Learn
About Reentry
"Responsible Fatherhood and the Role of the Family"
Plenary Remarks by Wade F. Horn, Ph.D., Assistant Secretary for
Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health And Human Services,
at the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative Grantee
Conference, September 30, 2002, Renaissance Hotel, Washington,
DC.
Introduction | Children of Prisoners | Absent-father
Epidemic
Who Cares? We All Should |
Generation After Generation of Absent
Fathers
What Is To Be Done?|
Helping
Children of Prisoners
Promote
Healthy Fatherhood in General
Marriage | Conclusion
In Washington, you can tell the importance of an individual by
how long their title is. The President is "the President." The
Secretary is "the Secretary." My title is "Assistant
Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services."
But, I have a title that is very important to me, and it is really
short. That title is "Dad." My most important job is
that of a father to my two daughters. Some of you may be wondering
what I’m doing here. You’ve been talking about recidivism risks,
mental health disorders, case management procedures—all the complicated,
interrelated factors that influence an offender’s successful—or
in too many cases, unsuccessful—return to society. To paraphrase
Tina Turner—What’s fatherhood got to do with it?
Not very much, to judge from the "official" government
literature on the subject. A couple of months ago, we gathered
a pile of federal publications dealing with corrections. We assigned
someone to see what she could find about the relationship between
fatherlessness and criminality. She may not have covered every
publication, but she got through several pounds of them.
What did she find? A lot of attention to one subtopic: the multigenerational
character of criminality—the fact that children of inmates are
more likely to be incarcerated than the general population. And,
more generally, discussions of what can be done to hold families
together when a parent is incarcerated.
But on fatherlessness as a predictor of criminality, nothing.
Not a single mention. Maybe discussing it was thought to be in
poor taste. Maybe it was seen as a constant rather than a variable—we
can’t do anything about it, so let’s focus our energies elsewhere.
Whatever the cause, this blind spot is indefensible at a time when
both fatherlessness and our prison population are at all-time highs.
Children of Prisoners
Let’s start with the basics. Some 93 percent of prisoners are
men. And nearly 90 percent of all prisoners are in state prisons.
So I’m going to talk principally about male prisoners in state
facilities. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, most
prisoners—55 percent—have minor children. The average age of these
kids is 8. In all, nearly 1.5 million children—roughly 2 percent
of all kids—have a parent in prison, almost always a father. That
suggests that most of our schoolchildren have a classmate whose
father is incarcerated.
By some estimates, 10 million children—one in seven—will, at some
point before reaching age 18, have an incarcerated father. And
the separation tends to be lengthy. For fathers in state prisons,
the average sentence is 12 ½ years. The majority of them have been
in prison before. And most of them haven’t seen their children
since entering prison—not once.
What’s the impact of this? Having a father in prison is a powerful
predictor of antisocial behavior in general and of criminality
in particular. Put the father in prison and, by some estimates,
you make the child five to six times more likely to end up in prison
than otherwise. Most of us can barely imagine the pain, shame,
disruption, and despair that children experience when their father
gets incarcerated. These are what U.S. News & World Report
a few months ago called "the most at-risk of at-risk kids."
For most of these kids, father absence is nothing new. In the
typical case, it wasn’t prison that yanked the father out of the
household. Before incarceration in state prison, nearly two-thirds
of the fathers were not living with their children. The Bureau
of Justice Statistics doesn’t indicate how many of these fathers
were married to the mothers at the time of birth—but it’s a minority.
According to the Bureau, one-half of the state inmates have never
been married to anybody.
It has been said that a million deaths is a statistic, while one
death is a tragedy—so let’s consider a couple of individual examples.
In April, U.S. News & World Report told the story of a 16-year-old
Houston boy named Brandon O’Neal. During much of Brandon’s youth,
his father was in prison. Brandon got into fights, ran away from
home, and tried to commit suicide. He told the reporter, "My
dad wasn’t there for me, he didn’t care, and I didn’t either." Last
year, Brandon’s father got out of prison and moved in with the
family. Brandon’s grades rose, and for the first time he made the
honor roll. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the story. By
Christmas, Brandon’s father had, once again, disappeared. Brandon’s
academic performance slumped, and he started thinking about killing
himself. He said: "My father is dead to me. Nothing but a
sperm donor." Think about that statement—"nothing but
a sperm donor." Brandon’s story can teach us something. Having
a father in prison set the stage. But, so far as Brandon knows,
his father isn’t in prison now—he’s just gone. It’s easy to see
how such an experience can lead to depression, anger, antisocial
attitudes, antisocial behavior, and, finally, prison.
