My Mom Is Out of Prison, But I’m Still Not Free

The Trauma of Having an Incarcerated Parent Is a Life Sentence of Its Own

An illustration of a pay phone inside an open flowery luggage. To the upper right of the illustration is a dark-skinned left hand presses against a glass. Near bottom right is a card that almost makes out the word "mom" placed inside a flowery heart.

This article is a co-publication of Zócalo Public Square and State of Mind, a partnership of Slate and Arizona State University focused on covering mental health.

I was 12 when I went to prison. Though Mom was the one behind bars, it felt like the system shackled me, too.

Visits to see Mom at Los Angeles County’s Century Regional Detention Facility were rare. Even when I managed to find an adult to take me, I wished I didn’t have to love her this way. Pressing the …

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In March 1943, Kaye Kimura left the “Manzanar War Relocation Center” in California and boarded the same train that had brought her there in 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt …

Can Criminals Be Genetically Determined?

Just Five Percent of Families Commit Half of All U.S. Crimes. Is It Bad Genes, Bad Family Values, or Both?

by REED JOHNSON | October 25, 2018

When veteran New York Times reporter Fox Butterfield first met the Bogle family, he believed that nurture mattered more than nature in influencing people to commit violent crimes.

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