From Prison to Home:  The Effect of Incarceration on Children, Families, and Communities

From Prison to Home:
What Are the Implications for Program Interventions and Research?

[ Main Page of Report | Contents of Report ]

Presented research and the subsequent discussions identified children, families, and former prisoners who have experienced incarceration as a group at high risk for adverse child, adult and family outcomes. Many conference participants expressed hope that addressing these needs could reduce the risks of recidivism, substance abuse relapse, and family violence. Throughout the conference participants noted examples of many public policy and program areas that could better serve prisoners and their families. Reentry strategies that involve families could also promote child, family and community well-being. Mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment programs could be more family-oriented. Re-entry planning could include re-unification services for children and parents, when appropriate. Use of welfare and food stamps could be part of a self-sufficiency plan for the re-turning prisoner and his/her family. And family violence concerns could be addressed both in prison and in the community. Participants believed that the opportunities to link incarceration, re-entry and family services are substantial and bear the promise of profound and far-reaching benefits for all involved. Targeted interventions could increase public safety and social functioning-benefits of interventions that are important for returning prisoners, their children and families, and communities.

Participants acknowledged the need for a continuum of supports for individuals and families throughout the incarceration and reentry period — so that appropriate services for individuals and families are developed and those who actually need services get them. It was expressed that current and new interventions need to be integrated and coordinated across multiple systems and institutional domains and that to capitalize on the learnings from interventions, accompanying research also needs to be multi-disciplinary.

Summarized here are highlights from the conference discussion that may be helpful in the development of future interventions and research at the local, state, and federal level.

• Maintenance of Family Ties During Incarceration. Most parents remain involved in their children's lives during incarceration and expect to resume parenting responsibilities upon release. Most children want to continue to maintain a relationship with their parents. Fostering positive child-parent interaction during incarceration, when appropriate, can help children, the incarcerated, and the care-giving parent. More interaction between human services' and the corrections' systems is needed on how and when ongoing relationships between the inmate parent and the caregiver and between the parent and the child should be facilitated. Information is also lacking on how best to support families in their desire to maintain ties with an incarcerated family member, ties that will strengthen the families and community upon release.
• Preparation of Prisoners and their Families for Reentry. Nearly all prisoners will eventually return to their families and communities. Yet, many prisoners are not adequately prepared to manage the return. Likewise, the families of prisoners and the communities they return to are often not prepared to help them become reintegrated into family and community life.
• Implementation of Coordinated Community Programs. Many inmates and ex-offenders would benefit from employment and parenting skill building, treatment for their trauma histories and substance abuse problems, and help in preparing for productive life when they return to their families and communities. However, there are few models for coordinated, multidisciplinary, multi-systemic efforts to provide ex-offenders with opportunities to financially and emotionally support their families. Additionally, gender, race, and class difference of inmates, ex-offenders, their families, and communities often are not considered in the design of programs and research.
• Coordination of Systems and Resources. Poverty, welfare, public housing, and incarcerated and parole populations concentrated in a small number of neighborhoods may hinder child development outcomes. Neighborhood assessments seems to indicate that it is likely that many of the same families have family members in the criminal justice system and family members served by health and human services systems of care. Yet, there are only a few communities and states where the criminal justice and health and human services systems are working together to address the needs of these multi-system involved families. More attention needs to be paid to how health and human services and criminal justice policies and programs intersect in high crime communities and how policies and programs can be coordinated and structured to improve the delivery of services that meet the needs of community residents.
• Information Sharing Among and Between Systems. Relatedly, current human services and criminal justice systems have no easy way of sharing information with each other. In fact, incarceration of a parent may never be identified as one of the causative or related events that brings a family into some part of the health and human services systems. Information sharing models that provide privacy protections and facilitate an examination of the service needs of the prisoner and family need to be tested to determine if early and coordinated interventions provide better outcomes for prisoners, families, and society as a whole.
• Basic Research on Children and Families of Prisoners. There is little basic research on children and families with incarcerated parents, and thus, there are many unanswered questions. Some of these questions are: the effects of parental criminality and parental absence during incarceration on children; the effect of parental involvement and familial relationships on adult recidivism; and the effect of high rates of incarceration on family and community stability. Answering these kinds of questions would involve undertaking prospective, longitudinal studies that: 1) follow families at risk of incarceration to determine the impact of incarceration, beyond other risk factors such as poverty and exposure to violence; 2) develop and use multidisciplinary approaches; 3) use developmentally appropriate, standardized measures for assessing children; and 4) address the effects of mother versus father incarceration, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and individual, family, contextual and cultural processes.
• Research on Policy Impacts. There has been little research on the effect of human services and corrections policies on children and families and on re-unification efforts. Program provisions that may provide good opportunities for study include time limits for termination of parental rights, restrictions on the receipt of welfare and public housing by convicted drug felons, non-modification of child support orders while a non-custodial parent is in prison, and mandatory sentencing requirements for certain crimes.

Where to?

Top of Page
Main Page of Report | Contents of Report

Home Pages:
Human Services Policy (HSP)
Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)