In fact, most of the children you spoke with seemed to feel a lot of anger and cynicism about justice and authority after watching their parents get locked up.

That's true, and I think one reason we have to keep these kids invisible is because if we really saw them, we'd have to change how we do business in a pretty profound way. Obviously that's what I would like to see happen, but there's a lot invested in doing things the way we do now.

You point out the irony that it's kids who are so often used as a rhetorical tool in the war on drugs and crime -- as in "we need to protect kids" from these dangerous people. To be fair, isn't it really the state's intention to remove these kids from a potentially harmful parenting situation?

You know, when I do interviews and talk about these things on the radio, there are a few questions I always hear. The first is, isn't this all really the parents' fault? The second is, wouldn't these kids be better off without these kinds of parents? Now, of those questions, the least relevant to me is "Isn't it the parents' fault?" Because, you know, if I were to turn my back and my son were to wander off a cliff, I'd want someone to catch him, whether or not it was irresponsible of me to let him play so near the edge. But the second question -- "aren't they better off?" -- I think that really is what people think, but it desperately needs to be addressed. I think there are a few things that allow people to think like that, for one, not understanding that when you take a child's parent away there's not some sort of perfect other adoptive home out there waiting for him. There's 20 or 30 foster homes or an impoverished grandmother or being passed from hand to hand. It's not as if we're actually offering them something that will make them better off. But the main thing that I've learned from talking to so many kids, which should be so obvious, is that these are the parents they've got. These are the parents they love. And their connections to those parents are exactly as real and as deep as my connection to my kids. And I know that should go without saying, but it never does.

"All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated"

By Nell Bernstein

New Press

288 pages

Nonfiction

Buy this book

You point out how isolation and incarceration cause the "reciprocal relationships" that hold people together to become eroded, until whole communities face crises. That made me think about Katrina, when you heard so many people asking, "Why aren't these people leaving New Orleans? Why don't they go stay with family somewhere else?" without understanding that they were talking about individuals stuck in poverty, literally stripped of family resources or any kind of community safety net to fall back on.

Are you reading my mind? Really, it's so interesting that you should raise that point, because two of the families in the book were affected by Katrina, and in exactly the way you describe. Dorothy Gaines, a woman I write about from Mobile, Ala., was arrested in the mid-'90s on extremely shaky conspiracy charges and as a result got clemency six years later and came home to her kids. She had previously worked as a nurse's technician but after her release she wasn't able to go back to that field because of the felony restrictions -- so she wasn't able to find work, she wasn't able to live in public housing, she wasn't able to get any kind of support. When Katrina hit, she was living with three children and four grandchildren in her oldest daughter's two-bedroom apartment. I spoke to her not long after, and she told me about sitting on her daughter's porch and watching, as she put it, the big long cars leave the city. She was among those who didn't have gas to put in a car. And when their apartment flooded, they just sat there. And obviously Dorothy wasn't the only one, but this was a family that prior to her incarceration had resources. They didn't have a big, long car, but she worked and she provided for her kids, and she would have been able to put gas in the car and get out of the city. Her incarceration drained her family of those resources, and it was simply made very visible post-Katrina

The other family is the Metz family, many of whom actually live in New Orleans. Danielle Metz, as you read in the book, is serving triple life for being involved in her husband's cocaine business. While she has been away, her children have been cared for by grandparents and her sister Adrian -- a woman who in addition to caring for her sister's daughter also took in four grandchildren in the wake of her own daughter's murder. Adrian always talks about how her greatest prayer is that God will release Danielle so that she would be able to help her in caring for all these children, including her grandchildren.

Adrian lives in Stockton, Calif., but when Katrina hit she happened to be in New Orleans visiting some of the extended family. So she wound up at the Astrodome and then after the storm passed, she brought her two brothers and their families, as well as her 67-year-old mother, back to California. On top of that, Adrian's church in Stockton chartered three buses and drove 150 more people to California. So here's Adrian -- whose life has already been turned upside down by her sister's incarceration -- and is now trying to reconstitute her entire family, again drained of resources. I actually got a letter from Danielle where she said exactly what you're saying -- that it's hard to have your family need you and not be able to do anything for them. That idea of reciprocity is the basis of family life.

So, it's just not working, and no one has really faced that. The state may have gotten Danielle Metz off the street, but New Orleans is still one of the most violent, corrupt, drug-plagued cities in the nation. And recent events don't indicate that law and order began to reign once they began giving people whose husbands sold drugs triple life sentences.

You cite a half-dozen programs that have proven to be viable alternatives to incarceration -- but even D.A. Joe Hines, who runs the very successful Drug Treatment Alternatives to Prison program in Brooklyn, N.Y., is adamant about not being thought of as a "finky liberal." Do you think that need to be seen as "tough on crime" is part of the problem?

Definitely, and what's really interesting is that every state in the nation does have several model programs that work -- they lower crime, they lower recidivism, they help people get over drug problems. And states are rightly always very proud of these programs -- but they are still always the exception. And I haven't figured out why we create special funding streams that last three years for the programs that actually work, while the pot is bottomless for the system we know doesn't work. You know the recidivism rate in California is something like 80 percent, but prisons are still the untouchable item in the budget.

What do you think about the fact that if reform does come, it will likely be because overcrowded prisons cause fiscal strain?

You know, we'll be lucky to even get that reform. A couple of years ago when the states were facing these intense budget crises there were a lot of small but significant activities that were budget-driven. A few states rolled back their mandatory sentencing laws, and a number of states started doing early release and things like that. But just last week, the government's latest round of prison numbers came out, and the population is up, again, and the rate of incarceration for women is growing at double the rate of men.

That's a statistic you hear a lot about these days. Why do you think that women -- many of whom are mothers -- are ending up behind bars in such large numbers?

There's pretty good evidence that it's not because there's this unprecedented rash of violence among women. It's because of the drug laws -- it's really just that simple.

But aren't far fewer women major players in the drug world?

Yes, but that fact also means they have little information to trade -- which under mandatory sentencing is the only way to get your sentence reduced. In fairness, they are still the smaller part of the prison population, but they are nonetheless the fastest-growing and least violent.

And because that rate is rising, and has been now for a few years, what you're seeing now is that neighborhoods that were first drained of fathers over a period of decades are now being drained of mothers. So, people are still talking about single-parent families without recognizing that there are growing numbers of kids growing up in no-parent families.

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