Many months ago I recorded an episode of “Our America” hosted by Lisa Ling titled “Incarceration Generation,” and I finally found time to watch it yesterday. Following the lives of two incarcerated young men in Georgia, Nick and Royal, Ling focuses on the past and future families of these two men, wondering how their families of origin shaped their path to prison and how their imprisonment shapes the lives of their current and future families.
Ling covers much statistical and economic common ground that continues to startle. She begins with depressing statistics like “African-American men make up 6% of the total American population but 1/3 of the incarcerated.” She reminded me of the Pew Charitable Trust funded report “1 in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008.”
“Three decades of growth in America’s prison population has quietly nudged the nation across a sobering threshold: for the first time, more than one in every 100 adults is now confined in an American jail or prison. According to figures gathered and analyzed by the Pew Public Safety Performance Project, the number of people behind bars in the United States continued to climb in 2007, saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime.
For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling. While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine. Gender adds another dimension to the picture. Men still are roughly 10 times more likely to be in jail or prison, but the female population is burgeoning at a far brisker pace. For black women in their mid- to late-30s, the incarceration rate also has hit the 1-in-100 mark. Growing older, meanwhile, continues to have a dramatic chilling effect on criminal behavior. While one in every 53 people in their 20s is behind bars, the rate for those over 55 falls to one in 837.”
Each man faced difficulties economically growing up, which in part spurred their involvement in crime. But prison has devastating effects on their hope of changing their economic outlook legally after prison as well.  She follows each man as they try to figure out how to get a job when every job application asks if you’ve ever been convicted of a felony. As Royal’s stepfather says, “Once you’ve done time on the inside, you face a life sentence on the outside…No one will have you.”
Although the stats and the economic roots and impact of prison are humbling and eye-opening, I was struck by how the title “Incarceration Generation” could easily have been changed to “Fathers Matter and Prison is Terrible for Fatherhood.” Ling spends a good deal of time with Nick’s girlfriend and two young sons who anticipate his release from prison soon. One of his sons has not yet met him.   Ling asks the girlfriend what she wants when he gets home:
“I want a 2 parent, 2 income household. If he can’t give me that, then I’m gone.”
But she is worried about male role models. Every male in her life (dad, brother and boyfriend) is in prison. What chance do her young sons have? Nick seems pretty hopeless as well: he has a 9th grade education, admits he doesn’t know how to use a computer, and with being in and out of prison for the last 8 years, has no job experience.
Royal, on the other hand, is spending his days at the public library taking computer classes and filling out resumes. His family of origin is supportive, especially his stepfather, Carl, who as an ex-convict started a non-profit organization that supports previous prisoners. They highlight a program he leads in a Georgia school that offers training to teen dads on parenting skills. They film him in a full cafeteria of teen boys who are already fathers. He asks how many of them grew up with their dads. Two raise their hands. “Two,” he says, “Boys can make babies, but it takes a man to raise one. Who wants to be a man?”
Overall, the negative impact of incarceration on the individual, the family, and the community as a whole is staggering, and Ling covers just a part of Georgia and she stops at description. As I turned off the television, I realized again that description only goes so far and that it’s up to us to highlight the prescriptions that are working and to start thinking and trying more.
