Growing up with an incarcerated parent can be tough. The feelings of isolation and stigma that I and others like me experienced growing up were a tough burden to bear.
To ignore the impact of incarceration on the family is to ignore how the drug war continues to dismantle black and Latino communities. The United States’ prison population — fueled by the war on drugs — is increasing, with blacks and Latinos being the majority of those incarcerated.
2.7 million children are growing up in U.S. households in which one or more parents are incarcerated. Two-thirds of these parents are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, primarily drug offenses. One in nine black children has an incarcerated parent, compared to one in 28 Latino children and one in 57 white children.
Incarcerated people have families and communities they belong to, and when they go to prison an array of problems develop.
My father immigrated to the United States from Jamaica in the 1970s. I was four years old when my dad went away, and my younger brother was two years old. He was convicted for trafficking in cocaine and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
– Read the entire article in The Huffington Post.
