“Rarely do children admit they have an incarcerated parent. Only now are we beginning to see people acknowledge this about themselves, and I would attribute a lot of it to the strides WE GOT US NOW has made. We’ve helped children and families understand that they don’t have to feel shame or stigma – they didn’t do anything wrong — and that it’s okay to love your parent. People make mistakes.”
– Ebony Underwood, founder and CEO, WE GOT US NOW
Interview with Ebony Underwood
Ebony Underwood is a social entrepreneur, content creator, and founder and CEO of WE GOT US NOW, a national nonprofit advocacy organization built and led by children and young adults impacted by parental incarceration. She is a Soros Justice Fellow, Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow, and board member at The Sentencing Project. By centering the voices and experiences of children with incarcerated parents, Ebony and her organization bring an important perspective to advocacy that promotes practices and policies to keep families affected by the justice system connected, create fair sentencing, and end mass incarceration
We spoke with Ebony about her work and the solutions her organization promotes for families with incarcerated parents.
What led you to start WE GOT US NOW?
It was back in 2014 that this journey started. At that point, my father had been incarcerated for more than half of my life — 26 years — and I never said anything publicly about it. But I started hearing people talk about the problem of mass incarceration and I learned that the Obama Administration was interested in righting the wrongs. I was extremely moved by this.
My dad fought his conviction the entire time he was incarcerated. I felt if there’s one thing I could do to support him here on the outside, it would be to say something about the injustices in our society’s approach to incarceration and the experiences families with incarcerated loved ones have.
When I raised this with my father’s attorney, she said, “Ebony, I’m so excited for you to be in this space. We don’t really hear from families. The data is that most families fall off after 5 years, or at the most, 10 years.” I wondered where this data was coming from because I’d been visiting prisons for most of my life, and that just wasn’t true. Families are always there.
I also wanted people to know that my father never stopped being a father, despite prison walls, no matter where he was. He’d been in 8 federal correctional facilities across the United States, but he was always present in our lives: Through phone calls, birthday cards, holiday cards, and eventually email, he was there.
My dad’s attorney asked if I could write something for her to take to an event that she was attending at the White House that week for children with incarcerated parents. I thought, “What? Children with incarcerated parents at the White House? Wait, there’s a name for what my life is like?” Nobody I knew thought there was any empathy for children with incarcerated parents. I had never even heard the term used before. This new info compelled me to write a 4-page letter to President Obama about how my incarcerated father had remained a committed, loving parent despite prison walls.
From that moment on, I decided this was my purpose. I would pursue every avenue possible to help get my dad home. As a content creator, I have this mantra, “technology is the doorway and storytelling is the key.” I used my laptop, phone, and social media to advocate for my dad’s release. In 2016, I became a Soros Justice Fellow. As part of my research, I traveled across the country to meet anyone working on the issue of children with incarcerated parents. I wanted to help amplify this issue and support children like me. I wanted them to know they were not alone. This eventually led to WE GOT US NOW, which I rolled out in 2018.
What kind of work does your organization do, and what are its goals?
We are an advocacy-based organization that works on public education, civic engagement, developing directly-impacted leaders, and policy reform at the local, state, and federal levels. It was really important to be a national organization because this is not a monolithic issue, and we didn’t want to leave out any segment of the population. We believe it’s important to amplify how mass incarceration creates collateral consequences that affect children’s daily lives. The goal is to seek justice and accountability for our marginalized population.
Prior to WE GOT US NOW, the work was primarily focused on children under the age of 18, but we wanted to emphasize that “children” can also refer to young adults affected by having a parent incarcerated due to draconian sentencing laws that keep families separated for decades.
Part of our work focuses on creating strategic partnerships. One example is our partnership with Google to create the digital campaign series, Love Letters. We created 3 iterations of Love Letters released on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day that shined a spotlight on the unbreakable bond between children and their incarcerated parents and advocated for the importance of keeping families connected.
