Children of the Prison Boom: Mass Incarceration and the Future of American Inequality

by Sara Wakefield, Christopher Wildeman

An unrelenting prison boom, marked by stark racial disparities, pulled a disproportionate number of young black men into prison in the last forty years. In Children of the Prison Boom , Sara Wakefield and Christopher Wildeman draw upon broadly representative survey data and interviews to describe the devastating effects of America's experiment in mass incarceration on a generation of vulnerable children tied to these men. In so doing, they show that the effects of mass imprisonment may be even greater on the children left behind than on the men who were locked up.

Parental imprisonment has been transformed from an event affecting only the unluckiest of children-those with parents seriously involved in crime-to one that is remarkably common, especially for black children. This book documents how, even for children at high risk of problems, paternal incarceration makes a bad situation worse, increasing mental health and behavioral problems, infant mortality, and child homelessness. Pushing against prevailing understandings of and research on the consequences of mass incarceration for inequality among adult men, these harms to children translate into large-scale increases in racial inequalities. Parental imprisonment has become a distinctively American way of perpetuating intergenerational inequality-one that should be placed alongside a decaying public education system and concentrated disadvantage in urban centers as a factor that disproportionately touches, and disadvantages, poor black children.

More troubling, even if incarceration rates were reduced dramatically in the near future, the long-term harms of our national experiment in the mass incarceration of marginalized men are yet to be fully revealed. Optimism about current reductions in the imprisonment rate and the resilience of children must therefore be set against the backdrop of the children of the prison boom-a lost generation now coming of age.

Genres: Sociology, Psychology

250 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Ian Blais]

I picked this book up on a whim while waiting at the library. I was expecting more of a narrative type exploration of the subject of mass imprisonment but instead this turned out to be a much more clinical analysis of the topic which is probably intended to be read by other academics rather than a casual reader. Nonetheless, while it was not quite what I was expecting, it is such a fascinating and frankly disturbing topic that I simply could not put it down. I found myself stopping to Google some of the more arcane statistical terminology in order to follow the explanations and while it was a tad difficult to grasp at times I am quite glad to have stuck it out until the end. Now to the topic of the book itself. Much has been written about the deep seated societal problems that have led to the massive racial disparity in our criminal justice system, the effects on the people imprisoned and on society as a whole. This books does touch on these topics but mostly concentrates on one particular, less frequently considered consequence: The effects on the children of those we lock away. These effects can range from increased chance of mental illness or violent behaviour to child homelessness (which is horrifyingly more common than I had previously even considered) and even to an increased chance of infant mortality. Also discussed is how each of these factors does or does not increase the likelihood of imprisonment for the child later in life, thus perpetuating and reinforcing this vicious cycle of mass-incarceration. While all of this appears quite bleak, as indeed it is, the authors do end on a optimistic (if tentatively so) note. The final chapter (before the appendices and indexes which comprise roughly one third of the book. Hey, I did say it was a technical paper.) they describe some of the measures we as a society can, and must, take to begin to undo some of the damage that has been done and brush on some of the (sadly few) steps that have already been taken. If you are looking for a straightforward read on the subject you may want to look elsewhere, but for anyone who really wants to dig deep into this topic I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

[Morgan]

Pretty statistically dense but the topic was interesting and remains important even 11 years post-publication