Unprecedented numbers of children experience parental incarceration worldwide. Families and children of prisoners can experience multiple difficulties after parental incarceration, including traumatic separation, loneliness, stigma, confused explanations to children, unstable childcare arrangements, strained parenting, reduced income, and home, school, and neighborhood moves. Children of incarcerated parents often have multiple, stressful life events before parental incarceration. Theoretically, children with incarcerated parents may be at risk for a range of adverse behavioral outcomes. A systematic review was conducted to synthesize empirical evidence on associations between parental incarceration and children's later antisocial behavior, mental health problems, drug use, and educational performance. Results from 40 studies (including 7,374 children with incarcerated parents and 37,325 comparison children in 50 samples) were pooled in a meta-analysis. The most rigorous studies showed that parental incarceration is associated with higher risk for children's antisocial behavior, but not for mental health problems, drug use, or poor educational performance. Studies that controlled for parental criminality or children's antisocial behavior before parental incarceration had a pooled effect size of OR = 1.4 (p < .01), corresponding to about 10% increased risk for antisocial behavior among children with incarcerated parents, compared with peers. Effect sizes did not decrease with number of covariates controlled. However, the methodological quality of many studies was poor. More rigorous tests of the causal effects of parental incarceration are needed, using randomized designs and prospective longitudinal studies. Criminal justice reforms and national support systems might be needed to prevent harmful consequences of parental incarceration for children.

http://www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/publications/download.php?id=18104

Children's antisocial behavior, mental health, drug use, and educational performance after parental incarceration: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration. By Devah Pager. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. xiii+248. $25.00.

This study investigates change over time in the level of hiring discrimination in US labor markets. We perform a meta-analysis of every available field experiment of hiring discrimination against African Americans or Latinos (n = 28). Together, these studies represent 55,842 applications submitted for 26,326 positions. We focus on trends since 1989 (n = 24 studies), when field experiments became more common and improved methodologically. Since 1989, whites receive on average 36% more callbacks than African Americans, and 24% more callbacks than Latinos. We observe no change in the level of hiring discrimination against African Americans over the past 25 years, although we find modest evidence of a decline in discrimination against Latinos. Accounting for applicant education, applicant gender, study method, occupational groups, and local labor market conditions does little to alter this result. Contrary to claims of declining discrimination in American society, our estimates suggest that levels of discrimination remain largely unchanged, at least at the point of hire.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/114/41/10870.full.pdf

Meta-analysis of field experiments shows no change in racial discrimination in hiring over time

Explanations for the fact that crime tends to run in families have focused on the deprived social backgrounds of criminal parents, methods of child-rearing, modeling processes, and genetic mechanisms. However, parental involvement in the criminal justice system itself also might contribute to the intergenerational transmission of crime and have other adverse effects on children's well-being. We investigated the development of youth problem behavior in relation to parental arrest, conviction, and incarceration in the youngest and oldest samples of the Pittsburgh Youth Study, a longitudinal survey of 1,009 inner-city boys. Parental arrest and conviction without incarceration did not predict the development of youth problem behavior. Parental incarceration was not associated with increases in marijuana use, depression, or poor academic performance. However, boys experiencing parental incarceration showed greater increases in theft compared with a control group matched on propensity scores. The association between parental incarceration and youth theft was stronger for White youth than for Black youth. Parenting and peer relations after parental incarceration explained about half of its effects on youth theft. Because the effects of parental incarceration were specific to youth theft, labeling and stigma processes might be particularly important for understanding the consequences of parental incarceration for children. KEYWORDS: Juvenile justice; Juvenile delinquency

Parental involvement in the criminal justice system and the development of youth theft, marijuana use, depression, and poor academic performance*

