Block, Kathleen J., and Margaret J. Potthast.  2001.  Girl Scouts Beyond Bars: Facilitating Parent-Child Contact in Correctional Settings.  In Children with Parents in Prison: Child Welfare Policy, Program, and Practice Issues, ed. Cynthia Seymour and Creasie Finney Hairston, 93-110. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Distant prisons, inconvenient visitation schedules, and the negative impacts of mothers’ incarceration on children present challenges for child welfare professionals who work with the children of incarcerated mothers.  Separation by prison can be devastating to children, resulting in feelings of abandonment, sadness, and anger, and can lead to eating and sleeping disorders, lower academic performance, and disruptive behavior.  It is often difficult for children to visit their mothers in prison.  Prisons may be far away, or caregivers may not be willing to take them.  When visits do occur, standard visitation settings increase the anxieties experienced by children and their mothers.  Visitation rooms are inappropriate for children, providing little opportunity for meaningful parent-child interaction.  Several states have developed enhanced visitation programs for incarcerated mothers and their children.  Seeking to normalize interaction, these programs provide more flexible visiting schedules, play areas with toys and activities, and longer contact times. 

One of these programs is Girl Scouts Beyond Bars (GSBB), an enhanced visitation program in which incarcerated mothers and their daughters meet twice per month for structured troop activities and one-on-one private conversation.  An impact assessment of the program found that compared to a control group, a higher percentage (64 vs. 49 percent) of GSBB participant mothers received visits from their daughters and averaged more visits per year (11.6 vs. 6.1).  In interviews, caregivers indicated that they had observed substantial positive impacts among the children in their care since they began GSBB.  These improvements consisted of better communication and understanding between incarcerated mothers and their daughters, a decrease in antisocial behavior at home and at school, and higher self-esteem.  The article concludes that child welfare professionals should consider enhanced visitation programs as a means to support mother-daughter relationships and reduce some of the problems caused by incarceration.

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Gabel, Stewart.  1992.  Behavioral Problems in Sons of Incarcerated or Otherwise Absent Fathers: The Issue of Separation.  Family Process 31 (September) : 303-314.

During the 1980s, the incarcerated population in the U.S. more than doubled.  Though little is known about the psychological reactions of children whose parents are incarcerated, in a review of literature on the children of incarcerated fathers, the author finds that the few studies in existence suggest that a variety of behavioral disorders are related to separation from a parent, the stigma associated with incarceration, and deception of children about the status of their incarcerated parents.  The author notes, however, that the existing literature is heavily descriptive and anecdotal, with few empirical studies and significant methodological limitations.

The author compares the literature on incarcerated fathers to literature on the effects of separation due to other forms of father absence.  Based on a review of the larger volume of empirical research in this area, the author suggests that the behavioral or emotional disorders displayed by the children of incarcerated fathers may be due more to associated factors such as the meaning of the incarceration to the child, the remaining caretaker’s psychological characteristics and psychopathology, the parenting relationship between the caretaker and the child, and the coping capacities and resources of the family, rather than to the separation itself.

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Hairston, Creasie Finney.  2001. The Forgotten Parent: Understanding the Forces that Influence Incarcerated Fathers’ Relationships with Their Children.  In Children with Parents in Prison: Child Welfare Policy, Program, and Practice Issues, ed. Cynthia Seymour and Creasie Finney Hairston, 149-171. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Fathers who are incarcerated are parents as well as convicts.  Nevertheless, few services and programs are provided for incarcerated fathers or their children and the importance of father-child relationships is often ignored.  However, the sheer number of children whose fathers are or will be incarcerated warrants a closer look at including incarcerated fathers in efforts to improve children’s and families’ welfare.  Incarcerated fathers’ relationships with their children can be complicated by many factors.  Incarcerated fathers are viewed as unimportant to children and their opportunities to parent are narrowly proscribed by their prisoner status.  Punishment, security, and safety are the focus of prisons, not families.  Rules governing communication with family members, whether by phone, mail, or visit, are not sensitive to family needs.  Visiting is particularly problematic: obstacles that make it difficult for the children to visit, restrictions on interaction during visits, and poor treatment of visitors and prisoners alike make it psychologically and physically demanding.  In addition, incarcerated fathers are often viewed by child welfare services as uninvolved and as poor role models.  The author recommends a fundamental shift in thinking about prisoners and their children.  She calls for 1) standards and principles that support incarcerated fathers’ ability to parent, 2) development child welfare practices that deal specifically with supporting incarcerated parent-child relationships, 3) more research on the impact of parental imprisonment on prisoners’ families, 4) leadership by social service organizations in the development of policies and programs that help incarcerated parents and their children to maintain ties.

