IN DEPTH: Incarcerated parents learn to live away from their children while remaining relevant to families

Marcus and Jasson Jr. can’t wait to wrestle with their dad.

The brothers sat with their grandmother, Kim Howell, on July 3 inside the family’s living room in Portage. It was a fairly normal evening, and just earlier that week, they had spoken to their father, Jasson Howell Sr.

More >> IN DEPTH: Incarcerated parents learn to live away from their children while remaining relevant to families

Jailed mothers: The 'terrible damage' to children

About 17,000 children are separated from their mothers every year by the prison system in England and Wales, which has one of the highest rates of female incarceration in western Europe. Now some MPs say the courts may be denying the human rights of these children.

Katie was 11 when her mother was sent to prison, and she never even got the chance to say goodbye.

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The children of incarcerated parents live in their own prison

Sending parents to prison imposes life-long consequences on their children. I know because I am one of them. When I was 14 months old, my parents left me with a babysitter and drove a getaway car in an armed robbery. Three men died, including two police officers. My mom was sentenced to twenty years to life; my dad to 75 years to life—he is still incarcerated. Like so many children of incarcerated parents I suffered horribly—in an instant, my family was gone and I was left alone. I showed the trauma and emotional suffering through anger, temper tantrums, tears, and difficulty in school. caused by that kind of sudden and irreparable separation. Statistics show all too well the economic, social, and developmental consequences so many of us face.

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Accused child molester severs his genitals in Santa Cruz County Jail, doctor reports

A former Live Oak foster parent, Girl Scouts troop leader and Scotts Valley Unified School District technology director accused of molesting children is competent to stand trial, a doctor reported.

The accused, Carl Benedict Guerin, 57, faces 16 felonies linked with lewd acts with children and attempts to dissuade a witness, according to court documents. A physician, upon court order, reviewed the defendant’s mental state and ruled out the need for medication and noted that the examination was spurred by the defendant’s decision to sever his testicles while in jail.

More >> Accused child molester severs his genitals in Santa Cruz County Jail, doctor reports

Inside the Prison Where Babies Serve Time With Their Incarcerated Mothers

One by one, a line of women in state greens walk down the winding prison roads and up a stairwell, with their arms wrapped around their tiny newborns or cradling their pregnant bellies.

One-year-old Xaylen is one of 26 babies who call Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum security women’s prison in New York, home.

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Baugh: The foster care-to-prison pipeline

Nelson Mandela once said that a society’s soul should be judged by the way it treats its children. In the United States, the soul of our society would be judged harshly, particularly because of the way we treat wards of the state.

In recent years, attention has been given to America’s children in the “School-To-Prison Pipeline.” Zero-tolerance policies, the criminalization of adolescence and the pushing of disadvantaged children out of the classrooms have fed a number of youthss into justice systems — many of them foster youths. Home and state systems, like group homes, foster care and youths institutions, set children up for emotional and relational trauma when children are uprooted from their biological families and have multiple home placements.

More >> Baugh: The foster care-to-prison pipeline

The foster care-to-prison pipeline

Nelson Mandela once said that a society’s soul should be judged by the way it treats its children. In the United States, the soul of our society would be judged harshly, particularly because of the way we treat wards of the state.

In recent years, attention has been given to America’s children in the ‘School-To-Prison Pipeline.’  Zero-tolerance policies, the criminalization of adolescence and the pushing of disadvantaged children out of the classrooms have fed a number of youths into justice systems — many of them foster youth. Home and state systems, like group homes, foster care and youth institutions, set children up for emotional and relational trauma when children are uprooted from their biological families and have multiple home placements.

More >> The foster care-to-prison pipeline

Report highlights the trauma that thousands of Texas families have experienced with incarceration

With more than 200,000 people in Texas jails and prisons, and nearly half a million children in Texas who have experienced a parent getting locked up, a new national report highlighted something Texas families are well aware of: family incarceration leads to potentially devastating emotional and financial effects.

Half of American adults — 113 million people in the country — have had a family member incarcerated, according to the report, which was released Thursday by the bipartisan advocacy and policy organization FWD.us and Cornell University.

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Lawsuit: NYPD forced woman to give birth in handcuffs

A lawsuit is claiming the New York Police Department forced a woman to give birth while shackled in handcuffs.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday, the woman she says she went into labor in February in a police holding cell in the Bronx. She says police took her to Montefiore Medical Center where they handcuffed her wrists to the bed and shackled her ankles.

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• Police Force Bronx Woman to Give Birth While Shackled, Lawsuit Says

Getting Past the Barriers: When a Mother Is in Prison

Allowing incarcerated mothers to interact and play with their children during visits helps maintain a sense of family connection and may reduce the trauma of separation.

