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Estimating the number and percentage of children who experience parental incarceration in Canada using whole population administrative and vital statistics data
(2026) PLOS One
Objective
To use linked data to estimate the number of children who experienced parental incarceration in five Canadian provinces from 2015 to 2021, and to describe parent and child characteristics.
Methods
For 2015–2021, we identified 93,090 incarcerated parents of children <18 and 169,740 children <18 who experienced parental incarceration. We found that per day in the included provinces, 0.23% of children <18 in 2016 and 0.27% in 2017 experienced parental incarceration, and per year, 1.2% of children <18 in 2016 and 1.3% in 2017 experienced parental incarceration. For children who experienced parental incarceration, 87.4% had one and 12.0% had two parents who experienced incarceration during the study period, and 5.9% had at least one Black parent and 30.5% at least one Indigenous parent. Children who experienced parental incarceration had a median of 60 (IQR 11–208) and a mean of 166.5 (SD 256.5) total days of parental incarceration during the study period. For parents who experienced incarceration, 22.6% were female, 77.4% were male, 6.0% were Black, and 31.6% were Indigenous.
- Fiona G. Kouyoumdjian, Martha Paynter, Else Marie Knudsen, Ruth Croxford, Susan J. Bondy, Lindsay Jennings, Nancy Russell, Raya Semeniuk, Christine Bentley-Wang, Amanda Butler, Tenzin Butsang, Nicole L.A. Catherine, Alice Cavanagh, Jennifer Leason, Jessica Liauw, Kate McLeod, Natalie Owl, Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, Salony Sharma