Barring Progress: The Influence of Paternal Incarceration on Families’ Neighborhood Attainment

• In Event: 052 - Regular Session. Children/Youth/Adolescents: Institutions and the State

Abstract

The literature on incarceration has increasingly recognized that incarceration may have implications beyond the offender, its detrimental effects reverberating onto families and children. In this study, we use the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to investigate the influence of incarceration on the neighborhood outcomes of the children of incarcerated fathers and their mothers. We specifically examine how paternal incarceration influences neighborhood social cohesion, one of many features of the neighborhood that has the potential to shape future wellbeing. In future analyses, we will also consider “objective” neighborhood measures like poverty and crime rates. We find that current, recent, and distant paternal incarceration experiences exhibit negative associations with the neighborhood social cohesion experienced by mothers and children. These relationships are particularly detrimental for mothers who have maintained relationships with the currently or previously incarcerated fathers of their children. These findings have important implications for the neighborhood attainment of families and may contribute to racial and socioeconomic disparities in neighborhood outcomes among poor and minority families.

Authors

• Christine Leibbrand, University of Washington

• Erin Carll, University of Washington

• Angela Bruns, University of Michigan

• Hedwig Eugenie Lee, Washington University St. Louis