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About half of incarcerated parents (58% female, 49% male) reported having an incarcerated parent in their childhood.

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Boys with an incarcerated parent are more likely to become aggressive, while girls with an incarcerated parent tend to suppress emotions, leading to depression and anxiety.

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Pregnant women that are incarcerated should have more comforts of home. They should not be treated as badly as they are now. In a hospital or doctor office setting, they should be treated as a normal woman because it impacts the way the baby handled and how the doctor treats her. While in a labor & delivery room, women should be uncuffed and allowed to move freely through the room, with officers outside the door, to offer privacy. Walking the halls should be allowed as long as the woman is accompanied by officers. They should receive the necessary time to recover for their delivery and should receive all the same treatment as any other mother in the hospital. Family members, especially, the father of the baby, the mother or close friends of the woman to provide comfort and support through delivery. Certain prisons should have a ward where the mother can keep the baby and raise it. (short sentences, minor offenses, privilege can be taken away)

Children are often scared to visit their parent in prison because prison is scary. Maybe instead of meeting in the prison, there is a “meeting house” close to the prison and monitored by guards/officers, that is welcoming, looks and feels like a real home where the parent and child/ren can meet. This way the children are comfortable and are more open to visiting their parent. They can even eat and cook in the house and act like a normal family for a day or half-a-day. This would not only help the children, but the parent/s also. The incarcerated parent could still maintain a relationship with their child/ren and their significant other without the confines and coldness of the prison.

Fathers in prison should be encouraged to have a relationship with their children. They should be encouraged to write letters home and make phone calls. Fathers are just as important as mothers. Fatherless children tend to have more behavior problems, diminished self-concept, poor academic performance, teen pregnancy, drug & alcohol abuse and many more consequences. Fathers are important to children and should be as involved as possible. In addition, fathers with a connection with their children might benefit them. They may want to better themselves to be a good dad and once they get out of prison, have a less wanting to commit more crimes. They will have a place in society after they get out of incarceration because of their connection.

Parenting classes should be offered for ALL mothers and fathers in prison. This will prepare them to parent after they get out of prison. They will have an increasing self-worth because they know how to parent, be a good parent and know they belong in their child/rens life. Marriage or family counseling should be offered, but not required, to repair broken relationships and provide closure.

Parents should NOT be arrested in front of their children. Police or arresting officers should wait for a more appropriate time, if it is possible and would not put others at risk. This will help the hardships that children feel when they see their parent getting arrested.

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Why should children NOT visit their parents in Prison?

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Why should children NOT visit their parents in Prison?

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Having children visit parents can sometimes not be the best option for them.

Bringing young children into a prison could be scary for the child or leave a lasting impact on them.

Older kids can think that it will be okay to commit crimes because their parent has. “Lead by example.”

Some kids feel bad about the visits and thinking about the parent in prison. They become embarrassed and it affects their daily activities.

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Why should children visit their parents in prison?

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Why should children visit their parents in prison?

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Children should be able to visit their parents because it helps with healing, relationships and helps prevent physiological damage that could happen because of not being able to see a parent.

Why should children suffer because of the mistakes their parent made. Common studies have shown that when a child to kept away from their parent that they suffer mentally. For example, when a baby is born to an incarcerated mother, they have less than (typically) or 24 hours to bond with their mother. Babies benefit from breastfeeding, skin-to-skin and many other bonding options with their mother, often related to health.

Parents can show how bad and traumatizing prison is, scaring the children from committing crimes, especially ones that put one into prison.

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Sometimes women do not know they are pregnant because the clinic tends to associate the sickness the women have as stress or stomach flu. (when the women have only been in prison for a short time. Get pregnant in May, enter prison in June, did not know they were pregnant...)

When at doctors appointments or in the hospital, the mothers are stripped searched, put in belly chains and handcuffed before leave. Things are not private.

Women typically have to give birth alone. Often times the family doesn’t even know that their family member had given birth until after she leaves the hospital.

In most states, women prisoners only have 24 hours with their baby. Women who had a vaginal birth can only stay in the hospital for 24 hours.

Despite this harsh treatment, mother are allowed to breastfeed their baby and have family pick up her breastmilk from prison for her baby.

Also, pregnant women have access to group therapy sessions in Parenting, Substance abuse, domestic violence, prenatal care, childbirth and postpartum. They all have to go through childbirth class. In addition, a childbirth educator often comes to the hospital after delivery to check up of the woman.

There is a pregnancy ward in the prison where all the pregnant women stay in.

Incarcerated pregnant women who have given birth are more likely to have postpartum problems and mental-disorders.

