Parental Incarceration and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

"Children exposed to parental incarceration were more likely to have other ACEs than children not exposed to parental incarceration. For example, only 14.3% of children exposed to parental incarceration had no other ACEs, compared to 72.2% of children not exposed to parental incarceration. Further, among children exposed to parental incarceration, about 28.9% experienced one other ACE (compared to 19.4% of children not exposed to parental incarceration), 21.2% experienced two other ACEs (compared to 5.5%), 16.4% experienced three other ACEs (compared to 1.8%), and 19.3% experienced four or more other ACEs (compared to 1.2%).

"Table 2 presents descriptive statistics of ACEs for two groups of children: those who experienced parental incarceration and those who did not experience parental incarceration. Children exposed to parental incarceration had more ACEs than those not exposed to parental incarceration (2.06 compared to 0.41, p < 0.001). Children exposed to parental incarceration were also more likely to report any ACE (85.7% compared to 27.8%, p < 0.001). Children exposed to parental incarceration were nine times more likely to experience household member abuse (31.9% compared to 3.4%, p < 0.001) and violence exposure (20.3% compared to 2.3%, p < 0.001). They were eight times more likely to experience household member substance problems (45.5% compared to 5.8%, p < 0.001); five times more likely to experience parental death (11.8% compared to 2.5%, p < 0.001); and four times more likely to experience household member mental illness (24.1% compared to 6.4%, p < 0.001) and parental divorce or separation (72.7% compared to 20.5%, p < 0.001)."