This book centers directly impacted Black children who have lived through parental incarceration. Their stories are told from holistic perspectives incorporating the full range of collateral consequences. Shifting from the Eurocentric and capitalistic viewpoint, they move us beyond negative outcomes to a positive prism by providing insider perspective, strategy, advice, and compelling experiences. We center Black children of incarcerated parents’ (BCOIP’s) rich narratives to show how they are conscious thinkers with perspectives that can help reimagine all Black children’s lives and futures. These stories help readers better understand the importance of exploring the revolutionary ways BCOIP continue to survive, thrive, and transform amid the dynamic challenges surrounding mass incarceration. The book shifts the social dialogue from fear of intergenerational crime and incarceration to resilience, success, Black joy, and self-love, and moves from sympathetic into an empathetic agenda. The book brings to the forefront counter-storytelling through oral narratives that fill a gap in literature that leaves out the voices of children of incarcerated parents who are doctors, lawyers, professional athletes, musicians, community leaders, activists, professors, teachers, bestselling authors, and much more. These are vital experiences to share because not all BCOIP will end up in prison, jail, or a detention center. Black Children of Incarcerated Parents Speak Truth to Power will be of great interest to scholars from the humanistic social sciences and humanities. It is also a timely resource for students (high school, undergraduate, and graduate) in sociology, criminology, corrections, humanities, social work, counseling, education, social justice, and related courses, as well as agency administrators, community organizations servicing families of the incarcerated, specifically incarcerated parents and the children of incarcerated parents, themselves.

Drawing on qualitative research conducted with young people in New York, this volume highlights the unique experiences of children of incarcerated parents (COIP) and counters deficit-based narratives to consider how young people’s voices can inform and improve educational support services. Supporting Children of Incarcerated Parents in Schools combines the author’s original research and personal experiences with an analysis of existing scholarship to provide unique insight into how COIP experience schooling in the United States. With a focus on the benefits of qualitative research for providing a more nuanced portrayal of these children and their experiences, the text foregrounds youth voices and emphasizes the resilience, maturity, and compassion which these young people demonstrate. By calling attention to the challenges that COIP face in and out of school, and also addressing associated issues around race and racism, the book offers large and small-scale changes that educators and other allies can use to better support children of incarcerated parents. This volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers interested in the sociology of education, race and urban education, and the impacts of parental incarceration specifically. It will also be of benefit to educators and school leaders who are supporting young people affected by these issues.

Rethinking Prison Reentry: Transforming Humiliation into Humility describes a prison-based education pedagogy designed to address a prevalent racial politics of shaming, self-segregation, and transgenerational learned helplessness. So many incarcerated black men face insurmountable psychosocial obstacles when attempting to make the successful transition back into ownership of their lives. Tony Gaskew confronts the issue of redemption and reconciliation head-on by critically examining the “triads of culpability” when it comes to crime and justice in America: (1) of those who commit crimes; (2) of those who enforce criminal laws; and (3) of those who stand by and do nothing. He explores the growth of a black counterculture of crime that has created modern-day killing fields across urban neighborhoods and challenges the incarcerated black men trapped within its socially constructed lies, helping them to draw upon the strength of their cultural privilege to transform from criminal offender into incarcerated student.

This book presents multidimensional knowledge on children of incarcerated parents using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory as an organizing framework. It examines the extent to which different levels of the environment are supportive (i.e., leading to resilience) and stress-producing (i.e., contributing to risk). The volume explores four levels of the environment – microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem – with specific theories and paradigms woven into the inquiry at each. At the level of child and family, it discusses the factors that influence resilience and risk in children from gestation through young adulthood; at the community level, it addresses risk and resilience in the interactions between children and families and the various systems with which they interact (e.g., child welfare). Key areas of coverage include: · A description of the factors that influence the quality of programming for children and their families. · A critical analysis of state and national policies that affect which individuals receive, or fail to receive, specific services. · An overview and evaluation of the state of knowledge and implications for research and practice to improve outcomes for children of incarcerated parents. · An organizing framework to help researchers identify gaps in the existing knowledge base and distills and organizes evidence-based information for practitioners. Children of Incarcerated Parents is an essential resource for researchers, professors, and graduate students as well as practitioners, therapists, and other professionals in child and school psychology, family studies, public health, and all interrelated disciplines, including developmental psychology, criminal justice, social work, educational policy and politics.

