Children of the Prison Boom

Mass Incarceration and the Future of American Inequality
Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-0-19-998922-5
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 248 Seiten, Format (B × H): 145 mm x 211 mm, Gewicht: 363 g

Reihe: Studies in Crime and Public Policy

An unrelenting prison boom, marked by racial disparities, characterized the latter third of the twentieth century. Drawing upon broadly representative survey data and qualitative interviews, Children of the Prison Boom describes the devastating effects of America's experiment in mass incarceration for a generation of vulnerable children.

Parental imprisonment has transformed from an event affecting only the unluckiest of children-children of parents whose involvement in crime would have been quite serious-to one that is remarkably common, especially for black children. Even for high-risk youth, Children of the Prison Boom shows that paternal incarceration makes a bad situation worse, increasing mental health and behavioral problems, infant mortality, and child homelessness. These findings have broad implications for
social inequality. Contrary to a great deal of research on the consequences of mass incarceration for inequality among adult men, these harms to children translate into large-scale increases in racial inequalities at the aggregate level. Parental imprisonment has become a distinctively American force for
promoting intergenerational social inequality that should be placed alongside a decaying urban public school system and highly concentrated disadvantaged populations in urban centers as factors that distinctively touch-and disadvantage-poor black children.

More troubling, even if incarceration rates were reduced dramatically in the near future, the long-term harms of incarcerating marginalized men have yet to be fully revealed. Optimism about current reductions in the imprisonment rate and the resilience of children must therefore be set against the backdrop of the children of the prison boom-a lost generation now coming of age.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wakefield, Sara

Wildeman, Christopher

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Sozialpsychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Altersgruppen Kinder- und Jugendsoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziale Ungleichheit, Armut, Rassismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Sozialethnologie: Familie, Gender, Soziale Gruppen
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Entwicklungspsychologie Kinder- und Jugendpsychologie

Über Autor(innen)

Sara Wakefield is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University.
Christopher Wildeman is Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University.