They have done no wrong, committed no crimes, yet thousands of children in Louisiana are being punished for their parents’ mistakes.
They are the hidden casualties of the state’s world-leading mass incarceration rate, and beginning Monday, The Times-Picayune will explore the damage done to children when a parent is sent to prison.
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The Times-Picayune
The multi-part series, Family Sentence, exposes the ways the criminal justice system is failing families: How law enforcement and the courts don’t always recognize that the people they arrest, prosecute and sentence are more than just suspects: often they are mothers and fathers. And their imprisonment will affect children, households and entire communities.
The series will show how parents charged with nonviolent offenses are held for months — sometimes years — as they await trial simply because they are too poor to pay bail and how this practice can leave children teetering on the edge of homelessness or falling into the foster care system.
It will detail how keeping some children connected to their incarcerated parents can break the cycle of recidivism. And yet families encounter significant obstacles along the way: from long and expensive trips across Louisiana to a jail telephone system that charges low-income families up to 10 times the average rate while generating millions of dollars for sheriffs and correctional facilities.
The reporting also will look at solutions being tried in other cities and states. California, Washington and Oregon have alternative sentencing laws that allow parents to serve their time at home if convicted of nonviolent offenses, while Oklahoma has established a government agency focused on the issue of parental incarceration.
There are an estimated 5.1 million, or 1 in 14, children in the United States who at one point in their lives have had to cope with having a parent in jail. In Louisiana, their numbers top 94,000, about 8 percent of the state’s youth population. And that is a conservative estimate as it doesn’t include children whose parents are imprisoned but didn’t live with them prior to their incarceration.
The government’s and community’s failure to create support systems for these children means that many are not raised, they are left to grow up on their own. And that perpetuates the cycle of poverty and crime.
Accepting that people are going to break the law, public officials must face the challenge of protecting the families and children harmed by the process, 4th Circuit Court of Appeal Judge Madeline Landrieu said.
“These kids are lost to us and the system says, ‘We can’t do anything about it.’ And I want to say, ‘It’s our responsibility to do something about it,'” Landrieu said. “These are our kids, and these kids are growing up to become adults, and society depends on healthy adults for it to function. You have to have more healthy adults than unhealthy adults. You have to have more un-incarcerated people than incarcerated people.”
Today:
- Ciarra’s father never showed up to get her from school one day. She learned two days later he had been arrested for selling drugs. Now 17, Ciarra’s life hangs in the balance. The anger and guilt she feels over her dad’s imprisonment threatens her dream of her father watching her graduate from college.
- Alvin, 22, lost his mom when he was 4. That same year, he lost his dad to a 15-year prison sentence. Alvin appeared poised to turn his talents on the football field into a college scholarship, when tragedy struck again.
Coming Monday:
- Corey Ladd was sentenced to 17 years for drug possession. His ailing parents are caring for his 4-year-old daughter Charlee whose only contact with her father has been during prison visits. A look at the cash bail system, pretrial detention and the habitual offender statute.
- Two months after Sharika, 20, was born, her mother went to prison. In the years that followed, she has faced nearly every worst-case scenario for a child of an incarcerated parent, from living with an abusive relative to spending time in a psychiatric facility, the foster system and a New Orleans youth shelter.
Tuesday:
- Child welfare experts say in-person visits play a crucial role in shielding children from the emotional and physical toll of their parents’ imprisonment and helps to reduce recidivism. Prison visits, however, can be long and expensive journeys made nearly impossible for those without a vehicle. And for families of inmates inside one of the state’s largest jails, the Orleans Justice Center, in-person visits have been eliminated.
- Corinna’s father supported the family by selling drugs. When he was sent to prison, her family was thrust into poverty. Corinna, 37, graduated from college and tried to reconnect with her father after his release from prison and until his death. But she remembers thinking about how his passing was just the final step in what had been a long path of losing her father.
Wednesday:
- Phone calls are often the only way children can maintain regular contact with an incarcerated parent. And yet staying connected comes at a hefty price. Louisiana families spend millions every year on phone calls to prisons and parish jails, money split between telephone service providers and correctional facility operators.
- Sibil Richardson’s husband was sentenced to 60 years in prison after a botched bank robbery in north Louisiana. She fights to not let incarceration define her family, but realizes the couple’s six children are losing the opportunity to grow up with their father.
Thursday:
- Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the world, tearing at thousands of families across the state. And yet there is no government initiative on a state or a local level specifically designed to help the children of incarcerated parents. Several cities and states, meanwhile, have focused on breaking the “generational curse” of parental incarceration by targeting it through criminal justice changes and through the creation of a safety net of easily accessible support services.
- Inmates at the Louisiana Penitentiary at Angola and the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women participate in parenting classes to learn how to preserve relationships with their children and teach their sons and daughters to avoid following in their footsteps.
- Shania’s mother has been in and out of jail since shortly after Shania was born. Her mom’s crimes left Shania, 18, in the care of an abusive relative. She turned to drugs to dull the pain, and ended up behind bars. After the birth of her daughter, she vowed to break her family’s cycle of imprisonment.
Friday:
- Facebook Live: Tim Morris, editor of the Family Sentence series, sits down with reporters Richard A. Webster and Jonathan Bullington to discuss their reporting and to answer questions from readers.