There is no single story that describes what it is like for a child to have a parent who is incarcerated. The experience depends on diverse factors, including the quality of the parent-child relationship prior to incarceration, the degree of household stability following the incarceration, and the child’s age, individual personality and others.
That being said some International human rights advocates have called parental incarceration "the greatest threat to child well-being in the US. As of today, 1 in 28 children in the United States have a parent behind bars. For African American children, that number is 1 in 9. The average term being served by incarcerated parents is 80 months.
Each year the number of children with incarcerated parents continue to grow as a result of the record prison population in the United States. On this edition of Inside Out we talk to Shaquille Mualimm-ak, from incarceratednationcampaign.org about his experience coping with having a parent behind bars. We also sit down for an in-depth conversation with Author and Professor Alan Singer & talk about the causes and effects of having a parent incarcerated.
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