One professor's fight to help the children of incarcerated parents
When I was ten years old my father, a lawyer, was incarcerated. He was what some people call a "white collar criminal" and spent two years in prison. Because I come from a loving family and because my family had other supports and privileges (i.e. we were white and middle class in a community that rewarded both), my siblings and I fared well despite of my father's incarceration. And so for a long time, decades, really, I didn't discuss my father's history. I didn't know anyone else who had had an incarcerated parent; I was in a world (the university) where nobody really discussed it; and my siblings and I had moved on. Yet, I was always aware and conscious of the plight of families and communities where incarceration was most profoundly felt. At a certain point I realized that I had to be part of the solution – or at...