In recent years’, widespread shifts in policing, prosecution, and criminal justice policy at the local, state, and federal levels have fueled growth in incarceration. (Sykes & Pettit, 2014, p. 128). Incarceration removes individuals from households, placing them in institutions that limit their potential to establish or maintain meaningful relationships with their partners and/or children. (Sykes & Pettit, 2014, p. 129). As a consequence, on any given day, more than 2.6 million children, in countries such as the United States, have a parent in prison or jail, and far more have had a parent incarcerated at some point during their childhood (Wildeman, 2009 as cited by Sykes & Pettit, 2014, p. 128).
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(Glaze, 2011 as cited by Turney, 2015, p. 480). Given the family roles inhabited by current and former incarcerated individuals, the majority of whom are men, it is foreseeable that mass incarceration has wide-ranging collateral consequences for family life. (Wakefield & Uggen, 2010, as cited by Turney, 2015, p.480). By removing a spouse from a household it can create immeasurable financial, social and emotional stress on their significant other, and in addition to the restricted communication and time they are able to have together (see Turney, 2015 for references) it is no surprise that recent studies have suggested that incarceration dramatically increases the odds of divorce. (Apel et al., 2010 as cited by Siennick et al., 2014, p. …show more content…
Although research suggests several mechanisms through which parental incarceration may influence children’s development, empirical evidence on the developmental effects of paternal incarceration is limited. (Geller et al., 2012, p.52). There is an inherent risk of attrition, recall error, and underreporting, as well as challenges in identifying when respondents or their family members were incarcerated, for how long, or for what offenses. (Groves, 2014 as cited by Geller et al., 2016, p. 23). It is important to be aware that the incarcerated population is overwhelmingly young, and poorly educated, and their children face substantial challenges even in the absence of incarceration. (Petersilia, 2003 as cited by Geller et al., 2012,