Posted on 07/04/2009 5:33:02 PM PDT by reaganaut1
...
The chances of seeing a parent go to prison have never been greater, especially for poor black Americans, and new research is documenting the long-term harm to the children they leave behind. Recent studies indicate that having an incarcerated parent doubles the chance that a child will be at least temporarily homeless and measurably increases the likelihood of physically aggressive behavior, social isolation, depression and problems in school — all portending dimmer prospects in adulthood.
“Parental imprisonment has emerged as a novel — and distinctly American — childhood risk that is concentrated among black children and children of low-education parents,” said Christopher Wildeman, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who is studying what some now call the “incarceration generation.”
Incarceration rates in the United States have multiplied over the last three decades, in part because of stiffer sentencing rules. At any given moment, more than 1.5 million children have a parent, usually their father, in prison, according to federal data. But many more are affected over the course of childhood, especially if they are black, new studies show.
Among those born in 1990, one in four black children, compared with one in 25 white children, had a father in prison by age 14. Risk is concentrated among black children whose parents are high-school dropouts; half of those children had a father in prison, compared with one in 14 white children with dropout parents, according to a report by Dr. Wildeman recently published in the journal Demography.
For both blacks and whites, the chances of parental incarceration were far higher than they were for children born just 12 years earlier, in 1978.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This of course assumes that those poor, black children know for sure who their father really is. I’m not so convinced that crime and it’s attendant punishment has as much of an effect on those children as does the born-out-of-wedlock/living-on-welfare cycle that has become so common among black families. No stable home environment, new daddy comes along every few months along with a new brother or sister. Seems that might be more of an impact then the fact that daddy is in jail. Of course, when your hero is the pimp or drug dealer on the corner or the thug-rapper or a professional thug-athlete then you know there’s bound to be a problem in that segment of society.
There is one particular trailer park in Cobb county GA that single-handedly has sent more criminal cases to the Georgia appellate system than any other neighborhood in the entire state. If you search for the name of the trailer park, you get multiple crimes -- everything from murder to simple assault, arson to petty theft, rape to indecent exposure. They run the gamut.
The trailer park is almost exclusively white, with a few Hispanics. It's just full of what my grandmother called "no 'count trash".
And while the NYT is wailing about the criminals being incarcerated, if they were NOT put in prison many of them would be molesting each others' children (and even their own), beating up their parents, and exposing the kids to criminal activity of various kinds.
There are worse things than having a parent in prison, like being the victim of a parent who OUGHT to be in prison.
So , I suppose we are not going to lock up any more black men because it hurts the kids.
I think we all know the kids of criminals have it hard, but it isnt society that is to blame , it’s their criminal parent.
Very deceptive use of statistics.
More than 60% of black children grow up without a father.
In prison, or out of prison, most black “fathers” will not be raising their own children.
One of my “jobs” is teaching music to children in the foster care system. I don’t know their circumstances, but I assume many of them are there because a parent is incarcerated for some reason. Maybe I can make some difference in their lives by not only teaching them music (and the responsibility and challange it takes to practice and learn an instrument)but I can sneak some “conservative values” into the bargain LOL!
In the early 1980’s, i sat on a jury for a Rape trial.
It was the trial of a young adult, Afro-American male
who was accused of gang raping a 30 something female
hitchhiker. He and three others males of similar
description, had picked up the English immigrant female
along a State highway.
We the Jury, found the evidence irrefutable and found
him Guilty as charged.
The following day, we jury members re met in the waiting area. A newspaper article about the young man's conviction
startled us all. The young man's FATHER was serving a life
sentence for the execution style murders of 4 people.
A Robbery/Murder that involved two middle aged couples about
4 years earlier. One of the victims had been a top state
official back in the mid 1970’s.
A vicious cycle.
JJ61
You are exactly right. How many of those incarcerated fathers were even married to the mothers in the first place?
OK, charge the scumbags with child abuse and add a couple of years to their tour. Cry me a river.
I’m guessing that for most of them, unfortunately, daddy wasn’t around much anyway.
What the article doesn’t mention is that children who’ve been abandonned by their parents - for whatever reason - become angry over their parent’s absence. Containing and channeling that energy wasted on anger into creative endeavors is really challenging for a guardian or foster parent.
Yes, but only the BLACK children really suffer...
So saith the New York Times, but we know what liars they are . . . .
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