Some of you may remember Kody Scott, a member of a Los Angeles
gang who recounted his exploits in a memoir a few years ago. "Monster," as
his fellow gang members called him, joined a faction of the Crips
at age 11, shot his first victim at 12, beat a man into a coma
at 13. His book is a litany of coldhearted murders, assaults, hit-and-run
attacks, and even a dismemberment by machete. He writes at one
point: "This was my career, my ‘calling,’ as church folks
say...." Later he adds: "Only when I had put work in
could I feel good that day; otherwise I couldn’t sleep. Work does
not always constitute shooting someone, though this is the ultimate....
And I was a hard worker." The book says a great deal about
Kody Scott’s street life, but scarcely anything about his home
life.
The fact is he never knew his father, a former player on the L.A.
Rams who had a brief affair with his mother. In one interview,
Kody Scott said: "I am the product of a man who wasn’t there." When
asked on "60 Minutes" if he resented his father’s absence, this is
his reply: "To a great extent, no doubt about it. I hate him,
you know what I mean? I hate him because I think about what I could
have been....I can’t dig that, man, running out on your kids....The
father thing—well, that’s just heavy to me....This is heavy." The
reporter asked if he thought having his father there would have
made a difference. Scott answered: "Yeah. Because I wouldn’t
have had to go to the street...."
My point is this, we know that father absence because of incarceration
creates all sorts of psychological problems for his children—and
we should do everything we can to ameliorate them. But we mustn’t
lose sight of the fact that father absence, in and of itself, creates
a lot of the same troubles. If we want to reduce criminality in
the next generation, we must recognize the phenomenon of absent
fathers, and not just incarcerated ones.
Absent-father Epidemic
The most consequential social trend of our time is the dramatic
increase in the number of children growing up in father-absent
families. In 1960, this number stood at less than 10 million. Today
it’s 24 million. This means that tonight, one out of every three
children in America will go to bed in a home absent their father.
And it’s not just that these kids are going to bed without their
fathers tonight, 40 percent of children who don’t live with their
fathers haven’t seen their father during the past year. And one-half
have never set foot in their father’s home
Who Cares? We All Should
Studies find that children who live apart from their biological
fathers are on average five to six times as likely to be poor.
They are twice as likely to suffer physical or emotional neglect;
to manifest emotional or behavioral disorders, including suicidal
behavior; to abuse alcohol or illegal drugs; to be suspended or
expelled from school or to drop out; and at least twice as likely
to end up in jail. A few findings from the research:
According to a Princeton University study, "each year spent
without a dad in the home increased the odds of future incarceration
by 5 percent."
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 70 percent of juveniles
in state reform institutions grew up in single-parent or no-parent
situations, and 53 percent of state prison inmates grew up apart
from their fathers. Indeed, the National Center on Fathers and Families reports that
the typical male prison inmate grew up in a single-parent, mother-headed
home and has at least one close relative who has been incarcerated.
We hear a lot about that last factor—the father or other close
relative who was in prison. But we don’t hear nearly enough about
the other, interrelated factor—growing up without a dad.
Generation After Generation of Absent Fathers
If we’re to get a handle on the situation, we’ll need to do something
about the growing epidemic of absent fathers.
What Is To Be Done?
Can the government, acting alone, solve these problems? No, the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can’t cure the
epidemic of absent fathers. As President Bush has observed, government
can’t cause people to love one another. But there are important
steps that government can take, working alongside community and
faith-based organizations.
Helping Children of Prisoners
To start with, we need to help kids whose parents are incarcerated.
Nothing frays family ties like prison, and, wherever possible,
we need to work with the fathers, mothers, and children to help
these families stay together. One impact may be to reduce recidivism—responsible
fathers are less likely to commit crimes. Studies show that prisoners
who try to maintain their family ties do much better when they’re
released. One father, preparing to leave jail, told U.S. News, "I
hope my kids will help me stay out—they’re the best reason to try."
