New Jersey to provide academic support to children of incarcerated parents

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The New Jersey Department of Corrections is partnering with the nonprofit organization Give Something Back, also known as Give Back, to provide mentorship and services to  middle schoolers whose parents are in prison.

Officials are hoping the new program will “end the pipeline to prison,” according to Victoria Kuhn, commissioner of the Department of Corrections.

“We see this as a game changer, not just a game changer for our prison population and for their kids, but a game changer for the state of New Jersey,” she said.

A pilot will begin soon at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Clinton, the state’s only correctional facility for women. Officials will look for middle school-age students and pair them with mentors who will help them set academic and career goals. The program also has a scholarship program to cover the gap between the cost of tuition for college, university or trade school.

“It’s a long-term program,” said Melissa Helmbrecht, CEO of Give Back. “Whenever we find the young person and they become enrolled, there’s no expiration date of the program.”

Helmbrecht said the organization’s first scholarship recipient, Dr. Adam Birch, is still involved with Give Back. The assistant professor of medicine at University of Illinois Health was among the dozens who attended the grand opening of Give Back’s new office in Lockport, Illinois.

Kuhn said they thought Edna Mahan was a good place to launch the pilot.

According to the New Jersey Department of Corrections, nearly half of the 396 women housed at the facility identified themselves as mothers.

“It was very easy for us to know that we had a dedicated population at the female facility to launch this program and knew that the women at the facility would be fully invested in the program because they want the best for their kids on a daily basis,” she said.

Officials added they would expand the program to other correctional facilities in the state, citing that men have the same interest in their kids as women.

According to the National Resource Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated at Rutgers University-Camden, the impact of an incarcerated parent varies depending on the age of the child and the environment they come from.

“The caregiving environment makes a difference on how those children adjust,” said Carol F. Burton, the center’s transitional director. “Who’s talking to them, who’s communicating to them in a language that they can understand about the experience.”

A recent study from Howard University found that a majority of those interviewed did not have any involvement with the criminal justice system, pushing back on a narrative that suggests a “pipeline to prison” doesn’t exist.

“I know it can be stigmatizing to the children of incarcerated parents that there’s become this narrative that the expectation is that they are bad in some way,” said Laura Napolitano, faculty advisor for the center and an associate sociology professor at Rutgers-Camden. “The pipeline is not really borne out in the research evidence.”

Napolitano adds that help is still needed when someone is engaged with the system.

“A program that’s supposed to help in terms of not getting [children] involved in criminal activity is great as long as they’re getting the other resources that they need,” she said. “If we have, as a society, deemed that their parent needs to be away for X amount of time because of something that’s been done, the child should still be supported.”

Burton said addressing the needs for both kids and families is important.

“It’s important for family coping, it’s important for the health and well-being of the child and the parent, the incarcerated parent,” she said.