Familial Incarceration in the Lives of African American Women

• In Event: Convict Criminology Session 2: USP Marion: Prisoners of the Federal Bureau of Prisons

Abstract

The experiences of men, particularly African American, have been one an ever-expanding area in criminological and criminal justice literature. African American women remain a large mystery. In this paper, we examined how familial incarceration affects psychological distress in the lives of African American women. Unlike many other studies on the familial costs of incarceration , our use of the National Survey of American Life allowed us to examine the heterogeneity of social circumstances within African American women’s lives, heterogeneity that might influence their vulnerability to familial incarceration. According to our findings, familial incarceration does not harm all African American women; but rather, we find that the association between familial incarceration and depressive symptoms depends upon whether African American women are in romantic relationships or not and whether they have children or not. In fact, only single mothers who are not in a romantic relationship of any kind experience a significant and negative mental health consequence of familial incarceration. Our findings make apparent that the story does not end with incarceration being a common experience for African American men; rather, the experiences of African American men and incarceration are a large part of the stories of African American women.

Authors

• Evelyn Joy Patterson, Vanderbilt University

• Tony Nicholas Brown, Vanderbilt University