Child Poverty and Incarceration – Should Child Anti-Poverty Advocates Join Prison Labor Reformers?
Dear Child Advocate: There are more unsupported minor children of US jail and prison inmates (about 2.2 million) than inmates (about 2.1 million). As an economist, I’ve learned from 50 years’ experience with prison labor (1) that child and family impoverishment is the primary consequence of US prison labor practices denying inmates paid work, and (2) that prison labor reform – compensated employment – will only come with insistent advocacy by those of you standing up for children.
Why Child Anti-Poverty Advocates Should Advocate for Prison Labor Reform: Although we tend not to see it, in a discrimination far more severe than segregation or Jim Crow, where at least some careers were permitted, on any given day US policies deny all 2.1 million US jail and prison inmates any access to paid employment whatsoever, directly impoverishing their 2.2+ million minor US children and effectively denying them basic survival resources, plus subjecting them to removal to adoption or foster care, all consistent with primary conditions defining genocide. This, despite the fact that 2/3 of persons going to jail or prison are non-violent and more than 50% were primary sources of support for their children at the time of arrest.
As a child advocate, a most cost-effective action path might be to maximize incarcerated parents’ access to remunerative work to continue supporting their minor children during and in the years after imprisonment.
Please respond:
If US jail and prison inmates held normal jobs, what notable effects could likely follow for reducing US child poverty, during and after incarceration?
What barriers do child anti-poverty advocates fear in advocating prison labor reform as a promising policy variable?
Please – Tell me your sense of appropriate actions together: PrisonLaborReform@gmail.com
Introduction
Children, almost completely ignored in public discourse about incarceration, are the largest population harmed by US prison labor policies that deliberately exclude the incarcerated from paid employment.
Quoting Henry Fonda from Twelve Angry Men, “I might be wrong, but…” prison labor is not being reformed in significant part because child advocates aren’t joining the cause representing impoverished children.
This website, PrisonLaborReform, argues that the supposed benefits of current US prison labor are almost entirely nonexistent while its all-too-real social costs – with child poverty and crime victims at the top - are ignored. We do so at considerable peril to us all.
The Real Story
My Best Understanding of the Reality: Genocide includes both the deliberate direct destruction of a group but also the denial of resources needed for the survival of a group. Examples of that possibility today include both Yemen and Gaza.
But in the United States today, much worse that Jim Crow or segregation that permitted some income and jobholding pathways, by deliberate US Federal, state, and local policies, 2.2+ million US children and their families are denied all access to remunerative work by an adult parent provider. Think about this: 60 percent of all 2.1 million incarcerated working-age persons in the United States have $0.00 annual income. $0.00! The remaining 40% are thought to obtain, on average, about $700 a year, less than the median weekly take-home of the average US worker. The fuller truth is, in fact, much worse because remaining family members reverse the support and now subsidize their incarcerated householder, seeming averaging over $300 a month for contact and provisions.
The Economics: The seeming universal belief for excluding incarcerated persons from the US labor force is that allowing inmates to work is unfair competition with free labor and business, would harm the economy, and would drive down wage rates. But upon reflection, economics exposes inmate exclusion as just a severe but familiar instance of discrimination, little different in argument but much moreharmful effect than historically used to exclude other groups. If prison labor is unfair, it is because the policies that we created – not unprotected incarcerated workers – built the unfair work rules for incarcerated workers. The completely“fair,” simple, obvious, efficient, and entirely ignored solution is for us to reform the rules and apply in prison markets the same “fair” rules as apply to the rest of us, both for incarcerated workers and for the firms engaging them. And contrary to popular mythology, western economics not only does not support excluding incarcerated workers from the labor force, both theory and demonstrated US history clearly show that including excluded groups (eg women, minorities) accelerates economic growth, increases GDP, triggers business and employment expansion, reduces inequality, and generally brings wider prosperity for all. So the economic benefits for all of us clearly accrue to reforming US prison labor.
Next, Criminal Justice: Virtually all criminal justice research and observation concur that future crime is reduced and families and communities better served when ex-offenders become successfully legally employed. Even prison staff are safer, healthier and less stressed, and security and discipline improved when inmates are productively occupied.
The Known “Facts” on US Prison Labor: From research I have done earlier, these are the likely “order of magnitude” facts for the roughly 2.1 million jailed and imprisoned workers in the United States today:
“Prison labor” as most of us conceive it, is little used in jails and prisons today. The real issue is, in fact, lack of work. Either by law or custom, 100% of US jail and prison inmates are excluded from the civilian labor force and the protections of US labor law. About 60% of US jail and prison inmates have no work at all, $0 annual income. Of the remaining 40%, 34% work in either institutional maintenance or agriculture, and only 6% work in traditional “prison industries,” with guesstimated annual incomes circa $700 per year , less annually than the weekly income of the median US civilian worker. Incarcerated workers get no Social Security investments or other “retirement” contributions, earn no family health care benefits, workers’ compensation protections, vacation pay, or any other “overhead” benefit of typical US employees that “spill over” to families. Available anecdotal information fairly clearly shows that, rather than supporting their children and families, America’s incarcerated workers reverse from their supporting roles, and are likely significantly draining funds from their families, anecdotally estimated at around $300 per month, for visits, telephone calls, and clothing and supplies not provided by the prison.
