Executive Director/CEO Sandra Barnhill visits with a mother in prison. Photo by Pete Winkel

"A lot of my friends would ask me where my mother was. I would be ashamed and embarrassed. I told them she was a traveling nurse and that’s why she wasn’t around."

Lucretia is a graduate of the AIM program.

Incarceration Facts

Women in Prison | Effects on Children | Effects on Caregivers | Factsheets

The numbers are staggering. And all too many times, the ones affected by incarceration are at their wit's end looking for ways to keep their families together. That's where AIM comes in. AIM helps to defy the statistics.

Women in Prison

According to the Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents, children of prisoners are five times more likely than other children to end up in prison. When a mother is arrested, her entire household experiences crisis. Children are particularly vulnerable and need special help in dealing with the burdens created by their mother's imprisonment. As they struggle with separation from their mothers, many of these children experience emotional, social and/or academic difficulties. Grades may drop; behavioral problems often increase; and happy outgoing children can become silent and withdrawn from those around them. The number of children growing up in this environment is increasing.

From 1984 to 1996, the number of women in prison throughout the United States of America more than tripled, from 19,205 to 73,607.
On any given day there are more than 100,000 women being held in jail or prison.
Approximately 60% of women in federal prison have been convicted of drug-related offenses. Many of the other crimes - theft, prostitution, armed robbery - are also drug related.
More than 90% of the 2,500(+) women incarcerated in Georgia's prisons are mothers of dependent children.
Studies show that families are more likely to be broken apart by the mother's incarcerations than by the father's.
The vast majority of women offenders are substance abusers and single caretakers of minor children. Consequently, the damaging effects of substance abuse, criminal activity and family fragmentation are reaching into the next generation.

Effects on Children

Children growing up in a fragmented family, surrounded by substance abuse and criminal activity are open to several risk factors such as health problems, substance abuse and/or criminal behavior.

Children are vulnerable when encountering such odds.
Approximately 8,000 children, of whom 85% are African-American, are affected by their mother's incarceration.
Children are usually between the ages of 7 and 12 years old when their mother is imprisoned.
The majority of these children stay with their maternal grandmother or other relatives or close family friends.
A small number of children are placed in alternative care, arranged by the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services.
Increasingly, children are themselves imprisoned in a Youth Development Center after their mother's incarceration.
Children experience a tremendous amount of trauma, anxiety, guilt, shame and fear.

Children may experience:

Decreased quality of care
Disrupted and multiple placements
Financial hardship
Lack of contact with their parents

Because of these hardships, these children are at risk for many dysfunctional behaviors including violence, poor academic achievement, substance abuse, delinquency, and even intergenerational incarceration.

Effects on Caregivers

When a mother is convicted, the state prefers to place the children with a suitable relative or friend. Foster care represents the last resort and a non-typical outcome of a mother's imprisonment. It is common that the maternal grandmother becomes the caregiver, or another older female relative.

Caregivers typically have less formal education than their imprisoned daughters and are similarly economically marginalized.
Approximately 95% of caregivers are single females.
90% of these women receive some form of public assistance, but the remaining 10% are also likely to be eligible and not accessing support.
Approximately 70% of the women are over the age of 50 and an uncounted number have older family members staying at the same residence.

These women struggle to strengthen family bonds through the crisis.

Factsheets

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