Children of Incarcerated Parents: A Handbook for Researchers and Practitioners

For the nearly 2 million children in the United States whose parents are in prison, caretaking necessary for optimal development is disrupted. These vulnerable youth--a population that has shot up 80 percent in the last 20 years--are more likely to experience learning difficulties, poor health, and substance abuse, and eventually be incarcerated themselves. Addressing the needs of children with imprisoned parents is urgent from corrections, child welfare, health care, and education perspectives. Children of Incarcerated Parents integrates a diverse literature, pulling together rigorous scholarship from criminology, sociology, law, psychiatry, social work, nursing, psychology, human development, and family studies. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers will find in this volume new directions for research and policies that will improve these children's life chances.

J. Mark Eddy is a senior scientist and licensed psychologist at the nonprofit Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene. His work focuses on the development of research-based interventions designed to prevent childhood conduct disorder and related problem behaviors. He is the principal investigator on several long-term randomized controlled trials of interventions conducted within the juvenile justice, criminal justice, and school systems. For the past 10 years, Dr. Eddy has worked closely with the Oregon Department of Corrections and nonprofit service delivery agencies on the design and testing of a multisystemic parenting program for incarcerated fathers and mothers and their children and families. Julie Poehlmann is a professor of human development and family studies in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, an investigator at the Waisman Center, and a licensed psychologist in Wisconsin and New York. Her research focuses on the role of family relationships in the development of resilience in high-risk infants and young children. Dr. Poehlmann’s research focusing on children of incarcerated parents has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Through numerous publications in psychological, developmental, and family journals and mentoring of new scholars, she has brought attention to the issue of parental incarceration.