Date of Award

Spring 2017

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Major

Urban Studies

First Advisor

Garth Myers

Abstract

The mandatory sentencing criterions established via the implementation of the infamous War on Drugs has resulted in the mass incarceration of millions of nonviolent offenders in the United States, and crafted a national penal population that is distinctly the largest in the world. Blatantly disproportional and misrepresented in racial and socioeconomic configuration, America’s correctional and criminal justice system has become overcrowded with individuals who overwhelmingly hail from at-risk urban communities of color. As a result, low-income urban communities across the country have been devastated by the continuous destruction and misconfiguring of fragile families that occurs when an individual, especially one who is a parent, is imprisoned. As a result of this destruction, millions of innocent children and adolescents across the country are confronting the heavy burden of criminal activity that they did not commit by bearing the shattering effects of the experience of parental incarceration throughout their childhood process. These negative consequences and effects, ample in number and profound in severity, ultimately configure immensely into an adolescent’s prospective life chances and outcomes, and compound with a range of alternative risk factors experienced via childhood immersion in at-risk urban environments to destructively impact the future of the affected adolescent population of children with presently or formerly incarcerated parents.

Comments

Senior thesis completed at Trinity College, Hartford Connecticut for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies.

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