Overview
As mass incarceration has grown over the last several decades, more and more people want to know how children and families of the incarcerated are affected by a family member’s imprisonment. Some of the important questions they are interested in include:
- What kind of effect does parental incarceration have on children, whether behaviorally, academically or psychologically?
- How does contact between incarcerated individuals and their family members affect them?
- What are the best practices in responding to parental incarceration?
A great deal of information based on research conducted by people from a number of different disciplines is available from sources that include online publications, government reports, non-profit organizations that conduct research and academic journals that publish research studies. Nevertheless, much remains to be learned about families and incarceration and new studies appear regularly. This section of the website seeks to broaden access to what is known from research by providing:
- links to on-line research reports that are intended for a general audience;
- a list of selected references by topic; and
- periodic summaries of new studies in non-technical language.
The Published Research is in six categories: Children, Families, Mothers, Fathers, Program and Policy Descriptions and Evaluations, and Research Reports and Reviews.