Kin Availability in the Era of Mass Incarceration

• In Event: 231 - Section on Sociology of Population Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 07. Special Topics in U.S. Socio-Demographic Patterns and Inequalities

Abstract

The prison boom of the 1980-90s has left an indelible mark not just on the biographies of those whose lives were ensnared by the penal system, but also on the full network of family within which they were embedded. Employing microsimulation techniques to construct complete genealogical data for (simulated) black and white Americans born before and during the prison boom, we address two sets of questions: the first deals with the collateral consequences of incarceration for children and adolescents; the second pertains to the availability of kin support among those released from prison. Our analysis suggests that young black Americans face, on average, greater than five-fold higher risk than their white peers of having a relative incarcerated during their childhood and adolescence. Black Americans leaving prison have kin support networks that consist of proportionately more incarcerated or formerly-incarcerated members and fewer prime working age members, which may diminish the support available to these particularly vulnerable re-entrants.

Authors

• Pil Hong Chung, University of California, Berkeley

• Peter Scholfield Hepburn, University of California Berkeley