Delinquency

A screenshot from a Sesame Street special on kids with incarcerated parents.
A screenshot from a Sesame Street special on kids with incarcerated parents.

Nearly 2.7 million American children have to cope with the incarceration of one or both of their parents, according to 2010 data from the Pew Charitable Trusts. A growing body of research informs concerned policymakers by showing the extraordinary challenges these children face compared to those whose parents are never imprisoned. Family disruption, economic losses, and greater exposure to crime, abuse, and violence – all can serve to reinforce disadvantages from one generation to the next for these unfortunate children. Because fathers are more often incarcerated than mothers, most research to date has focused on their children. But more remains to be learned to inform policymakers trying to address the special needs of children whose mothers – and perhaps both parents – end up in jail or prison.

My co-author Sherry Zhang and I have compared the experiences in childhood and young adulthood of boys and girls who experienced one of four scenarios before their 18th birthdays – neither parent ever incarcerated; mother incarcerated; father incarcerated; or both parents incarcerated. This research allows us to describe similar and different childhood experiences in these four types of situations. We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health – called “Add Health.” Of the children in this data who had the experience of a parent sent to prison, just over 80% endured paternal incarceration, while 12% experienced maternal incarceration and 7% had both parents sent to prison. Our findings reveal many similarities among sets of young people with one or both parents imprisoned, but some differences also underline the special needs of children with imprisoned mothers.

Differences in Family Situations

The structure of a child’s family patterns much of what he or she experiences when a parent is imprisoned. As shown in previous research, prior to incarceration women are more likely than men to report that they lived with their children. Understandably, therefore, the vast majority of children with incarcerated fathers continue to live with their mothers, while children with incarcerated mothers are more likely to reside with other family members like grandparents. Our findings using data from Add Health suggest that these differences are likely more than temporary arrangements caused by a parent’s imprisonment.

  • Although almost all adolescents with fathers in prison during their childhood years were living with mothers (80%) or with either biological parent (92%), far fewer children of imprisoned mothers were living with their mothers (54%) or with either biological parent (71%). And just small proportions of those who resided with biological parents lived with both – in sharp contrast to the vast majority of adolescents whose parents were never incarcerated.
  • Other caregivers – such as fathers, grandparents, aunts, and unrelated adults – play a more prominent role for children of incarcerated mothers than for those with imprisoned fathers. In the maternal incarceration group, 17% reported living with their father but not their mother (compared to 6% in the paternal incarceration group and 5% in the group where neither parent went to prison). In comparison to adolescents whose fathers were incarcerated during their childhood, those whose mothers were sent to jail or prison are almost three times more likely to report living with their father but not their mother, four times more likely to report living with someone other than a parent, ten times more likely to report living with a grandparent or aunt, and 13 times more likely to be living with an adoptive or foster mother.
  • Differences in family structure linger into adulthood. Although 88% of adolescents whose fathers went to jail or prison name their biological mother as the person who raised them, only 54% of those whose mothers were incarcerated name her as the one who raised them, while 36% point to other family members. However, in our data, neither maternal nor paternal incarceration is associated with the family structures formed by offspring in young adulthood.

Similar Experiences of Economic Hardship, Abuse, and Crime

Compared to those whose parents never went to jail or prison, individuals whose parents were incarcerated are more likely to report that they experienced economic hardship and exposure to abuse, crime, and violence during their childhoods. Tellingly, these adverse experiences are largely comparable for children with either mothers or fathers in jail or prison.

  • Adolescents whose parents were ever incarcerated lived as children in households with average incomes below $33,000 – and over one quarter of these household had trouble paying bills and two-thirds received public assistance. Reported economic hardships were greater than for households where neither parent went to jail or prison, but for households with incarcerated parents it made little difference whether the mother or father was the one imprisoned. By young adulthood, those with one or both parents incarcerated during their childhood reported more hardship and lower educational attainment, but again it made little difference whether the mother or father had gone to prison. Our data suggest that previous research findings about the adverse effects of paternal incarceration can be generalized to maternal incarceration as well.
  • Compared to those without imprisoned parents, nearly twice as many respondents who had a parent imprisoned (35% versus 17%) reported childhood physical abuse, exposure to violence in their neighborhoods or homes, and participation in incidents of delinquency – but once again, there were no significant differences between paternal and maternal incarceration.

Taken together, these findings have important implications for future research and policy development. Most basically, similarities in the experiences of offspring of incarcerated mothers and fathers suggest that interventions already designed to deal with economic hardships and exposures to abuse, crime, and violence for children of imprisoned fathers can be adapted for those with any imprisoned parents. However, we have also learned that persistent differences in family structure – before, during, and after parental incarceration – could affect access to services, especially for children whose mothers go to prison. Even if appropriate services are available, grandparents or biological fathers who step into parenting roles may not know about them or may feel out of place in asking for help. Steps should be taken to ensure that children of imprisoned mothers do not experience extra disruption and family instability.

Are children and adolescents who break the law fated to become lifelong offenders? To answer this important question, we started in the 1980s to track the lives of 1000 disadvantaged males born in Boston during the Great Depression era. We were able to build on data collected during offenders’ boyhoods for a classic mid-twentieth-century study, Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency, conducted by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck at Harvard Law School. We used early waves of data from this study, and then tracked down males included in it to collect further information on their histories of criminal offending through old age. Over the last 25 years, we have used this rich, long-term trove of information for two books and dozens of journal articles and chapters. This brief summarizes our core ideas and major findings.

The Importance of Tracking and Explaining Lives

The idea that adult criminality is the inexorable result of childhood traits and troubles is a dominant theme in the science of criminology and media coverage of crime. Connections between childhood and adult behavior certainly do exist, but our research has been premised on the realization that findings about crime can be distorted when scholars start with adult offenders and then ask about their childhoods. In this retrospective approach, adult criminals regularly turn out to have been troubled children with early histories of delinquency. It is easy to jump to the simple, seductive conclusion that “bad boys grow up to become bad men.”

But if we start with children and follow lives forward for many years, we find considerable heterogeneity in adult outcomes. For example, although it is easy to presume that most antisocial children will become involved in delinquency as adolescents and then graduate to adult offending, in fact most antisocial children cease offending by adulthood. Although long-term research is challenging to carry out, only what scholars call “longitudinal prospective data”—that is, information repeatedly collected as particular children become adolescents and then younger and older adults—can allow researchers to shed full light on complex causal processes playing out over many years in people’s lives. Yet even repeatedly collected data are not sufficient. Also needed is a life-course theory of crime to make sense of the underlying patterns. more...

Empathy refers to a person’s ability to understand the emotions of others and share in their feelings. Researchers in many fields have shown that empathy – or its absence – matters greatly in many aspects of social life. For example, empathetic people are more likely to have strong ties to family members and others with whom they regularly work or interact. And individuals capable of empathy have higher self-esteem and enjoy life more fully. The flip side is also true: people who have trouble empathizing with others tend to suffer from poorer mental health and have less fulfilling social relationships.

Researchers are showing that empathy also matters in crime and punishment, and recent findings suggest important steps that can be taken to reduce juvenile delinquency and improve relationships between communities and police. more...