Prisoners Once Removed Probes "Indescribable Burden" of Imprisonment and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities

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Prisoners Once Removed: The Impact of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities, a new Urban Institute Press book edited by Jeremy Travis and Michelle Waul, documents the consequences of imprisonment for individual prisoners, their families, and the communities to which these prisoners return and asks whether the corrections and health and human services systems can better serve this growing population.

"In simplest terms, imprisonment places an indescribable burden on the relationships between these parents and their children," say Travis, senior fellow in the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center, and Waul, director of special projects at the National Center for Victims of Crime. Currently, there are 1.4 million inmates in America's state and federal prisons, and more than 600,000 will be released to return to their communities this year. These prisoners are parents to 1.5 million children. If adults who have recently been released from prisons and jails and those on parole are included, the number of affected children more than doubles-to an estimated 3.2 million.

Prisoners Once Removed: The Impact of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities begins with an introduction outlining current data on prisoners, their children, and their families by Travis and Waul. Part One of the book examines incarceration and reentry through the lens of individual prisoners and includes chapters on the psychological impact of imprisonment, by Craig Haney of the University of California, Santa Cruz; challenges for female offenders, by Stephanie S. Covington of the Center for Gender and Justice; and the academic, vocational, and health needs of released offenders, by Gerald G. Gaes of the National Institute of Justice and Newton Kendig of the Bureau of Prisons and Johns Hopkins University.

Part Two looks at how incarceration and reentry affect the relationships between parents and children, with contributions from Donald Braman of Yale University and Jenifer Wood of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress; Ross D. Parke of the University of California, Riverside and K. Alison Clarke-Stewart of the University of California, Irvine; the Oregon Social Learning Center's J. Mark Eddy and John B. Reid; and Creasie Finney Hairston of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Part Three explores formal and informal service networks designed to support families and children, particularly in poor communities, with a case study of Brooklyn neighborhoods, by Eric Cadora of the Open Society Institute (with Charles Swartz and Mannix Gordon); a look at social capital and social networks, by Dina R. Rose of the Women's Prison Association and Todd R. Clear of the City University of New York; and a discussion of services coordination, by Shelli Balter Rossman of the Urban Institute.

"As the nation debates the wisdom of a fourfold increase in the rate of incarceration over the past generation, one impact is clear-prisons separate people from their families. Prisoners are the children, parents, siblings, and kin of untold numbers of individuals who are affected in different ways when family members are arrested, removed, incarcerated, and ultimately returned home from prison," say Travis and Waul.

Prisoners Once Removed: The Impact of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities, edited by Jeremy Travis and Michelle Waul, is available in paperback from the Urban Institute Press (6" x 9", 410 pages, ISBN 0-87766-715-2, $32.50). Order online at www.uipress.org or call 202-261-5687 or toll-free 1-877-847-7377.

The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization that examines the social, economic, and governance challenges facing the nation.