An Invisible Prison

Invisible Men

For African American men without a high school diploma, being in prison or jail is more common than being employed—a sobering reality that calls into question post-Civil Rights era social gains. Nearly 70 percent of young black men will be imprisoned at some point in their lives, and poor black men with low levels of education make up a disproportionate share of incarcerated Americans. In Invisible Men, sociologist Becky Pettit demonstrates another vexing fact of mass incarceration: most national surveys do not account for prison inmates, a fact that results in a misrepresentation of U.S. political, economic, and social conditions in general and black progress in particular. Invisible Men provides an eye-opening examination of how mass incarceration has concealed decades of racial inequality. Pettit marshals a wealth of evidence correlating the explosion in prison growth with the disappearance of millions of black men into the American penal system. She shows that, because prison inmates are not included in most survey data, statistics that seemed to indicate a narrowing black-white racial gap—on educational attainment, work force participation, and earnings—instead fail to capture persistent racial, economic, and social disadvantage among African Americans. Federal statistical agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau, collect surprisingly little information about the incarcerated, and inmates are not included in household samples in national surveys. As a result, these men are invisible to most mainstream social institutions, lawmakers, and nearly all social science research that isn't directly related to crime or criminal justice. Since merely being counted poses such a challenge, inmates' lives—including their family background, the communities they come from, or what happens to them after incarceration—are even more rarely examined. And since correctional budgets provide primarily for housing and monitoring inmates, with little left over for job training or rehabilitation, a large population of young men are not only invisible to society while in prison but also ill-equipped to participate upon release. Invisible Men provides a vital reality check for social researchers, lawmakers, and anyone who cares about racial equality. The book shows that more than a half century after the first civil rights legislation, the dismal fact of mass incarceration inflicts widespread and enduring damage by undermining the fair allocation of public resources and political representation, by depriving the children of inmates of their parents' economic and emotional participation, and, ultimately, by concealing African American disadvantage from public view.

Contemporary Research and Analysis on the Children of Prisoners

In March 2017, researchers, advocates and NGOs from twelve countries came together in Rotorua, New Zealand, for the first conference of the International Coalition for the children of incarcerated parents. The Coalition had been formed the previous year to recognise that similar issues faced the children of prisoners all over the world. From the first arrest until release from prison, the system is stacked against the child. Justice systems are all about punishing individuals, and are, as one conference speaker noted, â ~child blindâ (TM). The papers in this collection cover many of the themes in the wider literature on the children of prisoners. Advocacy themes include moving towards child-friendly prison systems, using mass incarceration to influence wider social change, the effects of pre-trial detention on families, the particular issues in Hawaii, and how arrest and detention procedures harm children. A set of papers reflect contemporary research and analysis on the children of prisoners. One paper sets out â ~12 guiding principlesâ (TM) for working with children and families of the incarcerated. Others look at how babies and young children react to parental imprisonment, as well as children who are resilient in the face of it. Two papers consider women: one on mothers involuntarily committed to psychiatric hospital and the other examining the difficulties in maintaining family ties when a mother is sent to prison. Another contribution looks at an initiative between university and community set up to â ~expand knowledge and inspire changeâ (TM) for the children of prisoners. One paper examines the difficult issue of supporting families where a parent has been convicted of a sexual offence. Also discussed in this volume are the Tyro programme that works to break the cycles of self-destruction for the children of prisoners and case studies of prison staff â ~making a differenceâ (TM) in child and family visiting.

Invisible Women