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Nearly 40 percent of children in the United States live in households where an adult has faced criminal charges; this rate increases to over 60 percent for Black and Indigenous children, as well as children experiencing poverty. As a result, family separation due to mass criminalization has become a developmental touchstone for the majority of Black, Indigenous, and Latine children. Millions of children across the country routinely experience separation from caregivers as a direct result of racist, punitive policies which are reflected across child welfare, policing, and correctional and immigration systems.
In their report, Unified, Safe, and Well: Building Life-Affirming Systems for Justice-Impacted Families, Deanie Anyangwe and Alycia Hardy analyze proposed federal policies, existing policy reforms, and state and local programs created to address family separation through incarceration. To reduce the harms of family separation, federal and state actors have instituted interventions such as the Finding Alternatives to Mass Incarceration: Lives Improved by Ending Separations (FAMILIES) Act and the Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention’s (OJJDP) Family Based Alternative Justice Grant Program. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with two programs funded by OJJDP as well as a state-funded alternative sentencing program. In addition to analyses of these three programs, the report:
- places family separation within its larger historical context
- discusses the criminal legal landscape
- explains the impacts of family separation on children, families, and communities at large
- reviews existing federal approaches to address family separation
- outlines challenges and barriers to effective and just implementation
The authors offer recommendations for harm reduction and transformative systems change to meaningfully address family separation. These recommendations provide practical policy reforms for the near term as well as recommendations that envision a future that does not rely on punitive and coercive strategies to address social issues and community needs.
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