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Hairston, Creasie Finney.  1995.  Fathers in Prison.  In Children of Incarcerated Parents, ed. Katherine Gabel and Denise Johnston, 31-40. New York: Lexington Books.

Incarcerated fathers are not just prisoners, they are also parents.  Though their parental roles are not generally considered, many fathers care about their children and families and have the same concerns as other fathers.  Maintaining responsible husband and parent roles during imprisonment is important to the well-being of both prisoners and their families.  This study, which surveyed 126 men, most of them under 40 and serving long prison terms in a maximum security prison, examined incarcerated fathers’ familial relationships.  The study found that fathers’ familial relationships are generally tenuous.  Few men in the sample were married or had a continuing relationship with the mothers of their children; only 50 percent were living in the same household as their youngest child at the time of their incarceration.  In terms of parenting relationships, contact with their children is limited: 30 percent of surveyed men had not seen their children since imprisonment and less than half had seen their children in the six months prior to the survey.  The main reasons given for lack of visitation were that the child had no one to bring him or her to visits or that the mothers of their children did not want their children to visit.  Despite the low visitation frequency, fathers expressed concern about their children.  Principal among worries were that children lacked guidance and supervision, that they might get into trouble, and that they lacked a proper home.  Fathers also stated that they needed to understand more about child development and parenting skills.  The study concludes that although they do not visit with their children frequently, incarcerated fathers are concerned about their children and would like to be better parents, but need assistance in learning how to become involved with their children in positive ways.  

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Johnston, Denise.  1995.  Effects of Parental Incarceration.  In Children of Incarcerated Parents, ed. Katherine Gabel and Denise Johnston, 59-88. New York: Lexington Books.

In this survey of research on the children of incarcerated parents, Johnston reviews studies that examine the effects of parental incarceration on children from specific age groups ranging from prenatal to late adolescence.  Johnston notes that many of the studies done on this population have serious limitations; they generally rely on small, non-random samples, and only a handful examine children directly. Studies on the children of pregnant prisoners indicate that prenatal stress related to the parents’ criminal activity (often drug use), arrest, and incarceration often lead to poor perinatal outcomes.  Children of pregnant prisoners serving longer terms have better outcomes than those serving shorter terms, possibly due to better nutrition and improved prenatal care in prison.  Infants of prisoners appear to experience few direct effects on intellectual and physical development.  However, the most important impact of parental incarceration may be the prevention of bonding between the parents and their infants. 

As children grow older, the impacts of separation by incarceration appear to become more serious.  For children between two and six, ability to develop autonomy and initiative may be damaged by the trauma of the parents’ criminal activity and/or arrest and parent-child separation due to incarceration.  The long-term impacts of parental incarceration may be worst at this stage, because children can understand and remember traumatic events, but lack the ability to process them without help.  In middle childhood (7-10 years), parental arrest and incarceration may have major impacts on social adjustment; many children in this age group develop aggressive behaviors and difficulty getting along with others, particularly in school. 

Early adolescent (11-14 years) children of prisoners have typically had multiple experiences with parental crime, arrest, and incarceration.  While some are able to overcome the absence of a parent by developing stable, productive patterns, many children of prisoners display maladaptive behavioral patterns and reject limitations on their behavior.  Late adolescence is the period over which children develop a cohesive identity, the ability to engage in adult work and relationships, and to become independent and self-sufficient.  By this stage of life, many late adolescent children of prisoners have experienced a lifetime of disruption and trauma related to parental incarceration.  The cumulative effects of this manifest themselves in decreased likelihood of reunification, increased delinquency, and negative perceptions of the criminal justice system.  In summary, parental incarceration and related enduring trauma, separation, and inadequate care interfere with child development, resulting in negative long-term outcomes, including intergenerational incarceration.

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Johnston, Denise.  1995.  Parent-Child Visitation in the Jail or Prison.  In Children of Incarcerated Parents, ed. Katherine Gabel and Denise Johnston, 135-143. New York: Lexington Books.

