Breyona Lampley

Ethnic Studies
Block 4

Research Paper
(Incarcerated Minority Fathers Vs. Single Parent Households)

"If we are honest​ with ourselves, we’ll admit that too many fathers are missing —
missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities,
acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it,"
this was said by Barack Obama himself. This is 100% true and understanding that a lot of the
problems we see everyday, like the circle of life, is because most of the black and brown children
in our urban communities lack a real father figure in their lives. But the real question is, is the
lack of a father in minority children's lives all falls on the father? Or does a large percentage of
this falls on the criminal justice system?

A lot of things we fail to realize is that the world we live in is corrupt. Our country cares
more about money than their citizens safety. Our “prisons are built based on the literacy scores
of 3rd graders”(“​Do Prisons Use Reading Scores to Predict Number of Beds Needed?” 2013)​,
what does that tell you? While doing this project I’ve learned a lot about our justice system. For
instance, did you know ”the​ ​it costs ​more than 60 billion dollars a year​ to keep all of these people
locked up”(Mass Incarceration 2019). In our criminal justice system especially in our police
forces, we see that most arrests or indictments are directly related to minority bias. We fear our
own source of “protection” because of things like police brutality because of every black males
with dreads look the same, or because a person has to “stop resisting” or shouldn’t be reaching
for a license and registration and ends up with a hole in they chest the size of a dime. I’ve with
my own eyes at the age of ten, my father get gunned down by a officer because of a routine
traffic stop, and all I can remember, after my father came out the police station, was him saying
“they were trying to keep their quota up,” this carelessness for HUMAN life needs to come to an
end, like yesterday.

In 2017, ”72% of Illinois African American children lived in single-parent

household”(Children in Single-Parent Families by Race 2017), that higher than any other race in
the population of Illinois. We live in a society where children with one parent is enough for a
child, considering that most children don’t have neither. But the problem with this, is that a
percentage of those 72% of children with one parent is going through more than you know. Kids
in our urban communities suffer for drug addict mother and are struggling to support themselves
and their siblings at such a young age, or they fall into what this world’s expectation of us is: a
savage or gangster. Our society’s expectation(a reference from Ms.Green) of the way our brains
work is slowly evolving into a reality. The effect of a single-parent households on our children
are tremendously unbearable, a lot of these children suffer from mental instability because of the
effects of abandonment issues, trust issues, etc.

Mass incarceration is a big part of why there are so many single-parent households. In the
last couple of years, “African Americans constituted 2.3 million, or 34%, of the total 6.8 million
correctional population​ ​in Illinois”(Criminal Justice Fact Sheet). So the result of incarcerated
fathers contributes to the escalation of single-parent households. Economic Society Institute
stated, “an African American child is six times as likely as a white child to have or have had an
incarcerated parent”(Mass Incarceration and Children's Outcomes 2016), which means they are 6
times as likely to undergo a harder time growing up without the proper support than a white
child. The rate of incarcerated fathers is only increasing the rate of single parent households,
which raises the number of mental unstable children, leading to the increasing rate of crime.
Where do we go from here?

Referring back the quote I stated in the beginning, although Obama was 100 percent
correct in my opinion, his objective is pointing in the wrong direction. The truth of the matter is
that the understanding of why our children are unfortunately are becoming oppressed because of
the lack of a fatherly figure in their life, but you cannot eliminate the fact that our justice system
is completely corrupted and will never change in my personal opinion. So, to answer my own
question, the justice system is a huge part in why our father aren’t around and we need to change
that. But what can we do about it? I believe if our generation takes the opportunity to help
support our youth so that we can see the change in our economic system, it would make a huge
difference. The BBBS(Big Brother Big Sister) program can significantly change the mindsets of
a lot.

But what about the opposite side of the matter, most kids take the opportunity to use the
lack of a fatherly figure to strive. The more the kids have to step up and take the opportunity to
become more independent and responsible, more kids become more self reliant and use those
responsibilities to push for a greater life for themselves and their family. The Office of Justice
Programs explains, that some children are forced to live with alcoholic and abusive fathers, they
are lucky enough that they get to be dismissed from the culture of their living situation.
 Works Cited

“Children in Single-Parent Families by Race | KIDS COUNT Data Center.” KIDS COUNT Data
Center: A Project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation,
datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by#detailed/2/15/fals
e/871,870,573,869,36,868,867,133,38,35/10,11,9,12,1,185,13/432,431.

“Criminal Justice Fact Sheet.” ​NAACP​, www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/.

“Hidden Consequences: The Impact of Incarceration on Dependent Children.” National Institute

of Justice, www.nij.gov/journals/278/pages/impact-of-incarceration-on-dependent-children.aspx.
Martin , Eric. “Hidden Consequences: The Impact of Incarceration on Dependent Children.”
National Institute of Justice, 2019,
www.nij.gov/journals/278/pages/impact-of-incarceration-on-dependent-children.aspx​.

“Mass Incarceration.” Equal Justice Initiative, 20 May 2019, eji.org/mass-incarceration.

Partner, Readers. “Do Prisons Use Reading Scores to Predict Number of Beds Needed?”
Reading Partners, 2013,
readingpartners.org/blog/do-prisons-use-third-grade-reading-scores-to-predict-the-number-of-pri
son-beds-theyll-need/.

Morsy, Leila, and Richard Rothstein. “Mass Incarceration and Children's Outcomes: Criminal
Justice Policy Is Education Policy.” ​Economic Policy Institute​, 15 Dec. 2016,
www.epi.org/publication/mass-incarceration-and-childrens-outcomes/.

“The Psychological Effects of Living with a Single Parent.” Secureteen.com,

www.secureteen.com/single-dad/negative-psychological-effects-of-a-single-parent-family-on-chi
ldren/.