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Home > Case Support > Incarcerated Parents Project > IPP Resources > What’s the Research Saying > LITERATURE > Understanding Mass Incarceration and Its Impacts
Understanding Mass Incarceration and Its Impacts

*Please note: This page is still in progress. More links will be posted soon.*

 

Consequences for Families & Mass Incarceration (in alphabetical order)

This article discusses the BJS survey of parents in federal and state prison and its data conducted in 2o16 and published in 2020.  Government survey results illuminate the broader consequences of locking up people with children.

  • Consequences for Families and Children (Chapter 9) in The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences edited by Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western, and Steve Redburn, Book online, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2014, found at: https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/18613

This chapter reviews empirical evidence on the consequences of incarceration for family behavior and child well-being. The researchers chose to focus on the incarceration of men because it is more common than the incarceration of women and men’s incarceration is the subject of the bulk of the available research.

This article describes changes to policies related to the contact incarcerated individuals could have with family members and others since the pandemic began. The authors examined the clarity of the information presented to the public regarding COVID-19 testing and outbreaks in state prisons. The results showed that DOCs quickly made free phone calls available to incarcerated individuals, although for how long this policy remained in place is unclear. The capacity for video visits during the pandemic was notably less; only 25 state DOCs had video visits in place before March 2020, and 16 of those reported adding free video visits with family members during the pandemic.

Using original data from the Family Incarceration Costs Survey, the researchers present national estimates of the direct financial costs of family member incarceration. They find that most Americans with an incarcerated family member provide them direct financial support.

This report offers a comprehensive guide for prison and jail officials on how to remove barriers for incarcerated parents’ contact and communication with their children. The guide also describes many low-cost, high-impact practices and provides prison and jail officials evidence on the effectiveness of recommended practices and helpful tips and resources for successful implementation.

  • Parents in Prison by Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Emma Stammen, and Kevin Muhitch, The Sentencing Project (2021)

This brief examines trends in parental incarceration, strains on families, missed opportunities for interventions, as well as recent reforms.

 

Fathers:

The study examined young children’s attachment behaviors during paternal incarceration and reported on initial validity of a new measure used to rate children’s attachment-related behaviors and emotions during visits in a corrections setting. Preliminary evidence for the validity of our new measure, the Jail Prison Observation Checklist, in that children’s attachment-related behaviors and emotions during the jail visit correlated with their attachment security observed in the home. The researchers indicate that, in certain contexts, non-contact visits with incarcerated parents can be stressful for children and that children’s caregivers may play a significant role during these visits. 

This study explored the impact of incarceration on African American fathers and their sons. The authors state data revealed four major themes: caregiving, stigma, paternal bonds, and reentry. The findings implied that specialized knowledge through a forensic social work lens might offer more comprehensive solutions by focusing on paternal relationships, long-term consequences of incarceration, and objective criteria that can assist with treatment outcomes.

This study examines the relationships fathers have with their own children while incarcerated in jails. Fathers reported their demographic information, incarceration-related characteristics (e.g., number of prior arrests), children’s exposure to incarceration-related events, and frequency of contact with their children. Findings include that 22% of fathers reported daily phone contact with children; that types of contact were correlated, so that more phone contact and letter writing were associated with more frequent visits; that White, non-Hispanic fathers and those who did not plan to live with their children upon release were less likely to report telephone contact with their children; and that children who witnessed their fathers’ arrest were less likely to write and children who witnessed their fathers’ criminal activity were less likely to visit.

The study took place while the fathers were clients at the Midlands Fatherhood Coalition located in Columbia, South Carolina. Using Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory (1977) as the framework, the study explored the barriers convicted African-American fathers face within the different systems they live in every day. Results showed the fathers experienced difficulty finding sustainable employment and reestablishing a parental role with their children due to their conviction and incarceration

 

Mothers:

This study assesses and demonstrates, consistent with previous research, many of the women studied here who were incarcerated in Australia experienced a range of social and practical difficulties that impeded the desistance process. For a large portion of the women, however, mentoring helped overcome some difficulties by enhancing positive social capital in their lives. These findings are discussed in the context of how mentoring relationships can act as key turning points in the lives of women involved in the criminal justice system.

This article reviews and examines the treatment of children with incarcerated mothers in Pakistan. The study allows the reader to read opinion and context regarding children of female prisoners in the prison and outside the prison regarding education with or mental health, which taken as the hidden consequences of the circumstances. This study encompasses the key issues regarding the children within jail or outside the jail of incarcerated mothers; the survey has been made for these children for opinion and condition analysis for the impact upon their lives of incarcerated mothers.

This 6-paged fact sheet contains data in graphs explaining the rise in female incarceration.  Over the past quarter century, there has been a profound change in the involvement of women within the criminal legal system. This is the result of more expansive law enforcement efforts, stiffer drug sentencing laws, and post-conviction barriers to reentry that uniquely affect women. The female incarcerated population stands almost seven times higher than in 1980. Over sixty percent (62%) of imprisoned women in state prisons have a child under the age of 18.

This report studies the civil rights of women in the United States prison system. The Constitution and federal statutes require that men and women in prison receive equal treatment. Noting that investigations have demonstrated that women in U.S. prisons face particular challenges in a prison system not designed for them. The report also includes recommendations and findings including: that many incarcerated women continue to experience physical and psychological safety harms while incarcerated and insufficient satisfaction of their constitutional rights; that classification systems not calibrated for gender specific characteristics incarcerated women at higher security requirement levels than necessary for the safety and security of prisons, resulting in some women serving time in more restrictive environments than is necessary or appropriate; sexual abuse and rape of women remains rampant; women are disparately impacted by permanent (legal) loss of parenting rights, and that the biological healthcare needs of women continue to go unmet by prison systems. 

