“For a while after getting out of prison, I still drank and smoked marijuana. It impaired my judgment, and one night I ended up cheating on my wife with another woman. She got pregnant, and now I have a son out of wedlock. I understood my responsibility to him as his father, but my criminal record made it really hard to find a decent job. I could barely support my wife and daughter – much less keep up on the child supports payments I owed my son’s mother. I needed help.” -Michael K., Fortune client

Strong families are the heart of strong communities, and everyone suffers when a parent or loved one is incarcerated. Financial and emotional supports are often interrupted or altogether withdrawn, putting additional strain on families that may already be dealing with substance abuse, housing instability, unemployment, and/or poverty.  Unfortunately, this situation is often exacerbated upon release because both the formerly incarcerated individual and their loved ones are counting on each other to mitigate the effects incarceration has had on their relationship and/or ability to meet basic needs.  For example, evidence suggests that family contact and the development of healthy relationships significantly reduce the likelihood of recidivism.  Despite this, formerly incarcerated men often avoid reconciliation with loved ones because they are unable to face the combined pressures of getting a job with a criminal record and supporting a family or meeting overdue child support obligations that have stacked up while they were behind bars.

Additionally, men and women coming home from prison or jail often find themselves dealing with a host of complex issues – including substance dependency or abuse, histories of physical and/or emotional abuse, custody problems, mental illness and other health concerns, and the challenges associated with rebuilding relationships damaged by prolonged absence.   In order to address these myriad issues and facilitate the process of community and family reintegration, it is recommended that individuals exiting incarceration engage in counseling, domestic violence workshops, mediation and conflict resolution training, and parenting and other essential life skills training.  This holistic approach, in which formerly incarcerated individuals participate in a wide array of supportive reentry services, fosters the development of strong, healthy relationships and – as a result – strong, healthy communities.

• Most people in prison are parents – 55 % of men and 65 % of women in state prison have children under 18 (Levingston, K.D. and V. Turetsky (2007), Debtors’ Prison—Prisoners’ Accumulation of Debt as a Barrier to Reentry, Washington, D.C.: Center for Law and Social Policy).
• About half of incarcerated persons have open child support cases (Turetsky, supra n. 13. See also U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Office of Child Support Enforcement (2006), Incarceration, Reentry and Child Support Issues: National and State Research Overview. Council of State Governments (2005), Report of the Re-Entry Policy Council: Charting the Safe and Successful Return of Prisoners to the Community).
• A study by the University of Maryland found that nearly 16% of child support cases involve a non-custodial parent who has been incarcerated (Ovwigho, P.C. et al. (2005), The Intersection of Incarceration and Child Support: A Snapshot of Maryland’s Caseload, Maryland: University of Maryland).
• About 70 percent of parents in state prison were employed at least part-time during the month before arrest, but more than half reported incomes of less than $1,000 (Turetsky, supra n. 13).
• In the U.S., the number of children under age 18 with a mother in prison more than doubled since 1991 (up 131%.) This finding reflects a faster rate of growth in the number of mothers held in state and federal prisons (up 122%), compared to the number of fathers (up 76%) between 1991 and midyear 2007. Of the estimated 74 million children in the U.S. resident population who were under age 18 on July 1, 2007, 1.7 million (2.3%) had a parent in prison. (Click here to view source.)