Guest Commentary: Children Suffer When Parents Are Imprisoned

By Erica Bryant

Imprisoning parents hurts children. It increases children’s likelihood of special education placement, being held back in school, or dropping out entirely. It also increases their likelihood of homelessness, developing substance use disorders, and becoming involved in the criminal legal system themselves. Yet, the United States continues to unnecessarily separate millions of children from their parents through incarceration—even though better options exist.

“Those kids are missing and lacking so much,” said Dunasha Payne. Her daughter was two years old when Payne went to prison, and she spent seven years passing through barbed wire gates for visits that were always too short. “When she would see me, it would be all tears, all the time. She had so much pent-up emotion that she couldn’t express…. Not only is their family member incarcerated; the family is incarcerated too.”

The United States spends a staggering $80 billion a year incarcerating people, often in dehumanizing conditions. This does not make us safer and, in fact, is sowing seeds of harm into future generations. To promote true public health and safety, we need to free more people and address the root causes of criminal legal system contact, instead of reacting to crime after it happens. Rather than falling back on the status quo, lawmakers have the power to lower jail and prison populations by directing resources into schooling, health care, housing, jobs programs, and other alternatives to incarceration that will ultimately help communities heal and thrive. Services like community-based housing programs that provide mental health services and restorative justice programs repair rather than punish.

Mass imprisonment of mothers is a relatively recent phenomenon. In 1970, nearly 75 percent of counties in the United States held not a single woman in jail. But by 2014, the number of women in jail had increased 14-fold. More than half of the women incarcerated in state and federal prison are mothers to minor children. Data is limited on the numbers of mothers in U.S. jails who have minor children, but studies suggest that more than 75 percent of jailed women in the United States have children under 18. And on top of that, an estimated 55,000 pregnant people are admitted into jails in the United States each year.

Most people in jail have not even been convicted of a crime, they simply can’t afford to buy their freedom and pay bail. And unaffordable bail can be particularly catastrophic for single parents without family support, whose children may be forced to enter foster care if their parent is faced with a lengthy pretrial detention. It also puts pressure on parents to plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit just so they can get back to their families quicker.

Women in the criminal legal system disproportionately are people of color, survivors of trauma, experience poverty, and have high rates of physical and mental illness and substance use. In many cases, women who could benefit from assistance—due to poverty, mental health, or substance use—end up behind bars instead of being able to access the resources they need.

An estimated 2.7 million children have a parent who is incarcerated, with children of color and children experiencing poverty being more likely to have parents targeted for criminalization, harsher charges, and longer sentences. Children’s relationships with incarcerated parents especially suffered during the pandemic, when visitation was suspended—many children were unable to see or hug their parents for a year or more.

While Payne was separated from her daughter, she got a journal and wrote in it every day. “I would tell her that I was thinking about her all the time,” she said. “You can leave spots in the book for the child to draw in. Even if you don’t get to see your child, you can definitely write to your child. It helped me a great deal, journaling to [my daughter].”

Each year, as Mother’s Day approaches, people raise money to bail out mothers who can’t afford to buy their freedom and pay for buses to bring children to visit their mothers in faraway prisons. Tears come to Payne’s eyes when she thinks of the mothers who will be spending this Mother’s Day behind bars, and the children who won’t get to see their mothers. “It is so sad in prison around this time,” she said. “Around all holidays, but Mother’s Day especially.”

Now that she’s home, Payne says that she and her daughter are rebuilding their relationship day by day. She hopes that communities will find ways to support parents and children who are separated by incarceration and that, in the future, fewer families will suffer the separation that hers did.

“I want people to show grace for folks who are incarcerated and for folks who are coming home and trying to transition,” she said. “Have some patience and give as much support as you can. You can write someone or send a card or do work in the community to help people who are coming home. Just be supportive the best way you can.”

It’s clear that the unjust system of mass incarceration has inflicted unnecessary harm on Payne, her daughter, and countless other families like theirs—and it needs to be dismantled, once and for all. Proactive investments in schooling, jobs, heath care, and housing are what families and communities actually need in order to stay safe. It’s time we make them.

