Over 5 million American children under the age of 18 years, a disproportionate number of whom are Black or Latino, have had a residential parent jailed or incarcerated. While a number of existing studies identify parental incarceration as a key risk factor for poor child and family outcomes, there is more limited information describing programs that aim to promote positive outcomes for children with parents involved in the criminal justice system. This literature review analyzes published studies about family strengthening programs that seek to maintain and build healthy relationships between parents who are incarcerated and their children. The review is organized by six key areas of programmatic focus that the research team identified based on an initial scan of the literature, consultations with experts and programs in the field, and guidance from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Primary Research Questions

This literature review addresses the following three overarching research questions:

  1. What areas should family strengthening programs explicitly address in their models?
  2. What programs and practices are currently being used to strengthen families involved with the justice system?
  3. What does the research and evidence indicate about programs that aim to strengthen families involved with the justice system?

Purpose

The purpose of this review is to summarize the research and evaluation literature on programs that aim to strengthen families involved in the justice system. This review focuses on family strengthening programs, defined as programs that seek to maintain and build healthy relationships between parents who are incarcerated and their children. To this end, the research team identified six key focus areas for this review based on consultations with experts from a wide range of disciplines including child development, parenting, and criminology. The findings presented in this review identify key gaps in the knowledge base on family strengthening programs, which can help programs improve their models and help researchers more rigorously study these programs’ impacts on children and families in the future.

Read the full article about families affected by parental incarceration by Meghan McCormick, Bright Sarfo, and Emily Brennan at MDRC.