[suspenseful music]
(Anna Haskins, PhD) My work looks at: how does a father
who has an incarceration history
impact his children's educational outcomes.
My findings show systematically
that parental incarceration has a negative
effect on kids educational outcomes.
Parental incarceration increases
the likelihood that this child
will be placed in special education classes.
It increases the likelihood they'll be
retained in grade.
It reduces likelihood that
adolescents perceive
that they will graduate from college.
This matters because
the educational trajectories
that we are put on
as early as kindergarten,
have major implications
for where we end up in life.
We are creating these intergenerational
transmissions of disadvantage
that will continue even
if we close down all prisons today.
The data set that I use
is called the "Fragile Families" data set.
And it's a data set that follows mothers
with children born between 1998 and 2000
in 20 large US cities.
These mothers give birth
to their children, and researchers
or interviewers start following them
48 hours after that,
and they have continued to follow them
for the last 15 years.
The Fragile Families researchers
continue to collect this data from
these mothers, their partners,
the mother's new partners now.
And also there's a focal child
that's of interest,
and now they're actually collecting the same data from the kid themselves.
[suspenseful music]
We see these negative effects,
but that also leads to questions of
why and how.
And, a lot of the research
that has been done in this area
talks about how, at the individual level,
the separation of a parent from a child
causes trauma for children
in ways that reduces their ability
to pay attention in school.
[suspenseful music]
When a parent contributes either formally
or informally to a family,
and that monetary contribution is removed,
it increases the likelihood of homelessness,
it increases the likelihood of residential instability.
And so, a parent incarceration
increases this aspect
of instability in children's lives,
that has implications
for how well they can focus
and do in school.
[suspenseful music]
The strain that is placed on
the remaining caregiver
when the removal of a parent
occurs through incarceration,
also increases the likelihood
that they are less able to parent
in the best way that they can,
and that impacts children.
[suspenseful music]
One of the things that my research
tries to do is
show that these three social institutions
are very interconnected.
The criminal justice system,
the education system and families.
And a lot of the policy that occurs now
is focused on just one of them at a time.
[suspenseful music]
What I hope my work does is
show that these three institutions are
incredibly interconnected,
and that any work
that we need to do to improve this
needs to understand that interplay.
[suspenseful music]