As they are shackled for most, if not all, of their labor and delivery, they can suffer mental and physically. Physically, because she cannot move her body to get more comfortable and cannot give birth in a more conducive way. Mentally because they can’t have a true connect with their baby.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6lBHqyuB8o

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45% of inmates lose all contact with their family. This happens because often visiting is restricted and calls can be awkward and avoided. Transportation and phone calls can also be expensive, leaving poorer families unable to afford it.

58% of Fathers and 59% of Mothers do not get visits from their children

Sometimes, children do not even know their parent is in prison. Fewer than 10% of the children of mothers in state prisons & fewer than 4% of the children of mothers in federal prisons are in foster care.

Many parents are divorced. 25-28% of partners are divorced before parents. In hindsight, this could be good because the children are already used to living with only one parent. Around 22% of partners divorce, when one is in prison.

10% of Mothers and 2% of fathers have children that are placed in foster care, many of which will never regain custody

When fathers are incarcerated, mother assume a caregiver rule 90% of the time. However, when mothers are put in prison, fathers only assume responsibility 28-31% of the time. Most of the time (53% for state incarcerations & 45% for federal) grandparents assume the caregiver responsibility. Friends of the family assume the role 10-12% of the time.

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How old are the children, typically, when their parent is Incarcerated?

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How old are the children, typically, when their parent is Incarcerated?

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The mean age of a child with an incarcerated parent is 8. EIGHT years old.

58% of children with incarcerated parents are under the age of 10.

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Younger kids (2-6 years old) tend to have separation anxiety, extreme & traumatic stress, guilt and impaired social-emotional development.

Social-emotional development means that the children experiencing  social-emotional have problems that negatively impacts their functioning, development and school-readiness.

Young school-age children (7-10 years old) typically deal with regressions in their development, poor self-concept, traumatic stress and have a hard time to overcome future trauma.

Older school-age children (11-14 years old) can experience rejection to limits of behavior and trauma-reactive problems and behaviors.

Teens & High school-age children (15-18 years old) may experience dissociation with their incarcerated parent, meaning the teen does not depending relationship with that parents and they are at the highest risk of intergenerational crime and incarceration.

Many parents are arrested in front of their children: 67% of parents get handcuffed in front of the children.  This can cause posttraumatic stress symptoms in the children who witnessed the arrest.

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Today.. How many parents are Incarcerated?

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Today.. How many parents are Incarcerated?

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“2.7 million children have a parent behind bars — 1 in every 28 children (3.6 percent) has a parent incarcerated, up from 1 in 125 just 25 years ago. Two-thirds of these children’s parents were incarcerated for non-violent offenses.”  (Western)

Approximately 1 in 110 white children, one in 15 black children, and one in 41 Hispanic children have a parent who is incarcerated. (Christian)

“Black children (6.7%) were seven and a half times more likely than white children (0.9%) to have a parent in prison. Hispanic children (2.4%) were more than two and a half times more likely than white children to have a parent in prison.” (Glaze) https://www.prisonfellowship.org/resources/training-resources/family/ministry-basics/faqs-about-children-of-prisoners/

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1 in 5 children have "clinically significant" internalizing problems, eg. depression, and 1 in 3 show "clinically significant" external problems, eg. agression, compared to the usual 1 in 10 of children without a parent in jail.

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1-2% of children with an incarcerated mother and 13-25% of children with an incarcerated father graduate college.

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Of the children with incarcerated an incarcerated parent/s: 1 in 15 are black, 1 in 110 are white, and 1 in 41 are hispanic.

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While it is hard for the children affected, not everyone is agreeing with efforts.

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*16% of kids with incarcerated parents experience fear of going to school due to the fear of being judged and bullied.
*23% of kids with incarcerated parents will get suspended or fail a grade.

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"While many of the risk factors children of incarcerated parents experience may be
related to parental substance abuse, mental health, inadequate education, or other
challenges, parental incarceration increases the risk of children living in poverty or
experiencing household instability independent of these other problems."
https://nrccfi.camden.rutgers.edu/files/nrccfi-fact-sheet-2014.pdf

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90% of the incarcerated parents are fathers. Yet, the number of mothers in prison has grown greatly, especially between 1991-2000.

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In a 2000 study in Mumola, nearly 3.6 million parents are under some form of correctional supervision, including parole. Almost 1.1 million of those parents are incarcerated in federal, state, or local jails. An estimated total of children with incarcerated parents is 2.3 million.

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Parents in prison have a risk of loosing custody of their children when the children are in foster care.