Mitigating the Effects of Parental Incarceration through Social Intervention

Abstract

This study addresses two central research questions: (1) are children with incarcerated parents (CIP) more deviant than nonimpacted peers and (2) is a regional mentoring social intervention program effective for CIP? Two sources of data were used, longitudinal data gathered from 173 children involved with a regional branch of Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) and a sample of children from the Fragile Families (FF) and Child Wellbeing Study. Based on the BBBS data, results find that CIP were more deviant than nonimpacted peers. Unexpectedly, children involved with BBBS reported more deviance after a year of social intervention, compared with children from FF.