This book is an essential clinician's guide to understanding, unpacking, treating, and healing individual, familial, and communal wounds associated with parental incarceration. Readers gain familiarity with integrative micro and macro healing techniques and modalities that are currently being utilized as anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and innovative practices. They also develop an understanding of and deeper unpacking of their own biases within the therapeutic relationship. The book offers an extensive overview of clinical practice models such as trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, narrative therapy, and relational and attachment-based therapy for treating trauma symptoms associated with children of incarcerated parents, their families, and their surrounding communities. The author provides guidance on healing complex trauma through phase-oriented, multimodal, and skill-focused treatment approaches, with emphasis on strengthening one's own narrative of power and pain while building community in supportive spaces. Among the topics covered: Why Criminal Justice Is Relevant to All Clinical Practitioners Impact of Secondary Incarceration: Collateral Consequences for Children and Families Psychosocial Stressors for Children of Incarcerated Parents: Conspiracy of Silence and Ambiguous Loss Supervision and the Therapeutic Alliance: Critical Consciousness and Anti-racist Clinical Training and Undoing Clinical Partnership: Application of Dismantling Anti-Blackness Through Anti-oppressive Practice and Critical Consciousness An Integrative Approach to Clinical Social Work Practice with Children of Incarcerated Parents enhances therapeutic relationships for social workers, teaches innovative clinical practices most effective for this population, and offers a comprehensive discussion and understanding of the complex traumas faced both historically and presently by children and families impacted by the criminal justice system. Although designed to inspire and train social workers, the guide has significantly wide-ranging application for mental health and medical providers and other clinicians interested in enhancing their work with children and families impacted by the criminal justice system in diverse clinical practice settings. Lay practitioners and policymakers within government and not-for-profit settings also will find the book of interest.

My book will help show women that being a strong-minded and focused woman who shows fearlessness will not fall. So I wanted to bring this book out to help you. This has helped me get to where I am at in my life. I’ve been through some struggles and ups and downs like some women, and I was confused about what to do with my life. It makes you feel beautiful inside. It’s encouraging and inspiring for women. So if you ever want to be successful and want to be a professional woman, you have to have a strong mind and be strong about life. So when you read my book, it will help you with the steps you need to know on how to be strong and live a better life for you and your family, friends, and anyone who will need help to do better with themselves. And as you read through my book and take the steps in my book, you’re gonna feel so thankful and love every step of the way and say to yourself, “I did it” and “I made it” with this inspirational book. So I just want you to be happy right now real quick because you are the creator of your destiny and keep your masterpiece. I want the world to know who I really am and show the beautiful, loving, kind, caring, compassionate, strong, wonderful, beautiful woman and mother that I am. I love you all, and God loves you too. Thank you, Brandy Farley

Parents, young people, community organizers, and educators describe how they are fighting systemic racism in schools by building a new intersectional educational justice movement. Illuminating the struggles and triumphs of the emerging educational justice movement, this anthology tells the stories of how black and brown parents, students, educators, and their allies are fighting back against systemic inequities and the mistreatment of children of color in low-income communities. It offers a social justice alternative to the corporate reform movement that seeks to privatize public education through expanding charter schools and voucher programs. To address the systemic racism in our education system and in the broader society, the contributors argue that what is needed is a movement led by those most affected by injustice--students of color and their parents--that builds alliances across sectors and with other social justice movements addressing immigration, LGBTQ rights, labor rights, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Representing a diverse range of social justice organizations from across the US, including the Chicago Teachers Union and the Genders and Sexualities Alliance Network, the essayists recount their journeys to movement building and offer practical organizing strategies and community-based alternatives to traditional education reform and privatization schemes. Lift Us Up! will outrage, inform, and mobilize parents, educators, and concerned citizens about what is wrong in American schools today and how activists are fighting for and achieving change.

