Children left behind
By Gerard Robinson
Every day in America, 5 million children wake up without hearing “Good morning” from a parent. Why? Because their mom or dad is among the 2.2 million incarcerated in our state and federal prisons. If you add in the 11.4 million who cycle through local jails each year, it is clear that too many children are living lives interrupted.
This week, AEI is dedicating its intellectual capital to incarceration policy as part of National Reentry Week (April 24–30). On Monday, AEI President Arthur Brooks spoke at a White House event that focused on the economic consequences of our criminal justice system. On the same day, I coauthored a pieceabout incarceration reform as a bipartisan issue with my colleague Elizabeth English. We believe Republicans and Democrats must find common ground about front-end reform — incentivizing adults to live productive lives — as well as back-end solutions — supporting sound reentry practices that will slow down our nation’s billon dollar merry-go-round called recidivism. As a nation, we are at a critical, and promising, moment to address these issues.
But in our conversations this week, and in most policy discussions on incarceration, we have focused primarily on adults. Here I want to focus on the children of the incarcerated.
To help shed light on this topic, the Annie E. Casey Foundation released a report titled “A Shared Sentence: The Devastating Toll of Parental Incarceration on Kids, Families and Communities” earlier this week. Below are a few staggering statistics highlighted in the report about the incarcerated and the children they leave behind:
- Between 1980 and 2000, the number of children with a father in prison rose 500%.
- 45% of men in state or federal prison age 24 or younger are fathers.
- 48% of women in state prison age 24 or younger are mothers.
- 55% of women in federal prison age 24 or younger are mothers.
Children left behind during a parent’s incarceration experience bouts of loneliness and hopelessness. Many of these children also face major obstacles in our public and private schools. Just as their parents often lack basic literacy skills, the children of those in prison often trail their peers. According to data from a recent White House report, at least 65% of prisoners did not graduate from high schools and 14% had less than an eighth grade education.
We can set the children of the incarcerated free from the prison of illiteracy and instead set them on a path of opportunity.
Our education system needs to do more to ensure that children of the incarcerated avoid falling into the same pattern. We can break this pattern by demanding that these children receive a high quality education; be it in a traditional public school, charter school, online option, or in a private school with support from a voucher, tax credit scholarship, or education savings accounts. By doing so, we set the children of the incarcerated free from the prison of illiteracy and instead set them on a path of opportunity.
During Reentry Week, we must recognize the importance of preparing the formerly incarcerated for life after prison — not only for themselves, but for their families and communities. Ensuring that the formerly incarcerated are able to find jobs upon their release is just as important as ensuring that they are able to fulfill their jobs as parents. Reducing recidivism and increasing opportunity for the formerly incarcerated requires the best efforts from government, corporate, non-profit, and faith-based networks. And if we can invest in the hearts, minds, and souls of the children of the incarcerated, we will reap social and economic dividends to our country a generation from now.
Found at: http://www.aei.org/publication/children-left-behind
