When I was ten years old my father, a lawyer, was incarcerated. He was what some people call a "white collar criminal" and spent two years in prison. Because I come from a loving family and because my family had other supports and privileges (i.e. we were white and middle class in a community that rewarded both), my siblings and I fared well despite of my father's incarceration. And so for a long time, decades, really, I didn't discuss my father's history. I didn't know anyone else who had had an incarcerated parent; I was in a world (the university) where nobody really discussed it; and my siblings and I had moved on. Yet, I was always aware and conscious of the plight of families and communities where incarceration was most profoundly felt. At a certain point I realized that I had to be part of the solution – or at least I owed it to others to use the knowledge I had to try to move the conversation forward. So, my co-editor and I researched and wrote Parental Incarceration: Personal Accounts and Developmental Impact.

Most of the literature to date suggests that parental incarceration can affect everything from how a child lives and behaves to how he is educated and whether or not he will someday become involved in criminal activity. Yet for various reasons, much of this literature is incomplete and under-analyzed; therefore, it does not provide an accurate picture of the impact of incarceration on families and communities.

Approximately 1.7 million children currently have a parent in prison or jail in the United States. Between 1991 and 2007 there was an 79% increase in the number of children whose parents were incarcerated.

To continue reading this article by Megan Sullivan, go to: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-p...cerated-parents.html