With three quarters of a million parents in prison, this affects their children by disrupting parent-child relationships, altering the networks of familial support, and placing new burdens on governmental services such as schools, foster care, adoption agencies, and youth-serving organizations. This article reviews the cost to society from parental incarceration through the criminal justice system.

This article, through the Family Strengthening Policy Center, reviews a new model to help support families raising children in low-income environments. Children have better outcomes when cared for by supportive families in supportive communitives. This article outlines ways in which connections can be increased in low-income communities for children with incarcerated parents.

This report, from the Urban Institute, describes incarceration and prisoner reentry trends in Philadelphia between 1996 and 2003. By reviewing characteristics of individuals returning to the community, this study provides insight on challenges regarding prisoner reentry in Philadelphia.

600,000 people on average are released from prison every year, and face multiple barriers as they reenter society. This paper outlines research on employment-focused prisoner reentry programs and provides information on current evaluations on similar programs.

It is estimated that nearly two million children have an incarcerated parent. This article reviews the challenges that these children face and potential psychological and behavioral implications. Due to the disruption in the child's life, mentoring can be a critical factor to encourage positive outcomes, and the article concludes with reviewing relevant mentoring programs.

This research brief from the Urban Institute describes preliminary findings from a study of the experiences of prisoners returning home to areas around Cleveland. Providing a broad range of reentry challenges, authors examine potential factors related to post-release success or failure, which include employment, health challenges, and family and community life.

The Urban Institute and Winston Salem State University surveyed Weed and Seed sites around the country to review the extent to which Weed and Seed sites are engaged in prisoner reentry efforts. This report summarizes the ways that Weed and Seed sites are focusing on prisoner reentry and working with partner organizations to reduce recidivism and create safer, healthier communities.

Ready4Work is a demonstration project through the Department of Labor, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the Ford Foundation to provide services to ex-prisoners. The program is designed to meet the needs of this population, as well as examine the capacity of community- and faith-based organizations to serve the population. Early outcomes show that participants are maintaining employment at high rates and have significantly lower levels of recidivism than the national average.

From the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, this report highlights reasons to engage incarcerated parents and their children in programs to help support reunification. The authors offer recommendations to help balance addressing criminal behavior of parents and child safety to keep families connected.

This resource from the Urban Institute provides information on how to address prisoner reentry issues through mapping and analysis of neighborhood-level data. Through mapping data, local officials and stakeholders can improve service delivery to this target population.