Courts Must Reduce Impact Of Parental Incarceration On Kids
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This op-ed was originally published by Law360 and was co-authored by the Meadows Institute’s executive vice president for justice and health, Yolanda L. Lewis on November 1, 2024.
When the two of us — a Georgia superior court judge and a former trial court administrator — presented on the impact of parental incarceration at the National Association of Court Management’s conference in July, we asked the court officials from across the country a question: “How many of your jurisdictions track the number of criminal defendants awaiting sentencing who have children at home?”
Only two out of 100 hands went up.
These results were not surprising. By design, our country’s criminal courts are laser-focused on the defendant’s rights — the right to counsel, a speedy trial, an impartial jury and the other protections afforded by the Sixth Amendment.
But such a narrow gaze has led to a significant blind spot: who those defendants have left behind. By looking at criminal defendants in a vacuum, we have too often ignored the impact that parental incarceration registers on the lives of children, trapping this underserved population in a cycle of justice involvement and intergenerational poverty.