Parental incarceration: What we know and where we need to go

As the introduction to a series of articles, this Article summarizes the state of the art in a field that has advanced enormously in the past ten years: parental incarceration. On the heels of a summer 2013 workshop held in the White House Executive Office Building, entitled “Parental Incarceration in the United States: Bringing Together Research and Policy to Reduce Collateral Costs to Children,” we here summarize five key lessons from this research, and then consider new directions for the next generation of research and policy. In this way, this Article lays the foundation for a series of important forthcoming articles in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology.