Collateral Damage: Children and Prison Reform in California

Collateral Damage: Children and Prison Reform in California

Type “California” into a Google news search and chances are good that your browser will turn up headlines about prisons. Since October 1, 2011 the state has started to deliver on a mandate from the U.S. Supreme Court to remove 33,000 people from its bloated prison population. In this fast and furious process called realignment, it is easy to forget a crucial population: children. The majority of incarcerated people in California are parents. As described in my last post, realignment offers enormous opportunity to change the status quo corrections practices as non-sexual, non-violent, and non-serious offenders will now be sentenced to serve in county jails. Can children benefit from it?