Parental Incarceration Quotes

My parents got put into jail, both my mom and my dad.

You know, my daughters have been through their entire lives and knowing about my case.

To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.

Our prisons are full of people who are illiterate and innumerate, have been failed by the care system, and often have had a parent in prison.

When my parents were arrested, I was a year old. And like so many children with incarcerated parents, I experienced a range of traumas connected to the separation. I was angry. I was ashamed. I had developmental delays, behavioral problems.

For African American children, in particular, the odds are extremely high that they will have a parent or loved one, a relative, who has either spent time behind bars or who has acquired a criminal record and thus is part of the under-caste - the group of people who can be legally discriminated against for the rest of their lives. For many African American children, their fathers, and increasingly their mothers, are behind bars. It is very difficult for them to visit. Many people are held hundreds or even thousands of miles away from home.

My dad went to jail for a long time. We lost everything, and the situation never resolved itself. My parents had this sort of passionate, disastrous desire for each other - not ideal to grow up in.

All the kids in school taunted me, 'Your dad's going to jail,' and I believed my parents when they said no it wouldn't happen. Then one day I was driving into school with him, which was weird because my mom always took us. And he was like, 'yeah, I'm going to jail.'

I would lay awake nights and cry a lot thinking, is my dad gonna come home? Is he gonna go to jail again? Is he going to get killed?

My childhood was not always a happy one because we had to visit our father in jail, as my father was often imprisoned by the Pakistani rulers.

For children, the era of mass incarceration has meant a tremendous amount of family separation, broken homes, poverty, and a far, far greater level of hopelessness as they see so many of their loved ones cycling in and out of prison. Children who have incarcerated parents are far more likely themselves to be incarcerated.