From, "Prison and the Poverty Trap," New York Times, 2/18/13
Epidemiologists have found
that when the incarceration rate rises in a county, there tends to be a
subsequent increase in the rates of sexually transmitted diseases and
teenage pregnancy, possibly because women have less power to require
their partners to practice protected sex or remain monogamous.
When researchers try to explain why AIDS is much more prevalent among blacks than whites, they point to the consequences of incarceration, which disrupts steady relationships and can lead to high-risk sexual behavior.
When sociologists look for causes of child poverty and juvenile
delinquency, they link these problems to the incarceration of parents
and the resulting economic and emotional strains on families.
Some families, of course, benefit after an abusive parent or spouse is
locked up. But Christopher Wildeman, a Yale sociologist, has found that
children are generally more likely to suffer academically and socially
after the incarceration of a parent. Boys left fatherless become more physically aggressive. Spouses of prisoners become more prone to depression and other mental and physical problems.
“Education, income, housing, health — incarceration affects everyone and
everything in the nation’s low-income neighborhoods,” said Megan
Comfort, a sociologist at the nonprofit research organization RTI
International who has analyzed what she calls the “secondary prisonization” of women with partners serving time in San Quentin State Prison.
