SACRAMENTO – While millions of children nationwide face extreme difficulties due to having parents who are incarcerated or under criminal supervision, State Senator Mark Leno thinks change is coming.
“The good news is that after many decades of building [more] prisons to incarcerate [more] of our citizens, and lengthening every sentence, and making [more] misdemeanors felonies, and of course selling it all under the auspices of being tough on crime, that it appears we have turned a corner,” he says.
Leno (who represents the state’s 11th District in the Bay Area) convened a policy forum earlier this month at the State Capitol to look at the impact of the criminal justice system on the families of those who enter it, particularly “children of reentry” – children and youth whose incarcerated parents have returned home. Sponsored by the California Homeless Youth Project of the California Research Bureau and the California Council on Youth Relations (a project of New America Media), the forum also explored what can be done to change the system in ways that will support current inmates, the formerly incarcerated, and their families.
http://newamericamedia.org/2014/03/for-children-of-reentry-a-new-focus-on-family-ties.php
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