The unprecedented expansion of the prison population in the U.S. over the last 30 years, driven largely by changes in the way the law treats drug users and drug sellers, has had profound effects on millions of people who have never committed a crime: the children of prisoners, of course – but also their siblings and other family members, friends and neighbors.

Nell Bernstein’s book, All Alone in the World, offers us valuable insight into the destructive effect this wholesale incarceration of parents is having on children, extended families, and entire communities.

Bernstein effectively uses the personal stories of prisoners, their children, and their families to make real what research tells us about the toxic effects of parental incarceration on children: high rates of anxiety and attention disorders and post traumatic stress; unstable living arrangements with a variety of overstressed caregivers; struggles with school performance and school behavior; increased poverty.

With 2.4 million children currently experiencing the incarceration of a parent, and more than 7 million with a parent under criminal justice supervision, the problems of this group are problems our entire society needs to address. One of the bleakest statistics in the book is that as many as fifty percent of boys who experience a parent’s incarceration will wind up behind bars themselves.

And because of mandatory sentencing laws, the loss of a parent can extend for years, decades, even lifetimes. In her chapter on the effect of these sentencing policies, Bernstein describes the case of a woman arrested on drug charges. A first offender, but prosecuted under a law designed to nab drug “kingpins”, Danielle was given a sentence of three consecutive life terms. “I didn’t even think it was real at the time,” her son Carl told Bernstein. “I thought she was kidding. I remember saying, ‘You can’t do triple life. You only have one.’”

Bernstein argues that mandatory sentencing laws have had a disproportionate effect on women, who are now the fastest-growing segment of the prison population. Her recounting of Danielle’s efforts to parent her son from behind bars is painful to read; Carl’s hope of winning her release by becoming a famous rap star who can afford the best lawyers is heartbreaking.

All Alone in the World also highlights the stunning inattention of our major public institutions to the needs of these children. Police making a drug bust aren’t usually expected to ask or care if they are snapping the cuffs on the primary caregiver of one or more young children. Child welfare agencies are not routinely informed when parents are taken to jail. Legitimate privacy concerns stand in the way of routinely informing schools and teachers of a parent’s arrest and incarceration – yet this could be valuable information if schools want to respond appropriately and with sensitivity to the acting out that often follows.

As Bernstein notes in her introduction, no one is claiming that the parents in question are great, good, or even adequate parents. But losing them still hurts their children. “But in one way are another, most say the same thing: things were hard. Mom got arrested. Things got worse.”

Bernstein’s first chapter, Arrest, starts off with 10-year-old Anthony remembering when his meth-abusing mother and her boyfriend, who also cooked and sold meth in a shed, were arrested. Police broke down the door, smashed through the floorboards of the house, broke a lot of things. He was put in the back of a police car and taken to a shelter. “It’s kiddie jail,” Anthony recalls. “They keep you in cells—little rooms that you sleep in, and you have nothing except for a bed, blankets and sheets. You couldn’t even go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.”

Anthony’s grandmother tried to get him out of the shelter, but he wasn’t released to her care for two and a half weeks, because she lived in a different county and child welfare authorities insisted she find housing in the county first.

Five years later, Anthony is still haunted by memories of the shelter. His mother is home now, and drug-free, but he is also haunted by his understanding that if she slips up, he will lose her again.

Bernstein reports that few police departments have procedures in place regarding the responsibility of officers to the children of arrested parents. Simple steps, such as making sure a child doesn’t see the handcuffs go on (one survey found that 70 percent did see their parents cuffed, and nearly 30 percent saw officers with drawn weapons), could reduce the trauma to children.

The preference of police for late-night and early morning raids, when suspects are most likely to be home, also increases the odds that children will witness the arrest. Some officers routinely search children at the scene, in case they have drugs hidden in their clothes or diapers. Then, it might be off to the police station in a squad car, or perhaps to a hospital for a physical exam (to see if they have been exposed to drugs, for instance). For kids, it all winds up feeling exactly as if they are the ones being arrested.

Bernstein also tells of what happens when kids are not present at the arrest. They may miss a lot of trauma, but they often wind up abandoned, attempting to take care of themselves and younger siblings, afraid to seek help.

The moment of a parent’s arrest, writes Bernstein is one “not only of unnecessary trauma but also of tremendous missed opportunity. A child whose parent is arrested is likely already a vulnerable child. Arrest, reimagined, could be an opportunity to make that vulnerable child, and her family, visible; to make a bad situation better rather than worse.”

This idea becomes a theme of Bernstein’s analysis of what is wrong with our approach to parental incarceration and what we should do to change it. Parents faced with the loss of their children can be powerfully motivated to change, Bernstein argues, and a smart system would make the most of that. She points to the example of New Haven, Conn.’s Child Development-Community Policing Program, which was established at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic in the early 1990s. Police in the program are trained in child development, and can call on clinicians from Yale’s Child Study Center 24 hours a day, to come to the scene of an arrest and offer counseling and support.

But after 13 years, only a handful of cities have followed New Haven’s lead.

Similarly, in her chapter on visitation, Bernstein accompanies the stories of children like Susana, who at fifteen does not remember seeing her father free, and only remembers touching him once – and whose own current residency in a juvenile detention center seems an almost inevitable result – with examples of programs that attempt to do better by children. Programs that allow physical contact, that provide parenting and child-development education, and that acknowledge that a prison sentence does not end the parental relationship.

Bernstein also describes the profound racial disparity in the effects of the current tidal wave of incarceration – for example, black children are nine times more likely than white children to have an incarcerated parent. To what extent this disparity accounts for the failure to respond to the needs of children when their parents are arrested is not a major focus of the book, but it’s hard for a reader to avoid thinking about whether these millions of children might be more “visible” if more of them were white.

Bernstein’s reporting experience shows in her ability to weave together the three threads of research, personal stories, and policy, and to make it all readable and compelling. One minor caveat: while it is true that more and more women are winding up behind bars, the vast majority of prisoners remain men, and thus the vast majority of missing parents are fathers. The book focuses mostly on children whose mothers are incarcerated. While this is understandable on some levels – mothers are more commonly the primary caregivers in their families – the loss of a father is also a profound one, and could have been more fully explored, especially since the experience affects so many more children.

A particular strength of this book is its attention to programs and policies that point the way towards positive change. And Bernstein winds up with some clear, relatively simple, recommendations, such as the development of arrest protocols that support and protect children; routinely considering children’s needs when sentencing parents; and creating child-centered visitation policies.

Her book, “All Alone in the World,” is published by The New Press.

Read the transcript of CFK's online chat with Nell Bernstein.