Finally, for incarcerated noncustodial parents with child support obligations, support arrearages accumulate, plus compounding interest, during incarceration, and are then charged to the worker upon release, with whatever reimbursements received being then diverted from families to repay earlier TANF benefits and not distributed to families. (Source: Identifying Beneficiaries of PIE Inmate Incomes, Thomas Petersik, 2003).
In sum 2.1 million US incarcerated workers are mostly not working because of deliberate public policies of exclusion, and, rather than supporting themselves or their children and families, they are likely to significantly instead drain additional resources from the children and families they should have been supporting. Similarly, rather than paying taxes and propelling the economy forward, America’sincarcerated workers are, in point of fact, an additional welfare load draining public coffers.
US child poverty: (Source: 2020 US Census Data, published by Children’s Defense Fund): 15%, of US children were poor in 2020, where only 10% of adults were poor. And poor children were heavily disproportionately from families of color, from single parent, female-headed families, and from the US South.
a. 1 in 7, 15.3%, (11. 15 million) US Children younger than 18 were “poor” in 2020; 7.2 percent were “extremely poor.”
b. 72% of poor children in 2020 were children of color (55% of them Black or Hispanic, 28% White);
c. 47% were from the South (38% US population from the South);
d. 69% of US poor children are in single-parent household (60% female-headed, 9% male)
e. Only 22% of the poor households host a full-time employed person; in 33% no household member works.
Characteristics of Children of US Inmates:[1]
About 3.2% of all US Children, 2.4 million have a parent in jail or state or federal prison on a given day, more minor children of US inmates than inmates (2.3 million at the time of these statistics).
66% of the children are of color, 45% Black non-Hispanic, 28% White non-Hispanic, 21% Hispanic (other 6%);
88% of male inmates identify the female parent as the current caregiver; 12% list the grandmother;
54% Report themselves to have been the child’s primary financial source of support before incarceration; and 69% report living with the child before incarceration.
And how pervasive is incarceration in the United States labor force? We know that having been incarcerated decreases employment probability and at the same time reduces projected earnings power. So what is the probability that a US minor child will have a formerly incarcerated parent at some point? We don’t really know, but the estimates are that as Nicholas Eberstadt, in America’s Invisible Crisis, Men Without Work, reports “…estimates indicate that approximately 12 percent of all civilian noninstitutional adult males in 2010 had a felony conviction in their background.” [page 134]
[1] Parents in Prison and Their Minor Children, NCJ222984, August 2008; Note: I have gratuitously assumed the parenting characteristics of those in jail to be identical to those in state and federal prisons.
And what are the probabilities of going to prison in the first place? And how do these probabilities correlate with the key characteristics of America’s poor children? Eberstadt displays results calculated by Bruce Western and Becky Pettit (page 140, Table 9.1), for 2009 that the overall probability of at least one incarceration for a US male to be 5.4% (1 in 20). However, that probability balloons tremendously for minorities and the less educated. Whereas Western and Pettit estimate a 1.2% probability of incarceration for a white male with at least some college (1 of 100) and 28% for a white male with less than a high-school education (28 of 100), a black male faces an overall probability of incarceration of 27 percent (27 of 100), and if less than a high school education, a 68% probability (68 of 100).
Does Parental Incarceration “Cause” Significant US Child Poverty? My personal bet is that parental incarceration (or being anywhere “in” the criminal justice system at any offender stage) does significantly affect US child poverty, such that addressing incarceration itself and certainly unemployment during incarceration should be significant targets of our interest and determined advocacy. Then again, we likely all suspect that “causes” likely are both multiple and interactive. Nevertheless -
Some evidence that parental incarceration is a significant correlate, if not cause, of US child poverty is shown below in the ranking of the “Top Ten” states with the highest rates of child poverty adjacent to their rank for adult incarceration:
State Poverty Rank Incarceration Rank
Mississippi 1 2
Louisiana 2 1
New Mexico 3 19
West Virginia 4 20
Alabama 5 6
Kentucky 6 7
Arkansas 7 5
S. Carolina 8 24
Tennessee 9 11
Oklahoma 10 3
(Sources: State Child Poverty Rates, World Population Review, “Child Poverty Rates by State 2023”; State Incarceration Rates/100,000 population, includes local jails plus state and federal correctional institutions, source: Prison Policy Initiative, “States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2021”)
Correlating state Child Poverty rates with Incarceration rates yields a 0.70 positive correlation So, if not a direct cause, there is at least a very high correlation between these two variables!