But we mustn’t be naïve. I fear there are some people in
the fatherhood movement who think that a seminar or two will transform
a violent offender into a model husband, father, and citizen. Some
group counseling, a few sessions of training in active listening
skills—and no more problems! Let’s face it: these men aren’t in
prison because they skipped one too many choir practices—the men
we are talking about are in prison because they committed a serious,
violent crime. Let me ask you this, imagine that your daughter
comes home and tells you that she’s met the most wonderful guy.
He served time for violence. He beat his former girlfriend regularly.
And, yes, he beat your daughter a few times. But, she assures you,
it’ll never happen again—he has a workbook!
How would you react to that situation? To be sure, some of these
men can become responsible fathers, but it’s going to take time,
hard work, and lots of help from community and faith-based organizations.
We can’t simply bring them back to the family home and call it
a happy ending, and we need to address those cases where the children
must seek their role models elsewhere. Many fatherless children
manage to avoid the pitfalls—delinquency, mental health troubles,
and the rest—by finding a male mentor. Sometimes it’s an uncle,
sometimes a teacher, sometimes an employer.
I mentioned Kody Scott, the Los Angeles gang member. In his book,
he wrote, "To be in a gang in South Central when I joined
is the equivalent of growing up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and
going to college: everyone does it."
As it happens, everyone doesn’t do it. Not everyone in South Central
Los Angeles. Not even everyone in the house where Kody Scott grew
up. Kody has an older brother, Kerwin. When he was around 17, Kerwin
got a job as a box boy at a little market near his home. The owner
of the market was a man named Morrie Notrica. He decided to look
out for Kerwin. He put him on the night shift to keep him off the
streets. He intervened to keep him out of fights at work. He bought
him his first car. So Kerwin ended up with a mentor and a job that
helped structure his life. His mother told a reporter: "Kerwin
just went and took him a father." Bottom line: Kerwin didn’t
join a gang. Mentors can likewise do a great deal of good for children
whose fathers are imprisoned. We need to work with community and
faith-based organizations to make the mentor alternative available
to far more at-risk children. In order to do these things, the
Administration’s budget requests $25 million to aid children of
incarcerated parents.
Promote Healthy Fatherhood in General
In addition, we need to promote responsible fatherhood directly.
In the President’s first budget, we sought $67 million. Unfortunately,
Congress chose not to fund the program, even nominally. This year,
we are seeking a more modest $20 million. We won’t be able to accomplish
everything we’d hoped to do, but at least it’s a start. The fatherhood
provisions are in the welfare reform bill that the U.S. House of
Representatives passed. Unfortunately, the Senate has not yet taken
a vote on this important legislation. Needless to say, I very much
hope that the fatherhood provisions make it into the bill that
ultimately reaches the President.
Marriage
And finally, we must also work to promote healthy marriage. Not
because wedding bells will make violent offenders—or for that matter
violent nonoffenders—into devoted, sweet-natured husbands. Again,
we mustn’t be naïve. But simply because we need to address
the epidemic of broken homes.
Conclusion
In closing, let me say, before anyone says it for me, that we’re
talking here about associations, likelihoods, and rough predictions
of criminality. Correlation is not causation. No doubt many other
variables enter into the equation. Let me reiterate, too, a point
that cannot be overemphasized: Some incarcerated fathers—and some
who aren’t incarcerated—are violent, abusive, or otherwise incapable
of being responsible parents. No question—their kids are better
off without them. As you know from your work with reentry, we have
to be realistic about these men and their histories. The worst
thing we can do is drop a violent, unreformed father back in the
house and simply hope for the best. With those caveats out of the
way, here’s my bottom line: One father at a time, one child at a time—responsible fatherhood
will reduce crime.
James Q. Wilson helped us see that broken windows lead to criminal
behavior, well, so do broken families. Government picks up the
pieces—not just the apprehension, trial, and incarceration
of criminals, but also child support enforcement, interventions
for troubled
youth, and much more. Shouldn’t we be thinking about prevention
as well as clean-up?
President Bush has said that the federal government ought to be
limited, but what it does, it ought to do well. One of the things
he has said the federal government ought to do is strengthen families.
Promoting responsible fatherhood is an essential component of this
strategy.
Thank you very much.
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