Mothers Behind Bars and the Children Who Suffer

In the United States, there are approximately 65,600 incarcerated mothers, which has left over 147,400 children under the age of 18 without at least one of their parents. When mothers are incarcerated, children are often left in the care of a non-parental family member or in foster care, a result that is not replicated when fathers are sent to prison.

Numerous studies, including a 2009 paper by Nancy Rodriguez, Hilary Smith, and Marjorie Zatz, have shown that children of criminal mothers are more likely to face particular sets of hardships, including being exposed to violence, substance abuse, intergenerational incarceration, and poverty. These risk factors can lead to increased rates of mental health problems in the children of incarcerated parents, and many of these children are not receiving the necessary medical care to address their mental health needs.

A recent study by Jillian Turanovic and Nancy Rodriguez, entitled Mental Health Service Needs in the Prison Boom: The Case of Children of Incarcerated Mothers, sought to better understand which children have unmet service needs and how we might be able to meet these needs.

The researchers used a sample of 700 children found through structured interviews with 300 incarcerated mothers in Arizona. The mothers of these children were racially diverse. The mental health needs of the children were assessed using maternal reports. Though the researchers acknowledge the limitations of this method, they found that most of the mothers were the primary care providers for their children immediately before incarceration and maintained regular contact with children while in prison, which made them confident that the incarcerated mothers could report on their children’s wellbeing with accuracy. Based on initial interviews, researchers were able to narrow down a subsample of mothers with children that have mental health needs. These needs were usually attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, and serious aggression.

The researchers were interested in determining which children with mental health needs were receiving the services necessary to help them. The variables examined included child characteristics (age, gender, exposure to violence, contact with Child Protective Services (CPS), and in utero exposure to drugs), maternal characteristics (race/ethnicity, mental illness, substance abuse, previous incarceration, and cause of incarceration), and caregiver characteristics (whether they were a grandparent, whether they were caring for the child before maternal incarceration, and whether they were receiving public assistance). Cases in which a child was having problems in school, or in which the mother had had her parental rights legally terminated, were excluded due to collinearity between these factors and the outcome of interest.

Using a two-stage probit model, they found that child age, maternal mental illness, and maternal violent offending all increased the likelihood that a child would develop mental health needs. They also found that children who had been exposed to violence, had Native American mothers, or who had mothers that had been diagnosed with mental illness were less likely to receive mental health services. On the other hand, children who had contact with CPS or were being raised by a grandparent were more likely to receive mental health services. Understanding these factors is particularly important because we know that adversity, such as exposure to violence, is also correlated with other lifelong problems, such as substance abuse and criminality. In addition, the current study suggests that state intervention might be crucial in treating children of incarcerated mothers, given that children who have contact with CPS are more likely to obtain needed services.

Based on these findings, the researchers make two recommendations. The first is that we should collect information about children during the intake screening of inmates, which would allow the government to identify subpopulations that are in great need of services. The second is that the information, once collected, should be shared with agencies that work with children so that they can provide proper services.

Though this research has many limitations–particularly its reliance on self-report measures, which are known to be unreliable, and its narrow focus on a population in Arizona–it does highlight a concerning problem: there is a large group of children whose mothers are incarcerated that are in need of services but are not getting them. This subpopulation of children is particularly vulnerable to poorer life outcomes. Making efforts to better provide these children with the mental health services they need may be a necessary step in improving their quality of life.

Article Source: Mental Health Service Needs in the Prison Boom: The Case of Children of Incarcerated Mothers. Jillian Turanovic and Nancy Rodriguez, Criminal Justice Policy Review, 2015.

Featured Photo: cc/(Stefano Corso)