Effects of Substance Use Disorder Incarceration on African American Adult Children

Background – Over-policing the African American community for the last forty years has led to an overrepresentation of this demographic in the United States jails and prison systems. Many of these individuals are parents, making their children a highly vulnerable population. Parental incarceration is one of many adverse childhood experiences that can lead to negative mental, physical, and social outcomes. To date, there is little known about these experiences from the now adult child’s standpoint and even less so specific to the African American individual’s experience.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to understand the lived experience of adult children identifying as African American whose parent(s) were previously incarcerated (at participants’ age of 17 or under) and who had substance use disorders, specifically around an understanding of the emotional, mental, physical, and social impacts of those events.

Methods – Focus group. Online recruitment and snowball sampling. Thematic coding.

Results – Authors expect to find various important themes due to focus group transcription and coding. Themes surrounding negative and positive experiences with mental health and social support are expected to be found based on the literature review performed for the research.

Conclusions – The focus group questions aim to uncover topics surrounding the relationship outcomes of parental incarceration and substance use, social support needed or used during parental incarceration, and the mental and physical health outcomes of such experiences. Lastly, the authors aim to elucidate the programming needs of children experiencing parental imprisonment by analyzing transcribed focus groups.

Hello, my name is Cristina Adao and I’m working alongside Jackie Custer, Paige Crilly, and Quinn Schwendiman for our BSW Capstone which is discussing the effects of parental substance use disorder incarceration on African American adult children. Over policing the African American community for the last 40 years has led to an over-representation of this demographic in the United States jails and prison systems. Many of these individuals are parents, making their children a highly vulnerable population. Parental incarceration is one of many adverse childhood experiences that can lead to negative mental, physical, and social outcomes. Research conducted by Stack in 2020 states that “one in nine African American children have an incarcerated parent while only 1 in 57 white children do.” Despite this over-representation in our country’s Criminal Justice System, the lived experiences of adult children who identify as African American with a parent who has been incarcerated and manifests a substance use disorder is absent in the academic literature. The purpose of this study is to understand the lived experiences of adult children identifying as African American whose parents were previously incarcerated at participants age of 17 years or younger and who have also had substance use disorders. We seek to understand the emotional, mental, physical, and social impacts of these events. Informal observations were uncovered through conversations with individuals deemed knowledgeable about the topic of Interest. So, we spoke with individuals who have Professional Knowledge of the phenomenon, those who directly experience the phenomenon, and those identifying as African American. In documenting these interactions, narrative themes emerged and while the results are not based on research, they do align with those from the literature. We found that while the experiences of Parental incarceration were trying and stressful, contacts also disclosed strengths and resiliencies. Notable themes included the negative impacts of incarceration, such as obtaining steady employment and a lack of financial stability, as well as having social solid support. Overall the experiences provided both comfort and confusion and based on these observations we have suggested several guidelines for future research, policies, programs, and standards that include facilitating settings that are inviting for children who are visiting their incarcerated parent, advancing systemic changes to the treatment of those involved in the criminal justice system, developing formal and informal social support programs for children impacted by parental incarceration, and introducing Employment Services to incarcerated parents before re-entry into society. Thank you so much.