The December 2024 US Davis Law Review Online included a particularly heart wrenching note regarding the impacts of incarceration on children.
Dyanna Castañeda Policarpio’s Behind and Beyond Bars: Children of Incarcerated Parents, details her experience as both a child of an incarcerated parent and a law student, expressing how the system circumvents the legal rights of incarceration-impacted children.
Dyanna writes perhaps the most simple yet profound sentence only a few pages into her work:
Why must prisoners’ children “do time” along with their parents?
It’s a question that also bothers me. One especially worth answering, as America and Michigan’s love affair with Mass Incarceration rages on.
The justice system creates deadbeat parents. With inmates earning pennies a day, most barely put a dent in restitution. It creates a cycle of poverty, preventing children of incarcerated parents from at times, even having basic needs met.
Any state that chooses to incarcerate parents without providing alternatives or rehabilitation should be required to financially support the children left behind.
I further argue that a state metrics dashboard be established, monitoring Judges who contribute to needless over-sentencing and perpetuate generational poverty.
Overall, Dyanna does a stunning job explaining the pain inflicted on children through parental incarceration. She closes out the paper with a proposed framework for addressing support.
Read Dyanna’s paper here.
