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We examined if residence in high-incarceration neighborhoods is associated with risk of cognitive, behavioral and physical health problems for young children net of individual-level parental incarceration status. We used regression analysis and linked data from Year 9 of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and zip code level information on neighborhood prison admission rates from Justice Atlas of Sentencing and Corrections in 2008. Neighborhood incarceration rates appear to have some independent and negative associations with child cognitive outcomes. For behavioral outcomes, individual-level parental incarceration appears to be the most meaningful. For child physical health outcomes as indicated by BMI percentages and overall good health, neither neighborhood incarceration rates nor individual-level parental incarceration experiences show persistent significant associations. Living in a neighborhood with high incarceration may threaten children’s health and wellbeing, suggesting that mass incarceration feeds into a system of inequality that extends beyond those who experience individual-level parental incarceration by exerting a broader public health impact.

Research on the collateral consequences of mass imprisonment has focused on the interactions that families and communities have with the criminal justice system. Less attention is paid to interactions that children of the incarcerated have with another important social institution: schools. This article describes the types of schools that children with incarcerated fathers attend. Using newly available data on children’s early elementary environments from a longitudinal birth-cohort sample of urban families, the analyses show that children of the incarcerated are more often in disadvantaged schools and in schools with climates worse than the schools of same-age peers with no histories of paternal incarceration. I offer a first exploratory step toward understanding the interplay among three of America’s most powerful social institutions—families, schools, and the criminal justice system—and the ways that they interact to structure the educational trajectories of what scholars are calling “children of the prison boom.”

Student turnover has many negative consequences for students and schools, and the high mobility rates of disadvantaged students may exacerbate inequality. Scholars have advised schools to reduce mobility by building and improving relationships with and among families, but such efforts are rarely tested rigorously. A cluster-randomized field experiment in 52 predominantly Hispanic elementary schools in San Antonio, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, tested whether student mobility in early elementary school was reduced through Families and Schools Together (FAST), an intervention that builds social capital among families, children, and schools. FAST failed to reduce mobility overall but substantially reduced the mobility of Black students, who were especially likely to change schools. Improved relationships among families help explain this finding.