Children who live in stable households with nurturing caregivers during their parents’ incarceration are likely to fare better than children who experience family instability as a result of a parent’s confinement Foster care, in particular, carries with it the risk of multiple placement changes and loss of connection to school, community, friends, siblings and extended family.
The vast majority (84 percent) of parents incarcerated in state prisons reported to the Bureau of Justice Statistics that at least one of their children was in the care of the other parent. Fifteen percent identified as caregivers the grandparents, 6 percent other relatives and 3 percent reported that at least one child was in a foster home, agency or institution.Responses of mothers and fathers in state prison differed on this survey question. Eighty-eight percent of fathers identified the child’s other parent as the current caregiver, compared to 37 percent of mothers. Sixty-eight percent of mothers, on the other hand, identified a grandparent or other relative as a child’s current caregiver, compared to 17.5 percent of fathers. Finally, mothers were five times more likely than fathers to report that a child was in foster care (11 percent vs. 2 percent, respectively).
Notwithstanding the Bureau of Justice Statistics survey, accurate estimates are not available of the number of children in foster care who have an incarcerated parent. Although the report tells us how many inmates identified a given type of caregiver, it does not tell us how many children are in each type of care giving arrangement. Thus, we do not know how many children are represented by the 3 percent of inmates who reported that a child was in foster care. Further, the survey makes no attempt to distinguish between relative caregivers who are foster parents and those who provide care outside the formal child welfare system. Other data sources are equally problematic, producing widely varying estimates of this population of children in care.