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Incarcerated Mothers Can Lose Parental Rights Just For Being Incarcerated

A new report from the Marshall Project outlines how child-welfare systems take children away from incarcerated mothers, viewing former or current inmates as unfit caregivers not on the basis of prior child neglect charges, but often simply for being incarcerated.

The problem stems in part from the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act, which says state-funded child-welfare programs must “begin termination of parental rights” when a child has been in foster care for 15 of the last 22 months.

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Baby P’s mother allowed contact with surviving children from inside prison

The mother of Baby P – tortured to death in 2007 – has been granted access to her surviving children by social services ahead of a new application to be released from prison. Tracey Connelly has been writing to her children from behind bars in an attempt to ‘build bridges’ before applying for parole.

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Jailed parents must be included in hearings on their kids' fate, Iowa Supreme Court rules

Parents in prison or jail must be allowed to fully participate in hearings on whether their parental rights will be taken away, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday.

Allowing parents who are incarcerated to participate in person or by phone in such hearings is considered best practice for juvenile court judges, but the practice is not always followed. The court's 4-3 opinion will require juvenile court judges and court staff to do more to ensure the parents can fully participate.

More >> Jailed parents must be included in hearings on their kids' fate, Iowa Supreme Court rules

Fury as jailed rapist who fathered a child with his 15-year-old grooming-gang victim is invited by social workers to be involved in the boy's upbringing – leaving the girl 'angry and scared'

A traumatised woman who was raped by a member of a grooming gang and became pregnant with his child was left 'extremely distressed' after social workers tried to help him get in contact with her son.

In the 'perverse' decision by the unnamed local authority, staff approached a jailed sex attacker and offered him help to be involved in his son's upbringing, without notifying his mother.

More >> Fury as jailed rapist who fathered a child with his 15-year-old grooming-gang victim is invited by social workers to be involved in the boy's upbringing – leaving the girl 'angry and scared'

Children of the Incarcerated Face Multiple Traumas: Study

Children whose parents are incarcerated are the “invisible victims of mass incarceration,” and judges and corrections authorities need to pay special attention to the emotional trauma and financial burdens they encounter, argues a new paper in the Maryland Law Review.

Amy B. Cyphert, author of the study, and a lecturer at the West Virginia University College of Law Lecturer, said research offered several pathways that provided a “ray of hope” for young people when one or both parents was behind bars.

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America’s Other Family-Separation Crisis

On a late-October morning two years ago, Robin Steinberg stood barefoot in her apartment, on the Upper West Side, preparing to uproot her life. Her suitcases were stacked by the door, her winter coats piled in the hallway. Steinberg, a fifty-nine-year-old native New Yorker, had decided to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to launch a legal startup. She laced up her sneakers and said goodbye to the bedrooms of her grown children, which she called “the shrines.” As she dragged her bags to her car, she told her doorman that she was going to cry. “I’m not good with change,” she said. He told her not to worry, and blew her a farewell kiss.

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Man imprisoned for more than 20 years says new evidence proves he didn't abuse his son

For more than 20 years, Jim Duncan has insisted he was wrongfully convicted of aggravated child abuse for breaking his infant son's bones in 1993.

Now a Florida judge will decide if there's enough new medical evidence to give him a new trial.

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Study on moms in jail merits policymakers' attention

AFTER studying practices at the Oklahoma County jail two years ago, researchers with the Vera Institute of Justice noted that roughly four-fifths of the population was made up of people awaiting trial. Those weeks or months (or sometimes longer) of waiting can turn a person's life upside down.

This is especially true for mothers, as is noted in a recent report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union.

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Interview: How Mothers Jailed in the US Lose Custody of Their Children

As the number of women locked up in the US grows, Oklahoma has the grim distinction of being the state incarcerating more women per capita than any other. Most women in jail have yet to be convicted of a crime – they’re being held until trial – and the vast majority are mothers. jasmine Sankofa speaks with Amy Braunschweiger about the obstacles these mothers face trying to keep in contact with, and keep custody of, their children while behind bars.

More >> Interview: How Mothers Jailed in the US Lose Custody of Their Children

Inmate sues DHS for $8.8 million, claiming abuse

A Klamath Falls man currently in prison for firearm theft has sued the Department of Human Services (DHS) for allegedly allowing his children to live with abusive foster parents.

Korderro Robert Bailey, 28, filed suit July 5 in federal court seeking $8.8 million for abuses he claims happened to his son and step-daughter dating back to 2013.

More >> Inmate sues DHS for $8.8 million, claiming abuse