Erica Bryant is Associate Director of Writing for Vera Institute of Justice.  Originally published by Vera Institute of Justice.

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7 comments

  1. “It’s clear that the unjust system of mass incarceration has inflicted unnecessary harm on Payne, her daughter, and countless other families like theirs—and it needs to be dismantled, once and for all.”

    Is this the same Dunasha Payne who murdered her boyfriend Kaman Drummond in 2013?  If so how about the harm and pain she inflicted on him?

    21-year-old Hofstra student Dunasha 

    Payne admitted in court today that she killed her boyfriend Kaman Drummond, 26, with her car in April.

    She was hell on wheels.

    A Queens woman admitted she slammed her car into her boyfriend, killing him in a jealous rage, as she tearfully pleaded guilty on Wednesday.
    Through sobs, Dunasha Payne told Queens Supreme Court Justice Gregory Lasak that she “intended” to hit Kaman Drummond with her 1994 Honda Accord on April 15 to “hurt him badly.”
    Payne, 22, and Drummond, 26, got into a verbal spat about an ex-girlfriend which spilled onto the streets of Queens Village. She jumped into her car and drove after Drummond as he tried to run away.
    “I hit him with my car…I hit him into the side of a house,”
    https://nypost.com/2013/04/17/jealous-gal-runs-down-boyfriend-with-car-kills-him-cops/

    1. I have no idea and it’s not really the point of the piece.

      The issue here is the impact of incarceration on children, and there is a lot of research here: “ Children with an incarcerated parent suffer lasting effects on their well-being. They face increased risks of psychological and behavioral problems, insufficient sleep and poor nutrition, unstable homes, and higher odds of entering the criminal justice system themselves.”

      From EIJ: “Family members of incarcerated individuals are often referred to as “hidden victims” — victims of the criminal justice system who are neither acknowledged nor given a platform to be heard. These hidden victims receive little personal support and do not benefit from the systemic societal mechanisms generally available to direct crime victims, despite their prevalence and their similarities to direct crime victims.

      “Children whose parents are involved in the criminal justice system, in particular, face a host of challenges and difficulties: psychological strain, antisocial behavior, suspension or expulsion from school, economic hardship, and criminal activity. It is difficult to predict how a child will fare when a parent is intermittently or continually incarcerated, and research findings on these children’s risk factors are mixed.”

      1. Then don’t commit murder or other terrible crimes when you have children because it’s going to adversely effect them when you have to go to jail.

        The article writes “It’s clear that the unjust system of mass incarceration has inflicted unnecessary harm on Payne”, so here we are once again more worried about the criminal than the person who was murdered.

        Sorry, but I can’t have too much compassion for Dunasha Payne in this instance, if she is indeed the same person who killed Kaman Drummond.

        1. “Then don’t commit murder or other terrible crimes when you have children because it’s going to adversely effect them when you have to go to jail.”

          Given what we know from data, how is that a helpful response?

          If your sole purpose is to punish people for committing crimes, you might be able to justify the current system (maybe – but that’ll take us off track).

          However, if you’re goal is public safety, then how does it help if you end up “higher odds of entering the criminal justice system themselves” – you’re basically an intergenerational creating a cycle of incarceration. The current system perpetuates this cycle and in so doing, makes us less safe.

        2. You think there’s some made up La La Land where people can kill and commit other heinous crimes and somehow they will be better people if as a society we just don’t punish them.

          Sorry, but I live in reality where if one commits a crime they deserve punishment and if you take away the threat of punishment it will only lead to more crimes.

          1. I said nothing of the sort, only that the current system doesn’t work.

  2. Seems like we have an article here which suggests that those headed for prison shouldn’t be having kids in the first place. 

    In other words, it’s bad enough that the parents are creating problems for others, let alone setting-up their own kids to follow them in those same footsteps. There’s your “systemic” (and entirely predictable) problem.

    For once, I agree with the Vanguard.  🙂

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