Criminal Justice System Case Study Essay

Taking into account the criminal justice system, family unit, and education system, cases will be selected only if researchers have access to the child (granted by their current guardian), key individuals within the child’s home and family, key individuals within the child’s school, and the child’s mother. In preparing for IRB approval, special consideration will be considered for working with children and incarcerated individuals and necessary IRB consent will be granted prior to beginning the study. The children must attend school within School District 7 and the incarcerated mother must have been the primary caregiver of the child prior to her incarceration. The study will focus on middle school children because, as studies have shown, early adolescent years are some of the most pivotal in determining long term social, emotional, and academic success in children (Roeser, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2000) and parent involvement with middle school children has proven to increase both short and long term academic performance (Hill & Tyson, 2009). Cases will primarily be chosen based on family structure and organization, in an attempt to represent the wide array of possible family scenarios.

For example, cases will include children now under guardianship of their father, grandparents, foster parents, and other family members. Furthermore, women will be chosen from at least three separate prisons or jails. Certain cases will be excluded, such as cases based off the mother’s crime, including if the mother was incarcerated due to abuse of her children.

While a sample of five to ten cases will not be completely representative of the community level demographics in the South Bronx, specifically Melrose and Mott Haven, cases will be selected that fit the population demographics as outlined in the Community Health Profile (NYC DOHMH, 2015). With 96 percent of residents identifying as Hispanic or Black, all cases will come from Hispanic or Black families. Furthermore, within the area, 23 percent of residents have no health insurance, 43 percent live in poverty, and 86 percent have a earned a high school degree or less. The sample study will be representative of these statistics and will include at least one family without access to health insurance, three families living below the poverty line, and the majority of cases will include parents without college or advanced degrees. Lastly, since 36 percent of residents have limited English language skills, it is expected that some families within the study will have limited English proficiency and bilingual researchers will be made available to all families (NYC DOHMH, 2015). These factors are important in ensuring reliability across the South Bronx community, reflecting the challenges and the protective factors that children and their families may experience in their day-to-day lives.
Data Collection
In order to understand how maternal incarceration impacts school attendance and performance, data will be collected regarding changes in the child’s daily home life, changes in the child’s school life, and changes in the mother/child relationship. While stressors in the child’s life will not be quantified, this study will identify potential new stressors in the child’s life due to his or her mother’s incarceration, including added responsibilities such as caring for siblings due to the mother’s incarceration. Possible changes in the child’s home life may include a change of residence, change of primary guardian, or living with/without other family members and siblings. Changes in the child’s school life may include moving away from school or enrolling in a new school, increased discipline in school, decreased attendance, reduced class participation or completion of activities, and a decline in grades/test scores. While there will be obvious changes in the mother/child relationship due to the mother’s incarceration, determining whether the pair has access to visitation (in person or video), phone calls, and a child-focused center or parenting classes within the prison or jail will be identified. While these areas will be of focus in all cases, additional data collection will explore the unique experience each child and mother faces.
Data will be collected primarily from the child and the child’s home environment and school and the mother and incarceration system.

Observations will take place in the home and school. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews will be conducted with the child, in addition to various key informants including the mother, child’s current guardian, child’s siblings, other family members, anyone currently living with the child, school staff, the child’s social worker, and prison or jail staff. Document analysis and interviews with prison or jail staff will aim to identify services available, including parenting classes, child-focused visiting centers, or video conferencing. Additional data collected from documents, will include school records, prison or jail records, and police

records.
Because “participant as observer” (Creswell 2013, p. 166) observations allows researchers to be fully immersed in the setting and extrapolate analysis from observations (Marshall & Rossman, 2008), observations occurring in the child’s home will be participant observations. This will provide researchers with the opportunity to gain a full understanding of the home life of the child and will lead to the more concrete observations of factors influencing school performance and attendance. Observations in this environment may also include observing and analyzing objects in the environment and how children interact with material things in their environment, including photographs. In addition to participant as observer observations, simple observation will take place. These observations take a more hands-off approach with the researcher acting unobtrusively and objectively (Marshall & Rossman, 2008). Observations occurring in the child’s school will be simple “observer as participant” (Creswell 2013, p. 167) observations in order to not disrupt the flow of the child’s school day or draw any additional unwanted attention from the child and to simply collect data from the school environment.
With regard to the in-depth interviews, the interviews will be semi-structured to ensure that basic topics are discussed but to leave room to tailor to each case. Elite interviewing, or interviews done with high ranking officials and community members will be conducted with officials within the schools, including principals; school districts, including Melodie Duran, Elementary and Middle School Family Support Coordinator; individuals at Bronx Defenders; wardens within the mothers’ respective prisons and jails; and lawyer and judges within Bronx Criminal Court. Elite interviewing will help to ensure that valuable data regarding large scale community and policy information of the past, present, and future plans are gathered. This will be especially important when researching issues pertaining to school policies for children with incarcerated parents, particularly mothers who were previously the primary caregiver of the child, and sentencing guidelines for mothers (Marshall & Rossman, 2008). In interviewing children, special accommodations (e.g. a comfortable/familiar location) will be made to ensure that the child feels safe. The questions will be age-appropriate and the interviewer will begin to build trust with the children prior to conducting the interview. Also as suggested by Marshall and Rossman, when reviewing documents, special considerations will be paid to the fact that individuals that produced the documents did so with a certain level of interpretation and further interpretation is necessary on behalf of the researchers (2008).
While children's interviews will take place in their homes or schools, adults may want to be interviewed away from their home/school in order to ensure confidentiality and reduce harm if the child should overhear any information. For this reason, $50 per month per family will be allotted for light meals or beverage to enjoy while meeting with adults in the child's life or snacks to bring to the child during his or her respective interview. An additional $50 per month cash will be given to the child's current primary guardian to use as they see fit. While Visa gift cards were initially considered, many restaurants and stores in the South Bronx accept cash only. To avoid possible instances of families feeling the need to stay in the study in order to receive the monthly $50, participants will receive the money even if they decide to drop out of the study and will be informed of this as part of informed consent. Metrocards accounting for total round trip costs will be given to all participants if they are asked to travel for reasons directly related to the study (e.g. for an interview at a restaurant). While incarcerated mothers by law or prison/jail regulations often cannot receive compensation for their research participation, the financial contributions to the child’s legal guardian may be passed on to them in their commissary/canteen account. Furthermore, the potential of policy changes on the school and legal level may provide incentive for mothers, families, and key informants to participate.