We created advocacy campaigns to educate the public and to eliminate the trauma, stigma, and shame for children with incarcerated parents, recommend solutions that keep families connected, and advocate for policies and practices that create fair sentencing and end mass incarceration. Prior to WE GOT US NOW, there was a generalized narrative about children with incarcerated parents that alluded to a destiny of incarceration; if we didn’t save them, they would end up just like their parents in jail or prison. WE GOT US NOW works to challenge and debunk harmful myths that keep our historically-invisible population in the shadows so we can be the collective authors of our personal narratives. We produce advocacy campaigns that turns pain into personal power by exposing the emotional harm caused by collateral consequences of failed policies that brought about mass incarceration.
We have 4 guiding principles: to engage, educate, elevate, and empower our community. One way we do that is through our action-to-advocacy model. We built an “Actionist” leadership program — daughters and sons from across the US committed to reforming the criminal legal system. We provide robust leadership programming that includes advocacy training, media training, civic engagement, personal/professional development, and tools for wellness and wellbeing. The program has helped transform our emerging leaders into subject matter experts who understand how to effectively advocate for change and we provide opportunities for them to do so nationally, and in their respective cities and states. Since 2021, WE GOT US NOW has been instrumental in passing 5 pieces of legislation at the local, state, and federal levels.
What are some issues that come up for kids who have an incarcerated parent?
There are many triggers for a child with incarcerated parents in their daily lives. I’ll start from the point of view of an elementary school-age child. In elementary school, the teacher may ask a child to get their homework signed by their mom or dad, or when Mother’s Day or Father’s Day comes around, what often happens in class is you’re asked to write a Mother’s Day card or a Father’s Day card — and that can be triggering. Or when there’s parent-teacher night, daddy/daughter dances or mommy/son dances, sports activities, school plays, where parents are expected to show up — those things can be triggering. The emotional toll of the holidays can also be devastating with conversations from peers about receiving gifts, and television commercials and social media ads showcasing children and their parents spending quality time together.
Distance is also a huge thing. If your parent is incarcerated in a another state and your caregiver doesn’t have the financial means to travel there, you won’t be able to visit your parent in-person. For some children, that means years of being unable to see or hug their parents. And when you can travel to a correctional facility, that has its own challenges. The visiting hours don’t change, just because you’re coming from a different state or a very long distance. When we traveled, oftentimes we’d wake up at 3 am to be able to visit a facility that was maybe 6-8 hours away, just so we could make sure we arrived in time to have a substantial visit.
Some prison and jail facilities have begun to eliminate in-person visits, in favor of remote video technology. We advocate that facilities using remote connection technology never take away in-person visits because nothing can replace a hug or kiss from a parent.
When you think about children of incarcerated parents, it’s a historically-invisible population, primarily, because of the trauma, stigma, and shame associated with having an incarcerated parent. Rarely do children admit they have an incarcerated parent. Only now are we beginning to see people acknowledge this about themselves, and I would attribute a lot of it to the strides WE GOT US NOW has made. We’ve helped children and families understand that they don’t have to feel shame or stigma – they didn’t do anything wrong — and that it’s okay to love your parent. People make mistakes.
What can be done to reduce stigma that children of incarcerated parents feel? How do we create more visibility around these children’s experiences so they get more support?
It begins by understanding the problem. The work of WE GOT US NOW leads with education. Half of the 2.2 million people incarcerated in the US are parents. More than 2.7 million children under the age of 18 currently have an incarcerated parent — equal to the populations of Maine and New Hampshire combined. That alone is a huge population. But the epidemic is that over 10 million children, at some point in their life, have experienced a parent incarcerated. To me, that means an entire segment of our population is walking around with invisible wounds from the trauma, stigma, and shame of parental incarceration. We can no longer sweep things under the rug. This has to change. We must heal as a nation.
There isn’t an instruction manual when someone goes to prison. Most people, including family members, have no idea what children with incarcerated parents are going through. WE GOT US NOW’s approach is from the perspective of the child.
