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Separated on Father's Day: Mass incarceration & wage suppression strain Ohio families

Posted on 06/18/23 by Michael Shields (he/him) in Work & Wages

Today, we celebrate dads across Ohio on Father’s Day. Like Mother’s Day, it is a day to celebrate families of all types.

Yet tens of thousands of Ohio children will not get the opportunity to spend Father’s Day with their dads, because their fathers have been removed from their homes and daily lives by the criminal legal system. For children whose fathers serve time, the physical separation is a source of severe and long-term trauma. And fathers impacted by the criminal legal system face lasting hurdles in the job market that limit their ability to contribute to their families’ financial support long after they have served their time.

Among the more than 800,000 parents in federal and state prisons in the U.S., 92 percent are fathers, a four-fold increase in incarceration of fathers since the 1980’s.[1] Ohio’s prison system has similarly grown, with the state prison population rising from fewer than 14,000 in 1980 to nearly 50,000 by 2018.[2] The criminal legal system treats Black men more punitively than their white counterparts at every level of interaction, from whether police are called to whether they make an arrest, all the way through the type of charges filed for similar actions and the length of a sentence if the person is found guilty.[3] One in three Black men will serve time at some point in his life. National data show a roughly 1:1 ratio between the number of imprisoned people and the number of children with a parent behind bars, suggesting that around 50,000 Ohio children are separated from their parent — in most cases their father — by incarceration.[4] Forty percent of incarcerated fathers surveyed in the Bureau of Justice’s Survey of Prison Inmates were living with their children at the time of their arrest, making incarceration the sole reason for their separation.[5]

Incarcerated fathers by definition are physically separated from their children, a factor that can cause lasting harm in children’s lives. Among parents who go to prison, one in eight will permanently lose parental rights.[6] As child advocates weigh whether displaced children are better off being rapidly placed with new families or temporarily held in foster care settings for reunification with their families of origin, what’s clear is that fewer children should be separated from their parents by incarceration in the first place.

Fathers sent to prison are also unable to contribute to their children’s financial support during their incarceration even if they are working, as thousands of incarcerated people do. In Ohio, imprisoned workers are paid just $0.23 to $1.35 per hour.[7] After serving their time, Ohioans with a conviction face a bevy of work-related “collateral sanctions” that restrict their ability to work in one in four Ohio jobs.[8]

The rapid expansion of the criminal legal system is one factor — though not the only one — driving long-term suppression of men’s wages in Ohio. Over four decades from 1979 to 2021, women’s wages rose 27% accounting for inflation: a gain of $3.90 per hour and one of the most positive trends we’ve seen in recent labor history.[9] Overall, men continue to be paid more than women, but pay for men over this timeframe fell 6%: a loss of $1.55 per hour. This includes a loss of $1.13 for white men, and a staggering $4.96-per-hour loss for Black men.[10] Coupled with a four-fold increase in the likelihood of serving time and leaving with a record that curtails career opportunities, men have also had their wages pushed down by successful corporate attacks on union density, deindustrialization, and other factors that also suppressed women’s pay, but which women were able to partly overcome through things like higher educational attainment, stronger workforce attachment, and laws barring pay discrimination.[11]

The hurdles fathers face result from policy choices that Ohioans, through our elected representatives, can change. Lawmakers have created a web of collateral sanctions that stifle career opportunities for life even after a minor conviction. We can unwind that web. Our government has empowered corporations to suppress wages. We can take that power back, raise the minimum wage and make it easier for workers to join or form a union. Legislators have increased the number of behaviors that are considered criminal, and the sentences they carry, leading to an explosive growth of the prison population. We can reverse course, and require judges to consider parental responsibilities when making sentencing decisions so children do not bear the cost of a conviction through the loss of parents who love and are otherwise able to care for them. Leaders have neglected their responsibility to families and children. We can demand that they instead deepen commitments to child care and equitable school funding, so access to a quality education is not contingent on ability to buy a house in a tony ZIP code.

This Father’s Day, as we celebrate fathers and families across Ohio, we must also demand better policies that enable Ohio fathers to be present in their children’s daily lives and earn livable wages that contribute to their families’ economic security.

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