Teen Parents Behind Bars: An Examination of the Visitation Experience

• In Event: New Directions in Correctional Research

Abstract

Research consistently notes that teen parents face a great deal of adversities, including greater involvement in crime and delinquency. A small, but growing body of work has also begun to examine what happens once a parenting teen ends up in the justice system including how they navigate their role as parents and how they adjust to periods of confinement. What has yet to be examined, however, is whether and how teen parents access support during confinement. Yet, given the importance of social support for long-term outcomes, this is an important question. Accordingly, the goal of this study is to explore whether teen parents receive support, namely visits, during periods of incarceration, and what those visits look like. More specifically, using a large sample of youth released from juvenile facilities in Florida, this study examines how often teen parents receive visits, from whom, and whether these visits are different in any way from youth who are not teen parents. The findings presented here can inform efforts to help this particularly vulnerable group of justice involved youth: teen parents.

Author

• Brae Young, Texas Christian University