“Ban the Box” (BTB) policies restrict employers from asking about applicants’ criminal histories on job applications and are often presented as a means of reducing unemployment among black men, who disproportionately have criminal records. However, withholding information about criminal records could risk encouraging racial discrimination: employers may make assumptions about criminality based on the applicant's race. To investigate BTB’s effects, we sent approximately 15,000 online job applications on behalf of fictitious young, male applicants to employers in New Jersey and New York City before and after the adoption of BTB policies. These applications varied whether the applicant had a distinctly black or distinctly white name and the felony conviction status of the applicant. We confirm that criminal records are a major barrier to employment: employers that asked about criminal records were 63% more likely to call applicants with no record. However, our results support the concern that BTB policies encourage racial discrimination: the black-white gap in callbacks grew dramatically at companies that removed the box after the policy went into effect. Before BTB, white applicants to employers with the box received 7% more callbacks than similar black applicants, but BTB increased this gap to 43%. We believe that the best interpretation of these results is that employers are relying on exaggerated impressions of real-world racial differences in felony conviction rates.

Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Racial Discrimination: A Field Experiment

Children of incarcerated parents: Challenges and resiliency, in their own words

Ample experimental evidence shows that the stigma of a prison record reduces employment opportunities (Pager, 2007). Yet background checks today uncover a much broader range of impropriety, including arrests for minor crimes never resulting in formal charges. This article probes the lesser boundaries of stigma, asking whether and how employers consider low-level arrests in hiring decisions. Matched pairs of young African American and White men were sent to apply for 300 entry-level jobs, with one member of each pair reporting a disorderly conduct arrest that did not lead to conviction. We find a modest but nontrivial effect, with employer callback rates about 4 percentage points lower for the experimental group than for the matched control group. Interviews with the audited employers suggest three mechanisms to account for the lesser stigma of misdemeanor arrests relative to felony convictions: 1) greater employer discretion and authority in the former case; 2) calibration of the severity, nature, and timing of the offense; and 3) a deeply held presumption of innocence, which contrasts the uncertainty of arrest with the greater certainty represented by convictions. In addition, personal contact and workplace diversity play important roles in the hiring process.

/pdf/the-edge-of-stigma-an-experimental-audit-of-the-effects-of-27ky6279ni.pdf

The edge of stigma: An experimental audit of the effects of low-level criminal records on employment

An Experimental Audit of the Effects of Low-level Criminal Records on Employment

With rising attention toward the plight of children with incarcerated parents, there has, as yet, been little focus placed on the adults who care for them, individuals who may have a profound impact on the children's relationships with their incarcerated parent. This study explores unique parenting challenges the caregivers faced, from their perspectives and presents their voices. Caregivers discussed the strain of serving as a gatekeeper between the child and imprisoned parent, coping with stigma and isolation, and negotiating a predominantly child-unfriendly visitation system. The findings suggest that caregivers need information about raising a child in this context, connections with others in similar situations, and a more child-friendly and transparent judicial and visitation process.

/pdf/caregivers-of-children-with-incarcerated-parents-2p8ank9igk.pdf

Caregivers of Children with Incarcerated Parents

While the scale and consequences of mass incarceration in the United States have been well-documented over the past two decades, sociologists have focused less attention on mass probation and the expansion of community supervision. Originally designed as a rehabilitative alternative to imprisonment, probation represents the largest form of penal control and a critical intersection between criminal justice and welfare—two systems that govern citizens at the margins. We analyze qualitative data from over 100 focus groups conducted in 2016-2017 with adults on probation and probation officers in several jurisdictions across the country to show the enmeshing of coercion and care in probation. Drawing on the concept of carceral citizenship, we detail the duties, burdens, and perverse benefits of supervision across four domains: relationships with probation officers, access to services and programs, time and financial constrictions, and the threat of revocation (or incarceration for non-compliance). We argue that probation provides barebones welfare services for some of the most vulnerable adults, while also imposing the unique harms of a criminal record, burdens of supervision, and risk of incarceration.

Ebony Ruhland

Papers

Children of incarcerated parents: Challenges and resiliency, in their own words

The edge of stigma: An experimental audit of the effects of low-level criminal records on employment

An Experimental Audit of the Effects of Low-level Criminal Records on Employment

Caregivers of Children with Incarcerated Parents

Governing Marginality: Coercion and Care in Probation