Incarcerated Parent Research Paper

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The Lingering Collateral Effects for the Adult Child of an Incarcerated Parent
According to Harris, Graham & Carpenter (2010), the United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Political and legal developments are the response to the “war on drugs” that have created harsh drug laws and mass incarceration (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008). The past thirty years has produced a 500 percent increase in incarceration, and women being incarcerated at rates comparable to men (Radosh, 2008), equating to approximately 2.3 million people being incarcerated (Harris, Graham & Carpenter, 2010). As a result, approximately, 74 million children have a parent that is incarcerated (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008). Nearly 80 percent of incarcerated mothers
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“Although the family breakdown was not the immediate cause of the American prison boom, mass incarceration had a potentially profound effect on the family life of those caught in the web of the criminal justice system.” (Wildman, 2009, pg. 222). The effects of incarceration are wide spread and most notably are negatively affecting the family system of those incarcerated.
Empirical research discovered children are vulnerable to a number of risks due specifically to parental separation and the interrupted child development (Arditti, Lambert-Shute, & Joest, 2003; Gabel, 1992; Johnston, 1995; Thompson, 2008). Several factors impact the children, including but not limited to, the age of child when the parent is incarcerated, type of contact with parent during incarceration and temporary caregiver(s), (Western & Wilderman, 2009).
The children are susceptible to negative social and academic outcomes, compounded, when children process the separation by adopting attitudes and displaying behavior problems, substance abuse, adult offending and incarceration, truancy, and or school failure (Murray, Farrington, Sekol, & Olsen, (2009). Negative emotional consequences include: fear, guilt, shame, anxiety, embarrassment, depression, and abandonment (Arditti, 2001,Forooeddin, Dadkhah, & Binglarian,