Part One: A Shared Sentence for Franklin County
Isolated. Tired. Depressed. Anxious. Withdrawn. Lonely. Aggressive. Distracted. Confused. Worried. Annie E. Casey Foundation calls it a Shared Sentence. Parental Incarceration leads to increased poverty and stress for the children at home. There are over 800 youth in Franklin County dealing with this adverse childhood experience* today; feeling overwhelmed with these thoughts and more while trying to succeed among their peers. (If you’re keeping track, that’s enough students to fill Western Hills High School.)
A recent study released from the Prison Policy Initiative looked at incarceration globally and called Kentucky’s incarceration rates off the charts. “States like Kentucky, with incarceration rates even higher than the U.S. national rate, compare even worse. Next to our closest international allies, Kentucky is off the charts.” (https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2024.html)
With statistics like these, it’s easy to see how cycles continue and worsen through the years. Cycles are not broken quickly. Cycles are changed through relationship building, support and love. Building relationships with family units as early as possible can help repair and change a course of negative outcomes.
Upstream Prevention is an approach that serves to reduce risk factors and enhance protective processes that influence youth. Unfortunately, this type of prevention work is not as common as Downstream Prevention which addresses the problem once it already exists. By building upstream prevention practices into our community, we can lower the future cases of substance abuse, homelessness, incarceration and much more. This is how cycles will be broken in Franklin County.
Community leaders such as Just Say Yes, ASAP and Wanda Joyce Robinson Foundation are already making our community stronger with upstream prevention practices. Addressing community issues such as these takes years of work. Working together in upstream prevention will cause a ripple effect in our county. We may not see the full results until years from now, when we can see a decrease in these numbers. But we will be able to see individual results in youth and family units during the process.
Maybe you don’t know someone who is or has been incarcerated, but you do know someone who is struggling mentally, with anxiety, stress, substance abuse… the list goes on. So many of these public health issues are connected to each other by a related denominator, chronic trauma. The issue of incarceration is an umbrella that includes mental health, anxiety, worry, stress, substance use, homelessness and so much more. That umbrella covers the entire family unit and/or household, not just the person who is incarcerated. This same umbrella then reaches out to affect our community, our schools and our economy.
How do we build a stronger community? How can we make Frankfort a better place? Relationships. Creating relationships with people brings change. The Frankfort Police Department is doing it through The Situation Table. Wanda Joyce Robinson Foundation is doing it through mentors, programming and family support. The Franklin County Opioid Abatement Alliance is doing it through upstream prevention work. Thorn Hill Education Center is doing it by offering free educational programs. Our school systems build relationships with their students everyday. Many other organizations in Frankfort are offering programs of support. And we’re working together.
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This is part one of a three part series from the Wanda Joyce Robinson Foundation. Learn more about them and the work they do in Franklin County at wjrfoundation.org.
*Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are traumatic events that happen between the ages of 1 and 17. ACEs affect a person’s overall health.