Forced parent-child separation is traumatic for children because one of a parent’s most important roles is to help children deal with trauma.  Children of incarcerated adults are likely to have experienced trauma in the household prior to their parent’s incarceration, leaving them even more vulnerable after separation.  As a result, children of incarcerated parents often experience feelings of anger, depression, withdrawal, and guilt and behavioral problems.  Studies show that frequent, regular visitation is beneficial to such children’s welfare: children who visit their incarcerated parents score higher on measures of well-being, IQ, emotional adjustment, and behavioral measures.  Despite the evidence of the beneficial impacts of visitation, child protective services workers, caregivers, and prisoners often perceive that visitation in the prison setting could have negative effects on children.  However, a 1992 survey of the adults who were supervising 240 visiting children showed that negative reactions among children were minor, and generally limited to excitability on the day of the visit or several days after.  Since there is evidence that the frequency, nature, and duration of parent-child contacts following separation play a key role in a child’s future development, visitation should be viewed as a beneficial, low-cost intervention that ameliorates the negative impacts of separation and that may help reduce future antisocial behavior among prisoners’ children.

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Johnston, Denise.  1995.  Intervention.  In Children of Incarcerated Parents, ed. Katherine Gabel and Denise Johnston, 199-236. New York: Lexington Books.

Historically, the criminal justice system has focused only on the offender and not on his or her family.  Only recently has a child-centered perspective emerged.  Research suggests that children of incarcerated parents are characterized by their experience of three factors: 1) enduring trauma in childhood, 2) parent-child separation, and 3) inadequate care, due mostly to poverty.  This article reviews the interventions available to human services professionals’ for use in addressing these three factors.  Intervention goals, client selection criteria, recommended methods and activities, staffing issues, expected outcomes, and model programs are discussed.

Several interventions address enduring trauma.  Crisis nurseries are places where parents can leave their infants for short periods of time to prevent their exposure to acute trauma such as arrest or homelessness.  Therapeutic visitation is prison-based counseling of prisoners with a history of domestic violence.  Therapeutic interventions the trauma-reactive children of offenders include individual, group, and family counseling.

Parent-child separation can be addressed through several interventions.  For infants and young children, prison nurseries and community-based mother-infant correctional programs are an option that can address the need for successful maternal bonding, allowing women who give birth in prison to live with and care for their infants.  For all children, parent-child contact visitation programs address the need for extended physical contact between children and their parents.  Traditional visitation settings allow only a minimal amount of physical contact, and are extremely restrictive for children who are accustomed to intensive, repeated physical interaction with their parents.  In contrast, contact visitation programs allow children and their parents to interact more closely in child-oriented environments, which should reduce the amount of stress experienced by parents and children during visitation and contribute to successful reunification on release.  Other interventions that can reduce the stresses of separation are child support groups and child custody advocacy.

Quality-of-care interventions seek to improve the welfare of children by helping their parents and caregivers to better meet their children’s material and emotional needs.  Where child placement and foster care services are required for the children of prisoners, their need for special support of the parent-child relationship should be considered.  Where children live with family members, caregiver and family support services interventions can address low-income and high-stress conditions of and provide benefits for children.  Parent education for prisoners, as it has not been proven to lead to behavioral change, is not recommended by the author.  Parental empowerment programs, designed by formerly incarcerated parents, help parents to understand issues unique to incarcerated parents such as separation and trauma.  Drug treatment programs can increase parenting competency by reducing continued substance abuse.  Finally, reentry services that help released parents to deal with postrelease stressors and stabilize their lives can only benefit children.

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Johnston, Denise, and Katherine Gabel.  1995.  Incarcerated Parents.  In Children of Incarcerated Parents, ed. Katherine Gabel and Denise Johnston, 3-20. New York: Lexington Books.

The majority of adults incarcerated in the U.S. are parents.  The lives of incarcerated parents, like those of other prisoners, have typically included separation from their own parents as children, substance abuse, and a range of traumatic experiences.  Prisoners who are parents also have unique characteristics.  They generally have appropriate parenting concerns and attitudes, and although it has been suggested that their parenting behaviors tend to be over controlling or aversive, there is no evidence of disproportionately high physical or sexual abuse of their children among incarcerated parents.  There are differences between incarcerated mothers and incarcerated fathers.  Incarcerated mothers are half as likely to be married as incarcerated fathers, three times more likely to have lived with their children prior to arrest, and half as likely to be satisfied with their children’s placement during their incarceration.  They are visited less often than incarcerated fathers, and are usually incarcerated father away from their children’s homes.

