THE FOSTER CARE TO PRISON PIPELINE

AND RACISM
M AS S INC AR CE R AT ION'S DE VEL OPM ENTAL L ANDSCAP E

Trinity Hutt
 Overview
The Foster Care to Prison Pipeline and it's developmental Landscape

**Developmental Framework:**

- Social Learning Theory

- The positive influences of social support

**Introduction on the foster care system**

- Overview of the system

- Demographics
- Statistics, Numbers
- Policies/municipal

**Affiliation with the prison system**

- overview of the prison systems demographics and overlap

- Specific risks for people of color

Systemic racism as an underlying cause

- Conclusion
- Implications for future research
- References
 Why I chose this topic?

• Racial Justice, BLM

• Social Mobility*

• Intergenerational Issues

• Raising awareness of the foster care system

• Teaching Background
What?
RACE

Insufficient childhood Having an incarcerated parent

environment heavily increases the likelihood
of entering the foster care
system.

Entering the foster care system

turning to criminality and perpetuating

the cycle for their children
 Key Developmental Framework

• Self Efficacy. Having an Identity, and a crowd to "fit in" to.

• Protective Factors and Risk factors - SOCIAL SUPPORT*
• The fragility and elasticity of early childhood.
(Development Services Group, Inc. 2015.) A study on protective factors for childhood
delinquency.

"Animals learn their most vital skill first. Hours old foal
can run, a newly hatched snake can bite. What do babies
do? Babies cry. Your most important survival skill is
asking for help." -twitter @signsofhope
 An Introduction to the Foster Care System

• The most prominent reason for being placed in foster care is parental
neglect.
• the decision to remove a child from their home
• the risk factors that come with it
• Isolation from existing social supports and identity.

Over-representation of African American children, amongst

other minorities. (Knott Giwa 2012.)
 Crayons to Cuffs

Incarceration severly impacts social mobility (Alexander 2020)

Scholars on the issue of race have begun to see

incarceration as a de facto stage of adolescence for
African American men.

40.4% of young adults having been arrested for something more serious than a
traffic violation. (Yi and Christopher 2018)
 Conclusion

• Intergenerational importance

• Risk factors assessed

• Fragility of Early Childhood Considered

• Vulnerability levels for mass incarceration

• The perfect storm for a system of oppression

 Strengths and Limitations

• Lacking visual representation of data

• Evident and sociologically important topic

• limited research on social support in particular

• Extensive literature on the criminal justice as a buffer for adverse life outcomes
system

• Did not account for wealth as a commonality.

• Intergenrational issues
(Intentionally)
 Implications

• Implementing interventions

• Finding agents for change within communities and giving them the resources needed for change on

a grassroots levels.

• Focus on maintaining and supporting existing social networks.

• This research is most effective and critical for implementation with foster youth.
References
THE FOSTER CARE TO PRISON PIPELINE
AND RACISM
TRINI TY HUTT

Thank you!

Questions?