In Pakistan, there are 7,000 children in 70 jails. From observations on why children commit crime, the author offers that the core cause is poverty; 99 per cent of young prisoners belong to deprived sections of society. They do not have access to education; living in prison is difficult; the degrading and harsh treatment adversely affects the…

Thirty-five in-depth, face-to-face interviews were carried out with sentenced male prisoners shortly before their release from prison. All but two of them had been incarcerated on at least one prior occasion, and had served an average of five previous prison sentences. A quarter of them had been flagged by the prison staff as being at risk for…

The present study contrasted the parenting stress and adjustment patterns of 100 mothers and 111 fathers incarcerated in one of 11 U.S. prisons. In comparison to inmate mothers, fathers had less contact with children, higher levels of parenting stress, and poorer alliance with caregivers. For inmate mothers, higher levels of contact with…

We investigated the reported parenting practices of fifty incarcerated African American fathers. Fathers were interviewed using hypothetical vignettes adapted from the Parenting Dimensions Inventory (PDI) and received scores on two parenting practices: responsive and restrictive. Father's individual level (education and length of time spent…

Although the number of girls served by the juvenile justice system has grown dramatically, little is known about the adult offending patterns of delinquent girls and the factors associated with their persistence and desistance from adult crime. To address this gap, we prospectively track 499 girls (62% Black, 16% Hispanic) discharged from juvenile…

The authors use data from the 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey to examine the association between incarceration and living arrangements, net of a range of sociodemographic and early life characteristics. Relative to living with a spouse and child(ren), there is evidence that a history of incarceration is strongly associated with…

This interview with Pancho Gonzales and Herbert Smith tells of their experiences in the California Youth Authority. (PD)

For the nearly 2 million children in the United States whose parents are in prison, caretaking necessary for optimal development is disrupted. These vulnerable youth--a population that has shot up 80 percent in the last 20 years--are more likely to experience learning difficulties, poor health, and substance abuse, and eventually be incarcerated…

Left out of the conversation for education reform, at least on the level of grade school, secondary school, and college are the adult education programs provided across the country. These programs receive a fraction of the funds and respect as mainstream programs do. However, they are sorely needed in Northwest Indiana. The region's early 21st…

Children with incarcerated mothers are at high risk for developing problem behaviors. Fifty children (6-12 years; 62% girls) participated in summer camps, along with adult mentors. Regression analyses of child and adult measures of child's emotion self-regulation and callous-unemotional traits, and a child measure of moral emotions, showed that…

Research indicates that female offenders are far more likely to have experienced intimate partner violence than women in the general population. Despite extensive research on women's pathways into offending, very little is known about why these women are at increased risk for partner violence. The authors use data from a sample of incarcerated…

Since slavery, attempted enclosures upon Black spaces of cultural production and autonomy (i.e. music, language, art) have manifested in various forms. In the context of the post-industrial terrain of urban southern California, the formation of the prison is the dominant model of forced enclosure in the lives of Black people. Moving beyond the…

Approximately 1.7 million children have parents who are incarcerated in prison in the United States, and possibly millions of additional children have a parent incarcerated in jail. Many affected children experience increased risk for developing behavior problems, academic failure, and substance abuse. For a growing number of children,…

Recent work suggests that offenders rate several alternatives as more severe than imprisonment. We build on this literature by comparing punishment exchange rates generated by criminal court judges with rates generated by offenders and their supervising officers. Findings reveal that none of the three groups rates prison as the most severe…

The number of children who experience parental incarceration continues to rise with the United States. In 1999, an estimated 1.5 million minor children had a parent in a United States prison. One-fifth of these children are under 5 years of age (Mumola, Incarcerated parents and their children, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, 2000). A…