Prisoners Once Removed: The Impact of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities (Urban Institute Press)

Imprisonment casts a long shadow in the United States. Currently, 1.4 million individuals are behind bars in America's state and federal prisons. For every person who goes to prison, there is a family and community left behind. Despite the huge number of affected families and children, there is little research on the impact of incarceration on American family life. In Prisoners Once Removed, the authors explore this important issue―from the psychological impact of imprisonment on prisoners and the difficulty of reentering free society to the challenges faced by communities who must integrate the prisoners once they return. They look at family functioning during a period of imprisonment, and how families are affected by the return of an incarcerated parent. Finally, they evaluate the current system and suggest ways to improve interaction between the corrections and health and human services to better serve the growing population of children, families, and communities. This book is vital reading for anyone who is concerned about foster care, child development, strengthening families, and post-prison adjustment.

Jeremy Travis is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, developing research and policy agendas on crime in community context, new concepts of the agencies of justice, sentencing and prisoner reentry, and international crime. He is cochair of the Reentry Roundtable, a group of nationally prominent researchers and policymakers devoted to exploring the dimensions of prisoner reentry. Before joining the Urban Institute, Mr. Travis was the director of the National Institute of Justice. He developed the concept of the reentry court, designed the Department of Justice’s reentry partnership initiative, and created the federal reentry program in President Clinton’s FY2000 budget. He has taught courses on criminal justice, public policy, history, and law at Yale College, New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University School of Law, and George Washington University. Mr. Travis has written and published extensively on constitutional law, criminal law, and criminal justice policy, including But They All Come Back: Rethinking Prisoner Reentry (National Institute of Justice, 2000).

Michelle Waul is the director of special projects at the National Center for Victims of Crime. Before joining the National Center, she was a research associate with the Urban Institute working to link the research activities of the Justice Policy Center to policy and practice arenas in the field. Ms. Waul managed the national policy conference on the impact of incarceration and reentry on children and families, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which led to this publication. She also served as project manager for the Reentry Roundtable and coauthored a policy monograph on prisoner reentry titled From Prison to Home: The Dimensions and Consequences of Prisoner Reentry (Urban Institute, 2001).