Incarceration strips offenders of parental power and authority but not their concerns about the well-being of their children and their desire for reunification.  Both male and female prisoners are mostly powerless in the areas of parental decision making and parent-child contact.  Recent increases in female arrests, incarceration, and recidivism are leading to decreases in mother-child reunifications and increases in termination of parental rights.  While prisoners of both sexes need support and services that empower them as parents and increase their parental decision-making capabilities, female prisoners need additional services aimed at preventing the termination of parental rights.

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Mumola, Christopher J.  2000.  Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report: Incarcerated Parents and Their Children.  Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs.

This document presents data from the 1997 Surveys of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities.  In 1999, it was estimated that over half (55 percent) of the prisoners in U.S. Federal and State prisons, or 721,500 men and women, were parents of minor children, and 33 percent were parents of multiple minor children.  The estimated 1,498,800 children of these prisoners represent 2.1 percent of the Nation’s children.  Only 23 percent of parents in State prisons and 36 percent of parents in and Federal prisons reported that they were married.  Fewer than half of the parents in state prison reported that they had been living with their children prior to incarceration compared to 57 percent of parents in federal prison.  One-third of incarcerated mothers indicated that they had been living alone with their children in the month prior to incarceration.  Eighty percent of prisoners reported that their child was living with the child’s other parent during their incarceration, while 20 percent cited a grandparent as caregiver.  Forty percent of fathers and 60 percent of mothers reported that they had at least some kind of weekly contact (telephone, letters, personal visits) with their children, though only about a quarter reported having at least monthly personal visits, and over 40 percent had not had a personal visit since admission.  Over 60 percent of State prisoners and 80 percent of Federal prisoners were held more than 100 miles from their last residence.  A majority of parents in prison were violent offenders or drug traffickers, and over 50 percent of State prisoners had been incarcerated previously. 

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Seymour, Cynthia B.  2001.  Children with Parents in Prison: Child Welfare Policy, Program, and Practice Issues.  In Children with Parents in Prison: Child Welfare Policy, Program, and Practice Issues, ed. Cynthia Seymour and Creasie Finney Hairston, 1-25. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

An estimated 200,000 children in the U.S. have an imprisoned mother and 1.6 million an imprisoned father.  The child welfare system is significantly affected by the increasing number of children of incarcerated parents.  Much of the research on children with incarcerated parents has had limitations such as small sample sizes and inadequate comparison groups.  There have been no longitudinal studies and few studies have employed standardized assessment instruments.  The literature that does exist indicates that children whose parents are incarcerated experience a number of negative consequences.  They feel fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, and guilt, exhibit low self-esteem, depression, emotional withdrawal, and engage in anti-social behaviors.  Lack of contact with parents is common: approximately half of incarcerated parents do not receive visits due to distance and lack of transportation, lack of caregiver cooperation, inhospitable visiting conditions for children, and parent reluctance.  The physical care and custody of children is often disrupted, and siblings are commonly separated.  New caregivers often lack the resources to provide for children’s needs. 

Children in the child welfare system whose parents are incarcerated are similar to the rest of the child welfare population in that their families struggle with poverty, domestic violence, substance abuse, and other complex problems.  However, important differences such as trauma related to pre-incarceration criminal behavior, parent-child separation, and the stigma of having an incarcerated parent present challenges for child welfare professionals.  Little is known about effectiveness of child welfare interventions and few policies and procedures have been developed that address the specific needs of this population.

Since the child welfare and criminal justice systems increasingly encounter many of the same families, several areas of shared interests have led to collaborative efforts.  When both systems seek to maximize family involvement, the period of incarceration can be an opportunity for positive intervention with families at risk.  The child welfare and prisoner advocacy community have worked together to make a focus on family and children’s needs a priority.  Future challenges for the child welfare system include developing and promoting a research agenda; identifying and addressing the therapeutic needs of children with incarcerated parents; clarifying the role of child protective services; promoting family preservation and support services; developing better methods for facilitating visits and other parent-child contact; enhancing work with children, parents, and caregivers; identifying and addressing the special permanency planning needs of this population; and developing methods for collaboration with the criminal justice system.

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Simmons, Charlene Wear.  2000.  Children of Incarcerated Parents. Sacramento, CA: California Research Bureau.

