Did you know that Sesame Street has introduced a character that has a father in jail? Alex, the new Muppet character, was created to help the 2.7 million children in the United States with an incarcerated parent sort through how to talk about having a parent behind bars and cope with missing them in their daily lives.
I attended a briefing on The Impact of Criminal Records on Children and Families hosted by the Center for American Progress which shed light on the sad truth that the person who committed the crime is not the only person who is penalized in the context of the family.
Most of the growth in incarceration rates is due to changes in state and federal laws, not increases in crime.
Having a parent incarcerated is destabilizing to a child because that parent is no longer present to raise the child and is limited in ways to provide for them financially-not to mention the stigma that children of incarcerated parents carry with them.
The U.S. is the world’s leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people in the nation’s prisons or jails — 5 times as many as there were 30 years ago. Most of this increase is due to changes in state and federal laws, not increases in crime.
Excessively long and mandatory minimum sentences are a major reason so many people are behind bars in the U.S. today. Amy L. Solomon, Senior Advisor to the Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice reported that there are 47,000 mapped out consequences that are possible for any individual having been in the criminal justice system ranging from restricted access to buying a home or renting, to limited job access after doing time, as well the inability to get a Pell grant to go to school.
Panelists at the briefing called for action for Congress to address the issue of how incarcerating 2.2 million Americans is negatively affecting 2.2 million families and their communities and how disenfranchising these people is not creating opportunities for those who leave the criminal justice system to rise up the ladder of success, but further punishes them and their families once they have served their sentence.
A step in the right direction is bill S. 2123, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, moving through the Senate that will take a major step toward restoring judging authority to judges, reducing mandatory minimum sentences and lowering the population of federal prisons. However, we cannot be content to stop there. Urge your representatives to demand criminal justice reform and consider the collateral damage of incarcerating millions of our citizens.