Incarcerated Parents: A Case Study

Problem

Common risk and protective factors that Intersectional influences behavioral and education outcomes amongst adolescent children with incarcerated parents in order to prevent negative outcomes in behavior and education by utilizing early identification and intervention strategies to positively influence good behavior and good educational practices amongst the population of the at-risk children.

Evidence to Support the Truth of the Problem

Over 2 million people were incarcerated in the United States alone, and since 1980 the incarceration rate has increased 100 percent to date. Martin (2017). According to the same article Martin (2017), further state, “Current estimates of the number of children with incarcerated parents vary. One report

studies shows that children with incarcerated parent demonstrate that even deeper and complex risk factor exist, for example, according to Dallaire, (2007). “Children with incarcerated parents may be particularly vulnerable to poor outcomes because of their exposure to an array of background, contextual, or sociodemographic risk factors such as poverty and single parenthood. They also are exposed to incarceration-related risk factors, that is, risk factors uniquely associated with parental imprisonment” (p. 441). Furthermore, she goes on to say, “Contextual risk factors. Sameroff et al. (Sameroff, Seifer, Baldwin, & Baldwin, 1993; Sameroff et al., 1998), as well as others (Rutter, 1979; Rutter & Giller, 1983), have identified several contextual sociodemographic risk factors that place all children at risk for such negative outcomes as academic failure and externalizing behaviors” (p. 441). More importantly Dallaire, (2007) further states that, “These contextual risk factors include mother's lack of education, being from a single parent home, being in a large family, being an ethnic minority, and having a parent with a mental illness (Rutter; Rutter & Giller; Sameroffet al., 1993, 1998). Many of these contextual risk factors may be present in the lives of children and families before, during, and after a parent's incarceration” (p. 441). Which can be easily interpreted that children with incarcerated parents carry adverse childhood experience (ACE’s) that inhibits the child from properly developing mentally and that these risk factors are a major barrier for this at-risk population to cope with every day situation which places them at risk both behaviorally and educationally. Another example according to Smith & Young (2017), “Also children of incarcerated parents suffer from a variety of physical and social issues such as migraines, depression,