The report examines the unique challenges women in the criminal legal system face and provides the clearest look at how the pandemic impacted women’s incarceration in the U.S. Originally released in March 2023; it was updated in March 2024.

Women are the fastest growing correctional population nationwide and since the 1990s, Oklahoma has incarcerated more women per capita than any other US state.  This report finds that mothers jailed in Oklahoma feel an added, and unique, pressure to plead guilty so that they can return home to parent their children and resume their lives. These mothers face difficulties keeping in touch with their children due to restrictive jail visitation policies and costly telephone and video calls. Some risk losing custody of their children because they are not informed of, or transported to, key custody proceedings. Once released from jail, they are met with extensive fines, fees, and costs that can impede getting back on their feet and regaining custody of their children. 

 

Exposure to Carceral Systems (in alphabetical order)

This research attempted to overcome data challenges of estimating the level of children’s exposure to criminal legal systems, the researchers leverage billions of restricted administrative and survey records linked with Criminal Justice Administrative Records System data and find substantially larger exposure rates than previously reported: prison – 9% of children born between 1999-2005, felony conviction – 18%, and any criminal charge – 39%. Charge exposure rates exceed 60% for Black, American Indian, and low-income children. 

This review summarizes existing literature on the impact of incarceration on parents retrieved via online databases.  Classified by overall themes, this review includes pertinent studies on the psychological and emotional consequences of incarceration on parents, the experience of parenting while incarcerated, including barriers to parenting, the utility of parenting program interventions during periods of incarceration, and how these results differ for mothers and fathers. 

 

Economic & Social Impacts on Families Impacted by Incarceration (in alphabetical order)

In this report, The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center provides a national overview of the scope, features, and operation of the employment-related collateral consequences imposed by state and federal law. The authors gathered the National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction (NICCC), a searchable online database that catalogs these provisions across the country. This analysis also provides a blueprint for policymakers seeking to mitigate the impact of these increasingly significant barriers to work.

This report examines the effects of a criminal conviction specifically those referred to as collateral consequences, which can include a wide variety of supplementary ramifications, further burdening individuals found guilty of a criminal offense. The authors note that although not all collateral consequences have a statutory basis or are imposed either mandatorily or via the involvement of a state authority, prominent collateral disabilities flow from somewhat subjective acts of discrimination– a social process involving private people making discretionary decisions in light of a person’s criminal history in decisions related to employment or housing, for example.

Both discrimination by private employers and governmental restrictions in the form of statutes that prohibit professional licensing serve to exclude the formerly incarcerated from much of the labor market. This Essay explores and analyzes potential legislative and contractual means for removing these barriers to labor market participation by the formerly incarcerated.

In this brief and accompanying video, the authors discuss how fines and fees in the criminal legal system jeopardize Black Americans’ ability to move into and stay in the middle class. The authors also discuss specific criminal legal practices and revenue policies that state and local changemakers can adopt to reduce harms and invest in their residents’ futures.

  • Incarceration and CPS Involvement  by Lawrence M. Berger, Maria Cancian, Laura Cuesta, and Jennifer L. Noyes, Fast Focus No. 24-2016, Institute for Research on Poverty (2016)

This brief describes our work using a unique longitudinal data system of linked administrative data from Wisconsin to describe overlap between parental incarceration and
child CPS involvement, and between adolescent CPS involvement and subsequent incarceration in young adulthood.

This report is specific to New York City arrest and pretrial detention law enforcement, public health, and social data, policies, and practices. The researchers explore how participants’ employment, residential stability, and family relationships changed since their arrest, and whether pretrial detention was associated with those outcomes. 

This article discusses the experiences of children with incarcerated parents, specifically profound and complex threats to their emotional, physical, educational, and financial well-being.

This report examines the barrier of finding employment after incarceration by attempting to determine the role that poverty and opportunity play in who ends up behind bars in the first place.  Using an underutilized data set from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, this report provides hard numbers on the low incomes of incarcerated men and women from before they were locked up.

The researchers noted that despite the ongoing decline in crime, the incarceration rate in the United States (at the time of publication) remains at a historically unprecedented level and continues to have profound effects on society. These effects felt from incarceration by individuals experiencing incarceration limits their access to economic prosperity. Because a founding principle of The Hamilton Project’s economic strategy is that long-term prosperity is best achieved by fostering economic growth and broad participation in that growth, elevated rates of crime and incarceration directly work against these principles, marginalizing individuals, devastating affected communities, and perpetuating inequality. This report intends to bring attention to recent trends in crime and incarceration, the characteristics of those who commit crimes and those who are incarcerated, and the social and economic costs of current policy.

This article examines the federal rating system of social programs issued by the Justice Department’s Crime Solutions, contemporaneously to its release of a “no effects” rating of the Bronx Defenders holistic defense system a year after the RAND study made findings of effectiveness in certain but not all of the state goals/outcomes. 

This article discusses the incarceration rate in the United States.  Despite the fact that the incarceration rate fell in 2021 to its lowest levels since 1995, the U.S. continues to imprison a higher percentage of its population than almost every other country. The U.S. incarcerates 530 people for every 100,000 in its population, making it one of the world’s biggest jailers – just below El Salvador, Rwanda and Turkmenistan.

The National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction (NICCC) is an online database that catalogs the state and federal statutes and regulations that limit or prohibit people convicted of crimes from accessing various rights, benefits, and opportunities. As of 2020, the NICCC identifies 901 provisions of Washington law that impose these “collateral consequences,” a large majority of which act as barriers to employment for people with criminal convictions (see FIG. A). This fact sheet provides an overview of employment-related collateral consequences in Washington.

The report proves there are deeper costs to the policy of locking up millions of people in jail or prison cells and submits that when we lock up individuals, we also break apart their families and communities.