• A Primer on Gender-Related Issues that Affect Female Offenders (Myrna S. Raeder)
    • 20-SPG CRIMJUST 4 (2005). This Article discusses the special circumstances that are created when women are incarcerated. The author points out that more than 5 million children have been affected due to their mother’s arrest. The article also shows that children of incarcerated women are more likely to end up in the child protective system, since only about 30% of fathers take the children in these situations, which results in many siblings being separated. Additionally, the author states that the United States is “one of the few countries that routinely separate incarcerated mothers from their infants.”
  • Behind the Glass Wall: Barriers that Incarcerated Parents Face Regarding the Care, Custody and Control of their Children (Pamela Lewis)
    • This Article discusses the obstacles confronting incarcerated parents who try to keep in contact with their children. Problems include evidentiary hearings on visitation, as well as the amorphous and subjective “best interests of the child” standard, which often tends to weight against incarcerated parents. The Article also reviews due process protections for incarcerated parents.
  • Building Debt While Doing Time: Child Support and Incarceration (Jessica Pearson)
    • 43 Judges’ Journal 5 (Winter 2004). This article discusses the extensive discretion that judges have nationwide in deciding whether an incarcerated parent’s child support obligations continue during the period of incarceration or whether they are stayed during that time, as well as the debate over the issue.
  • Can My Daddy Hug Me?: Deciding Whether Visiting Dad in a Prison Facility is in the Best Interest of the Child (Rachel Sims)
    • 66 Brooklyn L. Rev. 933 (2000-01). This Note offers a national overview of cases involving the rights of incarcerated fathers in visitation matters. The Note also proposes a 4-part policy for incarcerated fathers, including the right to a visitation hearing if the crime involved a child, the role of the child’s attorney and a forensic psychologist at the hearing, a best interests analysis allowing a child to visit a father in prison, and a presumption that murder of another parent is a bar to visitation.
  • Clearing Your Name: A Step By Step Guide Through the New York State Central Register of Child Abuse & Maltreatment (Lansner & Kubitschek)
    • This pamphlet guides users through the process of determining whether there is a child abuse/neglect report for the user, whether that information is available to potential employers and certain agencies, and detailing the processes of hearings and appeals.
  • Collateral Sanctions and Civil Disabilities: The Secret Barrier to True Sentencing Reform for Legislatures and Sentencing Commissions (Sabra Micah Barnett)
    • 55 Ala. L. Rev. 375. This commentary focuses primarily upon Alabama law and federal law, yet it also addresses the impact of criminal convictions upon all poor families. Essentially, Barnett argues that the collateral sanctions of criminal convictions may include parents unable to “act as sufficient caregivers to meet the basic needs of their children.” These neglected children may then be more likely themselves to engage in violent crime.
  • Holistic is Not a Bad Word: A Criminal Defense Attorney’s Guide to Using Invisible Punishments as an Advocacy Strategy (McGregor Smyth)
    • 36 U. Tol. L. Rev. 479 (2005)
  • Introduction: The Collateral Consequences of Imprisonment (Marc Mauer)
    • 30 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1491 (2003). This Article/Symposium piece introduces and summarizes the speakers for the Twelfth Annual Symposium on Contemporary Urban Challenges, Beyond the Sentence: Post-Incarceration Legal, Social, and Economic Consequences of Criminal Convictions at Fordham Law School. Mauer explains how loss of income and loss of family support have profound impacts upon the family of the offender. Single parents have to secure relative care, or else face the reality that their child will be placed in foster care. Mauer poignantly states “[p]risoners are frequently housed hundreds of miles from home, making it difficult for families, particularly low-income families, to visit. All this contributes to a “long-lasting and damaging impact upon the parent-child relationship” and one that is “potentially even more severe” for children of incarcerated parents who are in foster care.” Even further, younger children see a community of older brothers and neighbors in jail. Lastly “Men who are not around much, or who suffer the disabilities of a prison record, hardly make for good marriage partners.”
  • Prisoner Reentry: Issues for Practice and Policy (Jeremy Travis, Laurie O. Robinson, Amy L. Solomon)
    • 17-SPG Crim. Just. 12 (Spring 2002). This policy piece outlines reform efforts across the nation to assist prisoners when returning home. It emphasizes the need for coordinated community outreach to assist offenders in all aspects of re-entry, including family life and healthy family functioning
  • Procedural Due Process Rights of Incarcerated Parents in Termination of Parental Rights Proceedings: A Fifty-State Analysis (Philip Genty)
    • 30 J. Fam. L. 757
  • Protecting the Ties That Bind from Behind Bars: A Call for Equal Opportunities for Incarcerated Fathers and Their Children to Maintain the Parent-Child Relationship (Elise Zealand)
    • 31 Colum. J.L. & Soc. Probs. 247 (1988). This Note offers an array of topics relevant across the states for incarcerated fathers and their legal rights. The author specifically notes the risks that such fathers will have their parental rights terminated either by the State or via stepparent adoptions. The author concludes that prohibiting visitation with children and their incarcerated fathers is harmful to the inmates, the families and society as a whole.
  • Sex Offender Registration: Community Safety or Invasion of Privacy? (Maria Orecchio & Theresa A. Tebbett)
    • 13 St. John’s J. Legal Comment. 675 (1999). This Note provides a detailed overview of New York’s Sex Offender Registration Act (NYSORA). It then analyzes NYSORA’s constitutional impact and consequences, particularly to repeat sex offenders. The Note ultimately proposes a similar registry for violent offenders.
  • Symposium: New Voices on the War on Drugs: “Collateral Damage”: No Re-entry for Drug Offenders (Nora V. Demleitner)
    • 47 Vill. L. Rev. 1027. Stating, inter alia, that “[t]he rising number of women in prisons is particularly distressing since many of them are mothers whose absence has a profound impact on their children.” The article also discusses the impact of federal laws denying housing, foster care and TANF benefits to certain categories of offenders, and how this may prevent parents post-incarceration from being able to provide a safe and healthy environment for their children.
  • Systems of Oppression: The Collateral Consequences of Incarceration and Their Effects on Black Communities (Margaret E. Finzen)
    • 12 Geo. J. on Poverty L & Pol’y 299 (2005). This Note outlines how collateral consequences of convictions predominately affect persons and families of color due to the higher incarceration rate of Black persons. The Note urges the legislature to consider abolishing collateral consequences if not for the ex-offender, then for the families of these ex-offenders, the Black community and the nation as a whole.
  • The IMPACT of the Adoption and Safe Families Act on Children of Incarcerated Parents (Philip Genty, Arlene Lee, and Mimi Laver)
    • Child Welfare League of America, 2005.
  • The Social and Moral Cost of Mass Incarceration in African American Communities (Dorothy E. Roberts)
    • 56 Stan. L. Rev. 1271 (2004). This Article states that families “lose income, assistance with child care, and bear expenses related to supporting and maintaining contact with incarcerated family members.” The author further states that the stresses and pressures of having a family member incarcerated often fall on the shoulders of women, because it is “women struggling to manage budgets consumed by addictions; women trying to hold families together when ties are weakened by prolonged absence; women attempting to manage the shame and stigma of incarceration; and women trying to prevent children from becoming casualties of the war on drugs” (Beth E. Richie, “The Social Impact of Mass Incarceration on Women,” Invisible Punishment ). Additionally, the Article discusses the effect of parental incarceration on children, the shame and other consequences that fall upon them, and the disproportionate impact upon African American communities.