Kids Outside, Parents Inside

by Matt Kelley · 2009-10-07 05:47:00 UTC
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The sprawling prison system in the United States doesn't only affect the 2.3 million people behind bars. These disappeared prisoners create holes in their communities, and their absence is often felt most profoundly by the children they leave behind.

A documentary film in progress, The Word is Love, gives us an intimate portrait of the lives and thoughts of kids with incarcerated parents. And filmmaker Marika Turano will be a guest on the web radio show Family Life Behind Bars for a live chat tonight at 9 p.m. ET. Click here to join the conversation (and to listen to archived episodes of the show, which launched in March).

Some depressing stats: more than 200,000 kids in the U.S. have a mother in prison; more than 1.7 million have a father behind bars. At current rates, half of all boys with a parent behind bars will end up in prison or jail themselves. These are numbers we can reverse.

And if you enjoy Family Life Behind Bars radio show, here are a few great podcast and web radio offerings you might like:

Thousand Kites: This group's show Holler to the Hood and other story projects help to share the personal tales of prisoners and their families.

Fantastic Felons: A new podcast on criminal justice issues and life after incarceration from Jaime Woodard and Pete Cossaboon.

Women Behind the Wall - a podcast on women in prison and other criminal justice issues from two women who were convicted of crimes they didn't commit -- Gloria Killian and Mary Ellen DiGiacomo.

Photo by chez sugi

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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