Collateral Consequences of Imprisonment for Children, Communities, and Prisoners

From Prison to Home: The Dimensions and Consequences of Prisoner Reentry

“…During the prison experience, they also become exposed to a prison culture that frequently serves to strengthen links to gangs and the criminal world in general. 165 Advancing in the legitimate labor market is a product of learning through new experiences and opportunities. The same is true for involvement in crimi-nal activity for profit.…”

“…210 What we do know is that children whose parents have been incarcerated experience a range of negative consequences, but we cannot say the extent to which these consequences are a direct result of a parent being incarcerated or the nature of family life in that household. 211 For instance, several studies have found that children of incarcerated parents are more likely to exhibit low selfesteem, depression, emotional withdrawal from friends and family, and inappropriate or disruptive behavior at home and in school.…”

Commentary on Roettger et al. (2011): Confronting the elephant in the room

“…Because the risk of parental imprisonment has increased in tandem with the risk of imprisonment for adult men [8], mass imprisonment might also have exacerbated childhood inequality-but only if parental imprisonment harms children [9][10][11]. It is into this area that the excellent work by Roettger and colleagues [12] fits.…”

“…The first suggests that stable differences between individuals drive both the risk of imprisonment and poor child outcomes. Most research in this area uses covariate adjustment, propensity scores or fixed effects to address such concerns [5,[9][10][11][12][13]. Covariate adjustment and propensity scores both approximate causal relationships only if all factors associated with imprisonment and child outcomes are controlled.…”

“…(If these measures capture change, all the better.) A full list of such measures is beyond the scope of this commentary, but research in this and related areas indicates that better measures of parental criminal justice contact, criminality, drug use and abuse and social marginalization would take us part of the way towards overcoming omitted variable bias [5,[9][10][11]14]. Although the substantial investment such data collection requires may not have passed a cost-benefit test in 1974, it probably passes it now that the risk of parental imprisonment for black children exceeds 25% [8].…”