If each of us was born in America, with equal opportunity, good education facilities, safe neighborhoods, good jobs, and no systemic racism, then one would think that the chances of a given person going to prison, would truly rest on the content of a given person’s character. No doubt, part of who ends up going to prison, is based upon the content of that person’s character, but far too much though, has an awful lot to do with the environment that children are born into and grow up in. in other words, children of alcoholics or substance-abuse people, are going to have a strong propensity to have the same sort of issues; and children of those that have been or are currently incarcerated have a strong propensity to fall themselves, the same way, that their parent(s) did.
If America, desires to see the same sort of incarceration numbers, and in short, the same sorts of people, including fathers and then their sons and then the sons of those sons, being incarcerated, America need not change a thing; for that is exactly what we have at the present time. So then, this would presuppose that the incarceration make up will not meaningfully change in America when it comes specifically to intergenerational incarceration until there comes a time when the poor conditions that are part and parcel of this construct, are themselves fundamentally and foundationally changed for the better.
Many of those that make up our prisons, are typically those that come from dysfunctional and failing families, who are poor, disadvantaged, ill-educated, forgotten, forsaken, and often targeted by law enforcement to be arrested because these people have no one to champion their cause or to protect them, while also making it fairly easy for the police to meet their unofficial arrest quotas, which thereby serves to prove to those that want law and order, that law enforcement is consistently serving that up, very well.
In order to break free from this rather sad tale of son following their father into a life of crime, punishment, and incarceration, two basic things need to occur. The first is that those that are incarcerated, especially for that which would be considered to be victimless in the sense that nobody else or any institution has been harmed, such as in substance-abuse or vagrancy, should be provided with the appropriate tools that they need instead, to turn their lives around. Additionally, those that are incarcerated, have obvious time on their hands, of which it would behoove governance to utilize that time in order to educate or to train in a trade these prisoners in a manner in which upon their release they would thereby have skills that would aid them in finding meaningful employment. Secondly, those children that have one parent or both that are incarcerated, are absolutely vulnerable to themselves falling into the same sad pattern, of which, therefore they should be provided with robust social services to improve their welfare as well as their outlook on life.
This pattern of intergenerational incarceration, need not continue to occur, if America would put forth a more concentrated effort to ameliorate the conditions that help create crime in the first place, as well as to take the time to do more for those that are its most vulnerable and disadvantaged.