Dyanna Castañeda Policarpio’s Behind and Beyond Bars: Children of Incarcerated Parents is one of those pieces that stops you cold; not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s honest.
Writing as both a child of an incarcerated parent and a law student, Dyanna exposes a truth the criminal legal system works very hard to ignore: children are punished by incarceration, even though they’ve committed no crime.
Just a few pages into the paper, she asks a question that feels painfully obvious once it’s said out loud:
Why must prisoners’ children “do time” along with their parents?
It’s a question that should haunt anyone who claims the justice system is neutral. And it’s one we rarely force policymakers, judges, or prosecutors to answer.
The System Doesn’t Just Separate Families—It Creates Harm
America’s approach to incarceration doesn’t merely remove parents from households. It restructures family life around absence, instability, and poverty.
Dyanna details how the legal system routinely circumvents the rights and needs of incarceration-impacted children by treating parental incarceration as an isolated event—rather than a policy choice with predictable, cascading consequences.
Children experience:
- Loss of financial support
- Housing instability
- Food insecurity
- Emotional trauma
- Disrupted education
- Long-term economic disadvantage
None of this is accidental. It is the 100% foreseeable outcome of policies that prioritize punishment over rehabilitation and accountability over care.
The Justice System Creates “Deadbeat Parents”
We talk a lot about “parental responsibility” in courtrooms. But the system itself actively manufactures parental failure.
People in prison earn pennies a day. Restitution, child support, court fines, and fees pile up anyway. Most incarcerated parents will never meaningfully reduce what they owe; not because they don’t care, but because the system makes it impossible.
The result?
- Children go without basic necessities
- Caregivers absorb the financial shock
- Families fall deeper into poverty
- The cycle repeats
This isn’t moral failure; it’s completely and entirely policy failure.
If the State Chooses Incarceration, the State Bears Responsibility
Here’s the uncomfortable truth Dyanna’s work points us toward: if a state chooses to incarcerate parents without providing meaningful alternatives, rehabilitation, or family-preserving options, the state should be financially responsible for the children left behind.
You cannot remove a parent, block their ability to earn income, and then pretend the harm to their children is a private family problem.
That’s not justice. It’s state-sanctioned abandonment, breaking down families.
Accountability Must Include the Bench
I further argue (and Dyanna’s work supports this) that judicial discretion must be tracked and evaluated, not shielded.
A state-level metrics dashboard should exist to monitor:
- Judges who consistently over-sentence
- Courts that incarcerate primary caregivers unnecessarily
- Decisions that correlate with increased foster care placements
- Sentencing patterns that perpetuate generational poverty
When judges contribute to long-term harm without accountability, the system isn’t blind; it’s complicit.
A Framework That Centers Children
Dyanna closes her paper by proposing a framework that acknowledges children as rights-bearing individuals, not collateral damage.
Her work reminds us that:
- Children do not stop existing when a parent is incarcerated
- Family separation is a deliberate policy choice
- Harm to children is not an acceptable byproduct of punishment
This is not a sentimental argument. It’s a legal and ethical one.
Read the Paper
Behind and Beyond Bars: Children of Incarcerated Parents is required reading for anyone serious about criminal justice reform, family policy, or child welfare.
Read Dyanna’s paper here. Because until we answer why children are forced to “do time,” we cannot pretend this system is just.
