On any given day, approximately 2.6 million children (or about 1 in every 33) have a parent in jail or prison. Until relatively recently, few people paid attention to what happens to children when their parents are incarcerated, but as the number of parents in jails and prisons grew during the 1980s and 1990s there began to be an appreciation that incarcerating parents can have a profound and enduring effect on their children.
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