Foreword: Children of Incarcerated Parents: Ending the Cycle of Trauma

Abstract

An estimated 94,000 children in Louisiana have a parent who has experienced jail time. Nationally, the number of children with an incarcerated parent grew from 500,000 in 1980 to 2.5 million in 2012. The incredible growth in these figures runs parallel to the growth of mass imprisonment in the United States, which has had the highest incarceration rate in the world for over a decade. Children with incarcerated parents are at high risk of a number of negative outcomes such as poverty, mental health and behavioral problems, engagement with the foster care system, homelessness, and, often, their own incarceration. Parental incarceration touches the lives of far too many individuals throughout Louisiana, including myself. Not all children with an incarcerated parent face the same outcomes, but all of us experience the trauma of an absent parent. And with that, too many children enter the cycle of incarceration.