Child placement after parental incarceration: The roles of parents’ race and sex

Although an in-depth body of literature finds that race is central to interactions with the criminal justice system – for both adults and their children – very little research has examined differences in child placement after parental incarceration by race. Using nationally representative data from 4806 incarcerated men and women, we employed logistic regression models to predict child placement type by parents’ race, sex, and their intersection. Our results show that children of Black and Hispanic parents are more likely to be placed with their non-incarcerated parent, while children of white parents are more likely to be placed in state care. We also find that this relationship is gendered. While children of Black and Hispanic fathers are the most likely group to be placed with their non-incarcerated parent, children of Black and Hispanic mothers are the least likely group to be in this placement type. Further, while incarcerated men of all races are relatively unlikely to have their child placed with a non-parent relative, Black and Hispanic women are significantly more likely to have a child in this placement type than white women. These results demonstrate the critical nuances in the relationships between child placement type and parents’ socio-demographic characteristics. Our results further illustrate additional ways the criminal justice system impacts entire families.