Via CNN Money
For Debra Henderson, love has come with a hefty price tag. Her ex-husband was incarcerated multiple times, her boyfriend was recently released after serving seven months for a felony and her son has had a few brushes with the law. In all, Henderson, who is 40 and makes $60,000 a year working at an insurance company, has spent more than $32,000 on everything from bail bonds to lawyers to phone calls trying to maintain relationships with the men in her life.
Henderson is one of thousands of women who are shouldering the financial burden of incarceration of a loved one, particularly in black communities.
According to data from a CNN/Kaiser Family Foundation poll on race in America, 55% of black Americans said they either had been incarcerated themselves or had a close friend or family member who had been incarcerated compared to 36% of whites and 39% of Hispanics. Among these black Americans, nearly two-thirds said they earned less than $50,000 a year and only 21% said they had earned a college degree.
The financial costs of incarceration are steep. Inmates can be assessed fees for their daily stay in jail, probation and phone calls. In some cases, inmates accrued thousands of dollars in prison-related debt. Once released, many former inmates find that employers are reluctant to hire people with criminal records. As a result, it's often female relatives who are left footing a large percentage of the bills.
"Women of color are carrying the burden," said Gale Muhammad, the founder and president of the prison advocacy group Women Who Never Give Up. "It's all on us, the mothers, the wives, the sisters, the girlfriends."
Indeed, research on the financial costs of incarceration by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in 2014 showed that 83% of family members responsible for court-related costs were women. Families surveyed in the report also said they had trouble meeting basic needs like food, housing, utilities and transportation after a loved one was incarcerated.
The economic costs of loving someone in prison "has broken the black family," Muhammad said. "You've got women working two or three jobs to keep it together."
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