My college graduation should have been one of the happiest days of my life. Instead, it was bittersweet. My dad, serving a life sentence, couldn’t be there to watch me walk across the stage.
Today, there are 94,000 Louisiana children under the age of 21 with incarcerated parents. For this group of kids, milestones like graduations, birthdays, and parent-teacher conferences happen without one of the people who matter most.
Young people with parents in prison are navigating a reality most kids never have to think about.
Yes, research shows they face higher rates of anxiety, depression, and the risk of their own incarceration—about 70%, according to some estimates. But that’s not because of who they are. It’s because of a system that fails them at every turn.
These kids show up. They graduate. They advocate. They lead. They’re not defined by their parent’s incarceration; they’re fighting to change the very policies that put their families in this position.
And when we actually support them instead of writing them off, they prove everyone wrong. I know, because I’ve got a front row seat in their show through Daughters Beyond Incarceration, the nonprofit I launched in 2018.
The question isn’t what’s wrong with these children. The question is: what are we going to do to fix the system that’s stacked against them?
This is the invisible sentence that families like mine serve alongside our loved ones. And it’s a sentence disproportionately imposed on Black families. While Black people make up only 32% of Louisiana’s population, we account for over 67% of the prison population. More than 60% of people currently incarcerated in our state are identified as Black or African American. For Black girls in particular, the weight of this reality is crushing, and too often, we carry it alone.
I know this weight intimately. My father, Charles Brown Jr., has been incarcerated for 43 years of my life. I had to grow up in prison. My birthdays, graduations, and celebrations were experienced in prison.
But I refused to let my story end there. As an all-star track athlete, I utilized my drive and determination to work alongside my dad to develop Daughters Beyond Incarceration, to dismantle the stigma against children with parents in prison. I teach girls how to transform their pain into policy change.
Through DBI, more than 200 local families have found mentorship, mental health support, and perhaps most importantly, their voices.
DBI doesn’t just provide services; we train young advocates to understand the criminal justice system from arrest to parole, and we empower them to change it.
Last year, DBI helped pass legislation to support children across the state, allowing incarcerated parents to virtually attend their children’s graduations and parent-teacher conferences. During the pandemic, we successfully advocated for free phone calls from prison, ensuring families could stay connected when in-person visits stopped.
These victories matter because maintaining the parent-child bond isn’t just emotionally important; it’s transformative.
Research consistently shows that when incarcerated parents stay connected to their children, both the parent’s behavior and the child’s behavior improve. Children do better in school and in their communities. Parents are motivated to participate in rehabilitation programs and less likely to reoffend.
Yet our current system is designed to sever these connections. Phone calls from prison are prohibitively expensive. Visitation policies are restrictive. Children are rarely considered in sentencing decisions; despite the lifelong consequences we face.
Whether a parent is guilty or has been found guilty, children still have a right to their parents, because we know that it allows for psychological safety and all the important markers that children need for development.
The trauma of parental incarceration doesn’t discriminate; it affects children as young as five, who can’t understand why their parents had to go away or why they can’t get a job when they come home. It affects teenagers who join DBI with high levels of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences), who are suffering from depression, low confidence and confusion surrounding jails and prisons.
Those girls come to DBI for clarity and connection, and they leave with sisterhood. Through the program’s support, including access to therapy and mentorship, our girls find their voices.
But not every story has that ending.
Too many children grow up with parents serving life sentences or decades-long terms for non-violent offenses. My dad was sentenced to life without parole despite no evidence connecting him to the crime. My life was ripped apart by a conviction built on nothing.
Too many families are financially devastated by the costs of maintaining contact with incarcerated loved ones. Too many communities are trapped in an intergenerational cycle of incarceration that destroys families and fails to make anyone safer. At some point, we must look to support the families our system incarcerates.
Louisiana must reckon with this reality. We spend nearly 13% of our state’s budget on criminal justice while ranking low in healthcare, education, infrastructure, and economic wellbeing. We could redirect those resources toward affordable housing, quality education, mental health services, and community-based programs that prevent crime rather than simply punishing it after the fact.
This isn’t just about being compassionate; it’s about being smart.
We know that incarcerating parents devastates children and perpetuates cycles of poverty and crime. We know that maintaining family connections improves outcomes. We know that girls in DBI’s civic-engagement program have innovative solutions to policy change if lawmakers listen to them.
Here’s what I know: the people closest to the problem are closer to the solution. DBI’s work product shows that. Young people who have lived through parental incarceration are now passing legislation, advocating for reform, and building support networks that could break the cycle for thousands of children.
When we send a parent to prison, we must acknowledge that we’re sentencing their children too.
The question is whether we’ll continue inflicting that sentence blindly, or whether we’ll finally create a justice system that considers the human cost and works to minimize it.
Our children deserve better. Louisiana can do better. Our youth are talking but you aren’t listening.
Dominque Jones-Johnson is the founder and executive director of Daughters Beyond Incarceration and a transformative leader advocating for children impacted by parental incarceration, with a focus on Black girls and women. She serves as Chairwoman of the Louisiana Council for Children of Incarcerated Parents and Caregivers.
Under her leadership, DBI has achieved landmark policy victories including Louisiana House Bill 729, which established the Louisiana Council for Children of Incarcerated Parents and Caregivers, and House Resolution 7, enabling incarcerated parents to virtually attend their children’s graduations.
