The report, by the Oakland, Calif.-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Forward Together, and more than a dozen community and civil rights organization that work with incarcerated people, found that costs associated with incarceration, like traveling for prison visits, had pushed more than one-third of the families into debt.
The focus on the economic hardships endured by families after an arrest is an often overlooked element of the nation’s criminal justice system, where 2.4 million people are in prison or jail — many of whom are fathers or mothers who had been their family’s primary income earners, according to the report.
After an inmate’s release, a criminal conviction often means a family loses its ability to live in government-subsidized housing. And former inmates are barred from competing for various federal student grants and loans and have difficulty finding even menial work.