Report - Mass Incarceration and the Family Tax

FWD.us, an immigration and criminal justice reform advocacy organization, just released a report accounting of what incarceration costs the families of incarcerated people. The report titled We Can’t Afford It: Mass Incarceration and the Family Tax (covered today by NPR here) is the latest in a long line of arguments attempting to capture the financial toll prisons and jails exact on American families. 

This project was developed in collaboration with leading researchers at Duke University and NORC at the University of Chicago with whom we developed national surveys and conducted extensive literature reviews. Some of the key findings include: 

• Mass incarceration is costing families with incarcerated loved ones nearly $350 billion every year - This includes both out-of-pocket costs that family members pay and depressed wages over a lifetime for both the person who was incarcerated and their children. 
• Families with incarcerated loved ones spend an average of nearly $4,200 per year for each family member behind bars - That is more than 27% of the income for a person living at the federal poverty line. These expenses include everything from paying to stay in touch with and visit family members to caring for minor children of incarcerated parents to paying for commissary items marked up as much as 600% above retail cost.
• Black families are significantly more negatively impacted in supporting incarcerated loved ones - Black family members pay 2.5x more than white family members ($8,005 vs. $3,251) annually to support incarcerated loved ones, reflecting both disproportionate incarceration rates and deeper financial commitments to staying in touch and supporting family members behind bars.
• Loss of income for incarcerated families totals $6.7 billion annually - When a loved one is incarcerated, their families face immediate financial shocks— not only from sudden changes in household expenses, but also from the loss of income the incarcerated person would have earned, 
• One in five family members reports experiencing a decline in their income when a loved one is incarcerated, Families with an incarcerated loved one lose an average of $1,803 per month, roughly the equivalent of a typical U.S. mortgage payment.
• The financial impact persists long after incarceration ends -  Formerly incarcerated people experience reduced earnings of $111 billion annually. Even more devastating, children of incarcerated parents suffer $215 billion in lost annual earnings—an average loss of $4,468 in income for each child every year of their adult life.
• Housing instability is a common consequence of a family member’s incarceration - 1 in 5 families are forced to move when a loved one is incarcerated. For children of incarcerated parents, the impact is especially severe—18% experience homelessness.

The cost of incarceration has primarily been framed in terms of the $89 billion that taxpayers spend annually on jails and prisons. This research shows that taxpayer spending is just the tip of the iceberg and represents a dramatic undercounting of the full cost of mass incarceration since it ignores the crippling costs that are borne directly by families. The report is another attempt to make plain what the field has known for quite some time: America’s incarceration crisis is a pocketbook issue that’s preventing millions of people from climbing the economic ladder, stripping money from the bank accounts of people who are already living paycheck to paycheck, and creating lasting consequences for family budgets and local economies. 

In this moment of economic uncertainty and anxiety, these findings should be a wake-up call for leaders of both political parties promising to reduce the cost of living. They are particularly urgent in a moment when we see a troubling increase in criminalization and incarceration. We know that returning to the failed policies of the past won’t make us safer. Such a regression will also only worsen the affordability crisis.

Read and download the report --->>> We Can't Afford It: Mass Incarceration and the Family Tax

Use the "We Can't Afford It" toolkit to share with and promote on your networks --->>> We Can't Afford It Social Toolkit

NPR coverage of report --->>> The true cost of prisons and jails is higher than many realize, researchers say

FWD.us is a bipartisan political organization that believes America’s families, communities, and economy thrive when more individuals are able to achieve their full potential.