The United States Department of Justice recently estimated that nearly 1.5 million minor children – 2.1% of all minor children in the United States – had a parent in prison or jail in 1999. This figure represents an increase since 1991 of more than half a million children with an incarcerated parent. Trends in adult imprisonment suggest that the figure will continue to grow, since the number of adults in prison has increased on average 6.5% annually since 1990. To date, relatively little research has been conducted on the impact of parental incarceration on children and most of what is known is based on interviews with their parents. As the number of children left behind when a parent is imprisoned continues to grow, their stories need to be heard and told.

An increased risk of delinquency is among the effects on prisoners’ children that have been reported. Prior research has also found that parental criminality in general is a risk factor for delinquency, but to date there has been little effort to investigate what role the lack of supervision and the disruption of parent-child attachment that results from a parent's imprisonment plays in this generational continuity.

The current research has two main purposes: first, to improve our knowledge of how parental incarceration affects children and second, to investigate whether there are different outcomes in delinquent behavior for those children of convicted offenders whose parents are incarcerated compared to those whose parents are on probation. To accomplish these objectives, the project will proceed in two phases.

The first phase will involve semi-structured interviews with a sample of children whose parents are incarcerated and a participant-observation study of those children. Direct observation of the children at home, at school, at play and in the community will enrich our understanding of the impact of their parent’s absence on their daily life and better inform the second phase of the research. In preparation for the first phase, focus groups to be held in early 2001 are being organized in order to meet with prisoners’ children, families of prisoners, and parolees to learn more about their concerns and experiences.

The second phase of the project will involve a longitudinal study of children of both prisoners and people on probation. Clearly, a child whose parent has been incarcerated has been exposed to parental behavior that could serve as a model for delinquency. Many of the parents may also have other problems, such as substance abuse, that could interfere with effective parenting. In addition to parental conduct, several other factors could contribute to an increased risk of delinquency, including community-level variables and peer influences. Children whose parents have been convicted and placed on probation are subject to similar influences, but do not experience the added effects of separation from the parent and the many practical and emotional consequences that may ensue as a result. A comparison of children of probationers and prisoners will permit an assessment of the impact of the imprisonment itself, not simply parental criminality, while controlling for other influential factors.

For more information, please contact Jane Siegel, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, Rutgers University-Camden.

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Last updated 1/16/01