The Wrong Road: Efforts to Understand the Effects of Parental Crime and Incarceration

Abstract

Very little is known about children of criminal offenders. The recent interest in children of prisoners has produced a spate of new publications (

Hardships Children face in the United States of America by Having a Parent in Prison: How to Help Them! A Program Proposal

“…"In this study, 628 children were monitored for over a six year period by interviewing children, their caregivers and teachers [28]." The significance of this study showed that children who never lived with their incarcerated parent prior to arrest demonstrated similar emotional and behavioral characteristics, school performance, gang involvement and delinquency than children that had.…”

“…This indicates that parental incarceration is not an absolute value and that this situation has very little impact on their outcomes [28].…”

“…Johnson [28] included several studies in her article. The first study was by Robins et al Johnson recognizes that the importance of this study is the intergenerational offending relationship identified between parent and children.…”

“…The third study is one that Johnson [28] played a personal role in creating, The Children of Criminal Offenders Study. "In this study, 628 children were monitored for over a six year period by interviewing children, their caregivers and teachers [28]."…”

“…Besides limiting judges' discretion and shifting it to prosecutors, these reforms have caused confusion in interpreting and applying fair sentencing [3,[14][15][16]23,[26][27][28]. Prior to mandatory minimum sentencing and the three strike laws, judges were able to take all facts and extenuating circumstances into consideration, when determining appropriate punishment, but this limitation adds an aspect that makes many case rulings appear unfair [10,16,29].…”