This review of research on the children of incarcerated parents estimates that in 1999, 292,000 children in California had a parent who was either in state prison or in jail.  The impacts of parental incarceration on children appear to be profound.  The few small-scale studies that have focused on such children have found that they may experience psychological problems including trauma, anxiety, guilt, shame, and fear.  Behavioral problems experienced include sadness, withdrawal, low self-esteem, decline in school performance, truancy, use of drugs and alcohol, and aggression.  Despite the high risks of negative outcomes for children of incarcerated parents, the criminal justice and child welfare systems have few formal procedures or official policies for dealing with the children of incarcerated parents.  As a result, children can be left in legally ambiguous living situations or given inappropriate placements that ultimately lead to neglect.  Since there is little research and official information in this area, children of incarcerated parents and their caregivers are not targeted by government social services programs.

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Weilerstein, Rose.  1995.  The Prison MATCH Program.  In Children of Incarcerated Parents, ed. Katherine Gabel and Denise Johnston, 255-264.  New York: Lexington Books.

For incarcerated parents and their children, separation and related trauma can be one of the most difficult parts of the experience.  Parents cannot really parent while incarcerated: they are detached from their children’s daily development, deterioration of the parent-child connection makes it difficult for parents to help their children through times of crisis, and they feel guilt, anguish, and helplessness.  Children may experience insecurity, fear, worry, or shame, depending on developmental stage.  Experience has clarified three areas critical to ensuring children’s welfare and maintaining parent-child bonds: 1) supportive visiting contact, 2) community and social services support, and 3) parenting programs for incarcerated parents.  The Prison Match program, located in the San Francisco County Jail, strives to provide needed support in these three areas.  To facilitate enhanced visit contact, the program runs a children’s center where incarcerated parents and their children can engage in age-appropriate activities with an emphasis on developing parent-child bonds.  A social services component provides referrals to social service organizations and otherwise attempts to help caregivers ensure children’s welfare.  Finally, resources and training on parenting and child development are offered to both incarcerated parents and caregivers.

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Weissman, Marsha, and Candace Mayer LaRue.  2001.  Earning Trust from Youths with None to Spare.  In Children with Parents in Prison: Child Welfare Policy, Program, and Practice Issues, ed. Cynthia Seymour and Creasie Finney Hairston, 111-126. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

The incarceration of parents can have devastating effects on the children left behind.  Children of incarcerated parents are frequently in unstable living situations, which keeps them from settling down enough to build up enough trust to seek help.  In addition, social stigmatization related to a parent’s incarceration contributes to a range of reactions including delinquency, aggression, crying, and withdrawal.

Two programs that aim to assist children of incarcerated parents are the Youth Advocacy Program (YAP) and the Children with Incarcerated Parents (ChIPS) program operated by the Center for Community Alternatives (CCA).  The first objective of these programs is to build up trust with clients.  To this end, confidentiality is stressed because children of incarcerated parents often attempt to hide the truth about their parents.  Specific program services include support groups that focus on issues such as isolation, self-esteem, and shame.  Other focus areas include developing strategies for dealing with the absence of a parent, developing support systems, substance abuse, and understanding the correctional system.  Another main goal is to encourage the children of incarcerated parents to participate in other youth-oriented CCA programs.  However, since the children of incarcerated parents are hard to reach, programs like YAP and ChIPS must focus on building trust first.

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Wright, Lois, and Cynthia Seymour.  2000.  Working with Children and Families Separated by Incarceration: A Handbook for Child Welfare Agencies.  Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare League of America Press.

This book is for child welfare administrators and case workers.  It discusses the effects of parental incarceration on children and families, the systemic response to parental incarceration, and the community services available to support and preserve those families.  It also outlines child welfare practice needs and provides practice suggestions in areas such as child protection, temporary care in out-of-home placements, permanency planning, and family reunification.

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Additional References

Tammy Gillespie, director of the 4-H LIFE Program, can be reached at 573-882-3316 or gillespiet@missouri.edu.

The original 4-H LIFE project evaluators provided the research and design for this web display.
Dr. Elizabeth Dunn and J. Gordon Arbuckle.

Video footage by William Helvey, Ag. & Extension Information Center, Lincoln University, and
Bob Nash, Mineral Area TCRC Coordinator. Photography by Tammy Gillespie, Lynna Lawson,
Rick Secoy, and Rob Wilkerson. Graphics and web development by Jeanne Bintzer.

This program is supported by the University of Missouri Extension and the
 Children, Youth and Families at Risk (CYFAR) Initiative.