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Demographic Group of Children more Affected by Incarcerated Parents

Although there are a large number of children with incarcerated parents, there is an unequal number of incarcerated parents for certain demographic groups. Children of color are more likely than their white counterparts to have a parent in jail. More specifically, while only 4% of white children experience a parent being incarcerated before their 14th birthday, 25% of African American children would have faced a parent being incarcerated before their 14th birthday. So not only do developing adolescents have to go through a parent being put in jail, but a larger percentage of African American children have to experience this when compared to white children. This would also translate to the effects of parental incarceration (described in section "Children of incarcerated parents) being more apparent in primarily African American neighborhoods. This disparity is even more apparent when looking at the race percentages amongst parents in prison. It was found that in state prisons, 47% of the parent population are African American, 19% are Hispanic, and 29% are white/non-Hispanic. In federal prisons, it was found that 49% of parents were African American, 30% were Hispanic, and 22% were white/non-Hispanic. Again, it is seen that children of color are more likely to have experiences with a parent being incarcerated.

Parent Child Contact Programs

To mitigate the impacts of having a parent being incarcerated, various programs have been implemented to help promote parent and child contact between incarcerated parents and their children. Some of these programs include:

1. Living Interactive Family Education (LIFE) Program. This program aims to reduce feelings of abandonment, anger, and sadness, of children with incarcerated parents in order to help prevent mental and behavioral disorders that often arise in kids with incarcerated parents. This program is directly aimed at fostering and maintaining relationships between incarcerated fathers and their children. During the program running hours, fathers and their kids participate in four hours of activities based on youth and family development curricula. This program also provides monthly parenting classes for participating fathers.
2. Parenting Program at Nebraska Correctional Center for Women.This program includes a nursery program that allows incarcerated mothers to keep their babies close to them and raise them for up to when the babies reach 18 months of age. There is also child development courses for mothers and overnight and day child visitations are offered.
3. Reading Family Ties: Face to Face. This program has two locations in Florida. In this program mothers are taken to a room with video cameras and computers where they can videocall their kids and read a story to them. Kids are provided free transportation to reading sites.
4. Mothers/Men Inside Loving Kids (M.I.L.K.) Program. This program included classes, for both fathers and mothers, on child development, parent education, and independent living skills classes. The program includes transportation and food for visits between child and parent which can sometimes last up to 4-6 days.