Overview: Pastor Jackson pulls back the veil on the correctional system, delivering an unfiltered look into the psychological toll, isolation, and systemic trauma of life behind bars. Rather than focusing solely on institutional policy or statistics, the account centers on the raw human experience of incarceration: broken family bonds, the struggle to preserve dignity in punitive environments, and the uphill battle toward redemption. By sharing these lived realities, Pastor Jackson challenges communities to rethink rehabilitation, address the pipeline feeding mass incarceration, and build genuine reentry support systems that restore rather than discard incarcerated individuals.
The pain of incarceration extends far beyond concrete walls and iron bars. Society rarely gives this collateral damage the attention it deserves. While the justice system focuses on the person in custody, families carry a heavy, unaddressed burden.
The numbers tell an undeniable story. Approximately 44 percent of Black women and 33 percent of Black men have an incarcerated family member, compared to 12 percent of white women and 6 percent of white men. Regardless of race or background, families everywhere endure profound hardship.
The Heavy Toll on Innocent Families
Pain takes many shapes. It brings mental anguish, physical exhaustion, financial ruin, and public embarrassment.
Countless women and extended relatives had no hand in the criminal acts of their loved ones. They never agreed to finance foolish choices or enable destructive habits. Yet the justice system sweeps them directly into the aftermath. Incarceration shatters more than half of Black families, leaving behind trauma that takes generations to heal.
This sudden collapse can strike any household. In 2010, federal prosecutors in St. Louis, Missouri, indicted the leadership of National Prearranged Services for fraud. The arrest hit the families of the defendants like an earthquake. Authorities froze bank accounts, seized properties, and repossessed vehicles. In 2009, these families traveled overseas and lived comfortably. By 2013, they faced homelessness. That shock is the raw reality of incarceration.
Millions Trapped in Collateral Trauma
Across the nation, about 113 million adults have an immediate family member who has spent time in local jails, state facilities, or federal penitentiaries.
When you expand that count to grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles, more than 115 million people share that reality. Millions of people walk through daily life carrying the emotional and financial strain of someone else’s confinement.
Yet the person behind bars rarely pauses to consider that weight.
The Blind Spot Behind Bars
Speaking from firsthand experience, prisoners often view reality through a very selfish lens.
They rarely think about the mother scrambling to buy gas for visitation. They do not calculate what it costs her to put money on the commissary account. They forget that the bills, jobs, and demands of the free world keep moving while they sit idle.
Prison systems introduce countless programs every year, but almost none of them address the wounded family back home. Many inmates expect total financial and emotional backing no matter their offense. The moment a relative cuts off funds, that inmate quickly turns on them, bad-mouthing the very people who carried them.
Carrying the Weight Alone at Home
The family left outside receives almost no relief.
A spouse cannot walk into a social services office and receive state aid simply because a partner went to prison, even after losing the household’s primary income. Churches and faith-based groups want to help, but limited budgets mean they can only offer temporary comfort.
Who handles the laundry while scraping together money for groceries? Who breaks up the arguments, cooks the dinners, and works a double shift every day?
Too many women stay loyal to partners who show little gratitude and only call to ask for cash. An inmate has endless hours to write long letters. Meanwhile, the woman holding down the household gets almost no rest and has zero social life.
When she finally picks up the phone, she catches hostility: “Where have you been? I have been calling you all morning!”
To make matters worse, an incarcerated partner will often accuse her of cheating while he engages in prison politics and buys illicit contraband. He expects her to live like Mother Teresa while offering nothing in return. That double standard creates unbearable pain.
My time is up for this week. Thank you for reading my column. Look out for Part 2 next week: “But I Thought You Loved Me.”
Pastor Richard Jackson-Criminal Justice and Incarceration reform
audimanasseh@gmail.com