For decades, society solely focused on one individual — the incarcerated person. What was never considered at trial or sentencing was whether this person was a parent and, if so, what do we do to provide support for the innocent bystanders — their children. Instead, the approach was to harshly punish with policies that over-incarcerate and the ripple effects caused further harm to their children and families due to inhumane carceral practices, such as lack of proximity to facilities, telecommunication costs, lack of notification systems to inform of prison lockdowns and closures or the moving of incarcerated parent to a new facility.
I recognized early on that only part of our story was being told. I came up with the name WE GOT US NOW because of our lived experience. We understand more profoundly the depth of pain, responsibility, anxiety, and vulnerability these children and families face. We knew there was more to the story and decided that we will no longer be silenced by our pain.
Rather than point the finger, we took accountability for ourselves and, in turn, built a national movement to uplift, inform, educate, and equip our constituents, partners, and allies with knowledge and solutions that support the needs of children and young adults impacted by parental incarceration. Our work helps educate and inform partners and allies in the fields of criminal justice reform, education, tech, research, healthcare, sports, media, journalism, TV/film, art and entertainment. It lets them know, “This is who we are. This is what we need.” We approach these partnerships, not only as voices that have had this lived experience, but as subject matter experts.
My two biggest challenges have been, one — reinforcing the importance of this issue — this is not just a “sexy topic”; we must do what we can to ensure the health and wellbeing of these children as long as there are parents behind bars; and two, securing multi-year financial resources for the sustainability of WE GOT US NOW.
What advocacy or policy work do you do to benefit children of incarcerated parents?
WE GOT US NOW has been instrumental in passing 5 pieces of legislation that support our 3 policy priorities: to keep families connected, create fair sentencing, and end mass incarceration. We advocated for a law New York State passed requiring that incarcerated parents be housed in facilities closest to where their children live. We won the right to make prison phone calls free at federal correctional institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and we are part of a national coalition to make prison phone calls free in every state.
In Washington DC, we provided winning testimony supporting one of our Actionist’s effort to require all DC public schools to have social/emotional learning focused on supporting children of incarcerated parents. In Louisiana, we provided recommendations to a WE GOT US NOW Actionist that culminated in the creation of the Council on the Children with Incarcerated Parents and Caregivers under the Governor’s office.
This year marks 50 years since the number of people being imprisoned in the US began to rise rapidly. It’s a failed policy that has become a public health crisis, is inhumane, and not in alignment with family integrity.
What are some of the challenges people face when they leave their jail or prison facilities and come back home to their communities?
Reentry can be tough without the proper support. WE GOT US NOW’s first policy priority is to keep our families connected because studies show that incarcerated individuals who are connected to their family are less likely to recidivate. With over 90 percent of the prison population destined for release, we must better prepare our incarcerated loved ones for a safe and successful reentry into society.
I’ll give you a personal example of what happens with reentry. During the pandemic, my father received a compassionate release after 33 years in federal prison. He had never seen a cell phone in person. So, when he got out, it’s as if he was on a new planet. Imagine someone, who has been confined in prison for decades, experiencing this new digital world. It can be very intimidating. When my dad came home, he lived with me and did not get a cell phone right away. Life during the pandemic was completely digital and I had to do everything with him. As I began to help him adjust to his new life of freedom, the stark reality of what he was faced with began to set in. I saw all the challenges a 67-year-old elder coming into the free world faced. The daily things we take for granted — interacting with technology, understanding how to operate a smart phone, computer, apps to watch television or order food. For someone coming back into society without a family or support system, the results could be debilitating.
Thankfully, my father has a built-in support system with me and my siblings that helped him navigate the world upon his release from prison. Two years since his release, I am proud to share that he is a staunch criminal justice reform advocate who has testified twice before the US Congress and is a Senior Fellow at The Sentencing Project. We need to prepare incarcerated individuals for reentry. Two years before someone’s release date, there needs to begin a reentry process that prepares the incarcerated individual, as well as their family.
If we are a society that truly believes in a system of justice and shared safety, we must ensure that children with incarcerated parents are no longer forgotten.