Children of Prisoners

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Children of Prisoners
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• Mission
• To stop the intergenerational cycle of crime and
  incarceration

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• While many programs reach out to prisoners, very
  few address the crucial needs of their children.

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Children of Prisoners

• Children of prisoners face overwhelming
  challenges
• The absence of one or both parents
• Dire poverty
• Social stigmas
• Hopelessness
• Lack of direction
• Unstable living conditions
• Confusion and mistrust

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Additional challenges

• High crime environments
• Violence
• Parental substance abuse
• Neglect
• Multiple caregivers
• Uncertainty of the future

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Children of Prisoners

• Children of prisoners are at a higher risk for a
  wide variety of emotional and behavioral problems
  including depression, anxiety, poor academics
  performance, drug and alcohol abuse and juvenile
  delinquency.
• P/PV Ventures in Brief 2004

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Children of Prisoners

• Adding the element of incarceration of one or
  both parents to a childs life is more often than
  not a final and overwhelming factor in tipping
  the scale toward juvenile delinquency and
  life-long adult criminality.
• Big Brothers Big Sisters,
  2008

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Children of Prisoners
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• One in every one hundred adults in America is
  incarcerated. (1 in 100)
• Pew Charitable Trust, 2008 report

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1 of every 100 adults in America is behind bars
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Defining the problem

• Each prisoner has an average of 2.2 children
• Department of Justice
• 58 of the children of prisoners are under 10
  years of age.

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Defining the Problem

• Seven (7) out of ten (10), of the children of
  prisoners will follow their parents to a cell of
  their own. (7 out of 10!)
• 70 of the children of prisoners will go to
  prison themselves without one-to-one
  intervention.
• U. S. Senate Report, 2000

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Defining the problem

• Compare that to 14 out of 100 from the general
  population.
• OR 70 versus 14.
• OR of the children in todays society, children
  of prisoners are FIVE times more likely to commit
  a crime and end up in prison during their
  lifetime.

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The fact is that

• Having a parent behind bars is the single largest
  factor in the making of juvenile delinquents and
  adult criminals.
• Incarceration and Child Welfare, Rutgers
  University, 2006

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In fact.

• Of all juveniles currently in correctional
  institutions, over 50 have at least one parent
  who is or has been in prison.

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To add insult to injury.

• Often inmates meet their sons and grandsons for
  the first time behind prison walls.

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Prison is no place for a family reunion.
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What defines these children?

• Children of prisoners are invisible. They live
  midst a conspiracy of silence which creates for
  them a world of isolation, loneliness,
  disconnectedness, embarrassment, stigma, fear,
  sadness, and anger.
• Family and Corrections Network, 2005

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Cycle of illiteracy

• Children of prisoners inherit a cycle of
  illiteracy
• 75 of prisoners have not graduated from high
  school
• The average level of educational attainment of
  prisoners is 8th grade.

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Functional illiteracy

• 33 of inmates are functionally illiterate
  (educational attainment below sixth grade)

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Widespread and endemic

• 7.3 million children in America have one or both
  parents under some form of state or federal
  supervision.
• One (1) in five (5) or 20 of the children in
  America under age 18 has a parent under state or
  federal supervision.
• Pew Charitable Trust, 2007

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Widespread and endemic

• Add to that statistic the children of prisoners
  housed in city and county jails and that figure
  rises to near 10 million children in the U.S.

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Solutions are critical

• The intergenerational cycle of crime and
  incarceration is endemic to the criminal justice
  system in America
• We must break the chain that destines children to
  prison even before they are born.

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• Most of us will never know the unique form
  of grief and shame that come from having a parent
  who is alive but unreachable.

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• But ALL of us will experience dramatic fallout
  from this societal pandemic.
• The costs to society are staggering.

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The mission

• The intergenerational cycle of crime and
  incarceration in America is feeding the system at
  such an alarming rate it can no longer be
  ignored. We must take ownership of the problem,
  wrap our minds and wills around it and move
  forward with solutions to literally save the next
  generation.

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Summary

• We must break the cycle of crime and
  incarceration that plagues the children of
  prisoners so that these children can live a life
  of hope and opportunity.
• - Governor Rick Perry, 2006

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Summary

• And so that we as a society can live safe and
  productive lives, full of hope and opportunity.
  So that our children and grandchildren will
  continue to move about free of fear and
  intimidation.
• We must be willing to own the problem and seek
  solutions.

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Mentoring works

• Big Brothers Big Sisters proved that via PPV in
  the late 90s.
• Does mentoring work as effectively with children
  of prisoners?
• Intuition says yes, but we need research to
  prove it.

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Owning a cultural crisis does not mean simply
guessing at solutions.

• GUESSING is not the answer.
• We must KNOW what does and does not work in order
  to BREAK THE CHAIN.

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EVALUATION is the key to discovering what works

• We must have the answers in order to apply the
  solutions.
• We must have the answers in order to receive the
  funding to apply the solutions.
• We must have the answers in order to recruit the
  volunteers to apply the solutions.

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The key

• This endemic societal problem is not about hit
  and miss, band-aid type, quick fixes.
• This problem requires KNOWING that a solution
  exists and taking that solution to scale.
• EVALUATION is the key. We can not successfully
  apply what we do not know.

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The skys the limit

• Research evaluation provides opportunity to take
  solutions to scale.
• Taking solutions to scale means broad cultural
  impact.
• Broad cultural impact becomes a tipping point
  for deep seated societal change.

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Its possible. Its easyAnd its fun.

• You rarely start with money.
• You start with the reality that without
  evaluation you are spinning your wheels and
  defrauding your funders and volunteers.
• You start with the deep seated realization that
  you MUST.

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• The rest takes care of itself as the pieces
  come together to provide you with the most
  valuable tools known to the human race.
• wisdom and knowledge.