in the United States is very much a women’s issue. Women make up only about 7% of the prison population, but the recent rate of increase has exceeded that for men.² In addition, the nature of women’s involvement in crime is more complex and more extensive than it was years ago. The majority of women arrested and sentenced are parents of dependent children for whom they had some responsibility prior to incarceration. Women are often the primary caregivers for the children of imprisoned fathers as well as mothers. They make up the majority of prison visitors, and provide the homes to which male and female prisoners return. As mothers, sisters, aunts, wives, lovers, and friends, they are often male and female prisoners’ and former prisoners’ primary sources of emotional support and concrete help. The rules of engagement that govern prison life and the return home are forces that shape their daily lives as women and their families’ and communities’ well-being.

1.  For a review of the research and statistics see the following two reports I published with the Annie E. Casey Foundation: “Focus on Children with Incarcerated Parents: An Overview of the Research Literature,” October 2007; and “Kinship Care When Parents are Incarcerated: What We Know, What We Can Do”, May 2009. [↩]
2. Sabol, W., West, Heather and Cooper, Matthew (December 2009, NCJ228417) Prisoners in 2008. Washington, D.C. Bureau of Justice Statistics. [↩]