When Texas Prison Scams Religion exposes corruption in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, especially in the abuse of religion. In many ways, this book is a literature review of 1,800-plus works that defends freedom of conscience in prison while exposing the unconstitutionality of the seminary program that “buys faith with favor” from prisoners. The state veritably ordains the prisoner a “Field Minister” that represents the offices of the Governor, TDCJ Director, and wardens throughout the prison. Therein, TDCJ lies about neutrality in a program all about Christian missions and lies again in falsely certifying elementary Bible students as counselors. Why is the director sponsoring psychopaths counseling psychopaths? In fact, TDCJ pays $314 million a year to UTMB for psychiatric care and receives not a single report of the care given, and worse, for UTMB generates no reports itself. The underbelly TDCJ’s executive culture of cover up is exposed. TDCJ has hired the lowest qualified of the applicant pool many times in the last 25 years and regularly destroys statistics on violence. TDCJ Dir. Collier led the prison to model Louisiana Warden Burl Cain, the most scandal-ridden in penal history according to a host of published news stories for 20 years. Therein, Collier led TDCJ to favor the smallest segment of religious society within Evangelical Dominionism. Texas has no business endorsing the truth of any religion over another. We close with a proposal that utilizes the 400,000,000 hours of officer contact over ten years as a definitive influence in contrast to a commissioner that spends less than 10 minutes on each decision. Maness has been lobbying Austin for 15 years to definitively access staff for his “100,000 Mothers’ 1% Certainty Parole Texas Constitutional Amendment,” which would revolutionize prison culture and save Texans millions of the dollars.

I wrote this book because I want people to visualize the man that has been taken from you, from His biological children, and from His biological grandchildren, and great grandchildren. It is important that the world and all of the nations of the earth come to know of His greatness, His purpose and His message. This book will take you on a journey that will define his message and purpose, and what it was like to be the Biological Children of Yahweh Ben Yahweh. This Book will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you think like never before, causing all men both small and great to "study" like never before!

ALL DAY is a behind-the-bars, personal glimpse into the issue of mass incarceration via an unpredictable, insightful and ultimately hopeful reflection on teaching teens while they await sentencing. Told with equal parts raw honesty and unbridled compassion, ALL DAY recounts a year in Liza Jessie Peterson's classroom at Island Academy, the high school for inmates detained at New York City's Rikers Island. A poet and actress who had done occasional workshops at the correctional facility, Peterson was ill-prepared for a full-time stint teaching in the GED program for the incarcerated youths. For the first time faced with full days teaching the rambunctious, hyper, and fragile adolescent inmates, "Ms. P" comes to understand the essence of her predominantly Black and Latino students as she attempts not only to educate them, but to instill them with a sense of self-worth long stripped from their lives. "I have quite a spirited group of drama kings, court jesters, flyboy gangsters, tricksters, and wannabe pimps all in my charge, all up in my face, to educate," Peterson discovers. "Corralling this motley crew of bad-news bears to do any lesson is like running boot camp for hyperactive gremlins. I have to be consistent, alert, firm, witty, fearless, and demanding, and most important, I have to have strong command of the subject I'm teaching." Discipline is always a challenge, with the students spouting street-infused backtalk and often bouncing off the walls with pent-up testosterone. Peterson learns quickly that she must keep the upper hand-set the rules and enforce them with rigor, even when her sympathetic heart starts to waver. Despite their relentless bravura and antics-and in part because of it-Peterson becomes a fierce advocate for her students. She works to instill the young men, mostly black, with a sense of pride about their history and culture: from their African roots to Langston Hughes and Malcolm X. She encourages them to explore and express their true feelings by writing their own poems and essays. When the boys push her buttons (on an almost daily basis) she pushes back, demanding that they meet not only her expectations or the standards of the curriculum, but set expectations for themselves-something most of them have never before been asked to do. She witnesses some amazing successes as some of the boys come into their own under her tutelage. Peterson vividly captures the prison milieu and the exuberance of the kids who have been handed a raw deal by society and have become lost within the system. Her time in the classroom teaches her something, too-that these boys want to be rescued. They want normalcy and love and opportunity.