Absence of Child Anti-Poverty Advocates
While I am definitely not a highly qualified researcher on US child poverty, my so-far examination shows major US child anti-poverty advocates almost entirely silent on the roles and responsibilities of incarceration, prisons, prison labor, or certainly of policy proposals addressing raising the employment opportunities, skills, and channels of meeting financial responsibilities to children and families. Here’s what I find so far:
Children’s Defense Fund (CDF): Working with the Urban Institute, the CDF issued Ending Childhood Poverty Now, listing 9 policy improvements believed capable of reducing US child poverty 57%. The recommendations include principally taxpayer-dependent payments or tax reductions through child-care subsidies, increases in the earned income tax credit, making the child tax and child and dependent care tax credits fully refundable, and increasing SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – “food stamps”) benefits, plus housing vouchers. In addition, CDF policy recommendations include non-custodial parent-paid child support pass-throughs for TANF families, and recommends an increase in the Federal minimum wage. Finally, CDF recommends creating transitional jobs for the unemployed and underemployed, presumably also taxpayer funded. While we might presume former incarcerants eligible and being “hired” into such transitional jobs, at least on the website I see no reference whatsoever to either incarcerated workers or ex-offenders, but no explicit advocacy for the idled or discouraged workers with felony histories. So far as I can see, the CDF makes 9 recommendations without any explicit mention of jobs for either incarcerated workers or the formerly incarcerated, while by-and-large their recommendations depend primarily on taxpayer subsidies rather than work opportunities.
Child Trends: Child Trends defines itself as “the leading research organization in the US focused solely on improving the lives of children and youth…If it affects children and youth, Child Trends is on it.” (www.childtrends.org).
Child Trends powerfully shows that child poverty is being most significantly cut by increased use of the Social Safety net, including steps so basic as providing assistance to children based on their circumstances rather than those of their parents, particularly earnings requirements for benefits. So, what does the Child Trends website say regarding unemployment during incarceration as a child poverty policy variable? Well, here’s something at least encouraging and powerful from “Lessons From a Historic Decline in Child Poverty” (Sep 22, Dana Thompson, Renee Ryberg et al), namely Child Trends policy recommendation #5, to “promote the economic, social, and caregiving benefits that families bring to children and reform policies that undermine their roles in childrens lives” (italics mine), and in the detail following with…
“Furthermore, public officials should carefully reform policies and institutions that undermine the consistent presence of stable caregivers in the lives of children, and especially those that undermine the role and presence of fathers. In 2020, nearly 7 percent of children and youth had a parent serve time in jail.”
The two critical things that stand out most to me in Child Trends recommendations are (1) they call for increases in taxpayer funding for addressing child poverty, and (2) while making a general and extraordinarily important acknowledging swipe at incarceration itself as a notable factor in child poverty, I am not aware of Child Trends researching or examining incarceration as a policy variable of interest, and I certainly do not see any language reasonably interpreted as aggressively considering unemployment during incarceration as a policy variable.
Annie E. Casey Foundation: Actually, the Annie E. Casey Foundation offers some outstanding data and argument for reducing US child poverty by confronting our overuse of incarceration, as well as arguing for much improved re-entry education and viable post-release improvements to raise released parents financial and caregiving/involvement in improving child resources and care. And I applaud and highly recommend the Foundation’s April, 2016, report, A Shared Sentence –ways in which incarceration itself can be modified to preserve income and parenting.
Nevertheless, even this outstanding report appears to be silent on addressing the forced unemployment of persons while they are incarcerated. Nor does the Foundation appear to address, for examples, the absence of adequate wage rates, Social Security contributions (by the employee or correctional “employer”), or the denial of jobs offering family healthcare benefits
Save the Children: Save the Children (SavetheChildren.org) presents itself as “the world’s leading expert on childhood.” And indeed Save the Children provides both a huge array of US and global information on children and especially child poverty, but also carries out domestically and globally direct service programs in food, health, education, and advocacy for children, particularly in reducing childhood poverty. Primary US domestic initiatives emphasize child care, nutrition (like SNAP and WIC), mental health, and the “Save the Children Action Network” (SCAN) specifically addresses in “Families Belong Together” keeping children united with parents after crossing the US border. However, I find no mention whatsoever, including in the report 2021 US Complement to the Global Childhood Report any mention or reference to the consequences of parental incarceration on US child poverty. The report does array more than once the ranking of “worst” and best states with respect to child poverty with rankings like those shown in this blog text.
Conclusion
In sum, after decades of observing stakeholder debates on prison labor reform, and freely admitting that I may have somehow overlooked some strong and powerful line of child poverty advocacy joining ranks with either prison reform or more specifically prison labor reform, I do not recall even one conference or occasion (beyond my own actions) finding child advocates of any stripe either in the room, in the hearing, in the conference, or anywhere else advocating firmly for these correctional reforms.