In a report published in a recent issue of Demography journal, RSF author Bruce Western and Natalie Smith (Columbia University) examine relationships between formerly incarcerated parents and their children. They draw from the RSF-supported Boston Reentry Study—a series of comprehensive interviews with over one hundred individuals leaving the Massachusetts state prison system—to explore how factors like poverty, family structure, and access to housing affects how often parents have contact with their biological and social children in the first year after release from prison. The abstract of their report reads: 

The negative effects of incarceration on child well-being are often linked to the economic insecurity of formerly incarcerated parents. Researchers caution, however, that the effects of parental incarceration may be small in the presence of multiple- partner fertility and other family complexity. Despite these claims, few studies have directly observed either economic insecurity or the full extent of family complexity. We study parent-child relationships with a unique data set that includes detailed information about economic insecurity and family complexity among parents just released from prison. We find that stable private housing, more than income, is associated with close and regular contact between parents and children. Formerly incarcerated parents see their children less regularly in contexts of multiple-partner fertility and in the absence of supportive family relationships. Significant housing and family effects are estimated even after we control for drug use and crime, which are themselves negatively related to parental contact. The findings point to the constraints of material insecurity and the complexity of family relationships on the contact between formerly incarcerated parents and their children.

Western’s RSF book, Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison, is also based on findings from the Boston Reentry Study. In the book he describes the lives of the formerly incarcerated and demonstrates how poverty, racial inequality, and failures of social support trap many in a cycle of vulnerability despite their efforts to rejoin society. He advocates policies that increase assistance to ex-offenders in their first year after prison, including guaranteed housing and health care, drug treatment, and transitional employment. Western has recently appeared on the Brian Lehrer Show and in the pages in USA Today to discuss his research on incarceration and criminal justice reform.

Read the full report in Demography.