San Francisco Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership Blog

More Information and Collaboration Could Promote Ties Between Foster Care Children and Their Incarcerated Parents

Federal law sets timelines for states' decisions about placing foster care children in permanent homes, and, in some cases, for filing to terminate parental rights. Some policymakers have questioned the reasonableness of these timelines for children of incarcerated parents and expressed interest in how states work with these families. The Government Accounting Office (GAO) was asked to examine: (1) the number of foster care children with incarcerated parents, (2) strategies used by child welfare and corrections agencies in selected states that may support contact or reunification, and (3) how the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have helped these agencies support affected children and families. GAO analyzed national data, reviewed federal policies, interviewed state child welfare and corrections officials in 10 selected states that contain almost half of the nation's prison and foster care populations, and visited local child welfare agencies and prisons.

Foster care children with an incarcerated parent are not a well-identified population, although they are likely to number in the tens of thousands. Health and Human Services data collected from states show that, in 2009 alone, more than 14,000 children entered foster care due at least partly to the incarceration of a parent. This may be an undercount, however, due to some underreporting from states and other factors.

Download this report, GAO-11-863, with its recommendations for Executive action, over here.

Maternal Separations Durning The Reentry Years For 100 Infants Raised In A Prison Nursery

Prison nurseries prevent maternal separations related to incarceration for the small subset of children whose pregnant mothers are incarcerated in states with such programs. For a cohort of 100 children accepted by corrections into one prison nursery, subsequent separation patterns are analyzed. The largest numbers are caused by corrections’ removal of infants from the nursery and infants reaching a one-year age limit. Criminal recidivism and substance abuse relapse threaten continued mothering during reentry. Focused and coordinated services are needed during prison stay and reentry years to sustain mothering for women and children accepted into prison nursery programs.

Prison nurseries provide a housing space inside a secure criminal justice corrections setting where incarcerated women can co-reside with their newborn infants for various periods of time during which the mother completes an imposed judicial sentence while being the primary caregiver for her infant. Such arrangements have existed throughout the world and to a lesser extent in the United States (US; Cook & Davies, 1999; Weintraub, 1987). They have varied widely in terms of underlying philosophy, political will to support them, and resources available to mother and child (Goshin & Byrne, 2009; Kauffman, 2001; Radosh, 1988; Robertson, 2008; Shepard & Zemans, 1950). In the US, prison nursery programs have existed at one time or another within local, state, and federal jurisdictions with an erratic history of sustainability (Byrne, 2010; Craig, 2009). Such programs in this country have long been assumed by advocates to both create and sustain secure infant attachments, to establish a foundation that protects future child development, and to prevent the adult participants’ criminal recidivism. Opponents have claimed they interfere with prison secu- rity, interrupt child development and impose eventual separations. These assumptions have only recently been tested in the first longitudinal study of maternal and child outcomes for a cohort of prison nursery co-residents in a New York State prison system (Byrne, n.d.). This paper extends previously reported attachment findings from this study (Borelli, Goshin, Joestl, Clark, & Byrne, 2010; Byrne, Goshin, & Joestl, 2010) by exploring the patterns of union and separation experienced by a cohort of former prison co-residing mothers and infants who gave informed consent to par- ticipate in longitudinal studies that began in prison and have continued from one through eight reentry years.

Full article is here.

The Effects of Parental Incarceration on Children: Needs and Responsive Services

Here is a link to a report of the Advisory Committee Pursuant to House Resolution 203 and Senate Resolution 52 of 2009 by the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

 

Voices of SFCIPP

SFCIPP's Yali Lincroft contributed a provocative call for
Uniting Our Voices for Immigrant Children of Incarcerated Parents
to the First Focus blog:

Immigrant advocates often use phrases such as “innocent” or “they are not criminals” when they are defending immigrant detainees. However, these statements are actually problematic since they fracture solidarities between marginalized populations and create frictions between immigrants and laborers, prisoners, and other native residents. READ MORE HERE.....

 

Keeping Children Safe When Parents are Arrested: Methods for Allegheny County Police Officers

From the report: "In mid 2006 Administrative Judge Kim Berkeley Clark brought together a group of stakeholders to discuss two concerns raised in the Pittsburgh Child Guidance

Foundation's study of what happens to children when their parent is arrested and incarcerated at the Allegheny County Jail. The two concerns: l) harsh conditions facing most children who visit the jail, including absence of physical contact; and 2) lack of consistent policies and protocols in police departments throughout the County on how officers treat children at the time of their parent's arrest. This is the first report and set of recommendations produced by the Committee devoted to parental arrest procedures."

Download a PDF of the report here.

Linking Data on Children and Incarcerated Mothers

Integrating data across systems can provide new insights into the needs of children in the child welfare system or at risk for involvement. 

In 2008, the Urban Institute supported data integration efforts at three sites to learn more about the experiences of children whose mothers were incarcerated. Each site linked different data sets, depending on what was available and suited to their analysis. A new publication, Using Local Data to Explore the Experiences and Needs of Children of Incarcerated Parents, by Diana Brazzell, reports the findings.

The report discusses the potential for using administrative data to find out more about children of incarcerated parents, since child welfare and criminal justice data are not normally integrated. The overlap of the two populations—incarcerated mothers and children in the child welfare system—suggests that these families face multiple challenges. Using multiple data systems for further research could contribute to developing more effective prevention initiatives.

Incarcerated Parents and Their Children: Trends, 1991-2007

A new analysis by The Sentencing Project highlights the growth in the number of incarcerated parents and their children since 1991. As of 2007, 1.7 million children had a parent in prison, an 82% increase from the figure of 936,000 in 1991. Due to the distance from home at which many parents are incarcerated - 62% of parents in state prisons are more than 100 miles from home - visits from children are declining over time. In 2004, more than half of parents in state prisons and nearly half in federal prisons had never had a visit from their children. The study reviews data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and documents the growing impact of incarceration on children and families while recommending policy responses.

Strengthening Marriages and Families Affected by Incarceration

Thirteen programs around the country were funded in 2006 under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Responsible Fatherhood, Marriage, and Family Strengthening Grants for Incarcerated and Re-entering Fathers and Their Partners grant program. This study presents the first results of an evaluation of the MFS-IP grantees, describing all 13 projects while assessing the inputs (e.g., funding, partnerships), "throughputs" (e.g., services), outputs (e.g., systems change), and outcomes (e.g., child well-being, family violence) of each.

Incarcerated Parents and Their Children: Trends, 1991-2007

A new analysis by The Sentencing Project highlights the growth in the number of incarcerated parents and their children since 1991. As of 2007, 1.7 million children had a parent in prison, an 82% increase from the figure of 936,000 in 1991. Due to the distance from home in which many parents are incarcerated - 62% of parents in state prisons are more than 100 miles from home - visits from children are declining over time. In 2004, more than half of parents in state prisons and nearly half in federal prisons had never had a visit from their children. The study reviews data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and documents the growing impact of incarceration on children and families while recommending some very clear policy responses.

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

This study, by Susan D. Phillips and James P. Gleeson, looks at children who were subjects of reports of maltreatment. Information was collected on more than 5,000 children from 92 different communities in 36 states. More importantly, the participating communities and children were selected in such a way that the resulting data depict the entire population of reported child maltreatment victims in the United States. Though not a study specifically of children of incarcerated parents in the child welfare system; it is, however, the most detailed and reliable national data currently available on the safety, permanency, and well-being of children that child welfare agencies come into contact with while also containing seminal data about the criminal justice system's involvement in these families.