Brittany Herrington, recovery and outreach coordinator for Pathways, a certified community behavioral health center in Ashland, said currently, about one of 10 children in the Commonwealth has or has had an incarcerated parent. Herrington added they are often families who are struggling with substance abuse and poverty.
“What we have a real bad habit of in Kentucky is incarcerating parents, and we're incarcerating a lot of sick parents and not really incarcerating violent parents,” Herrington contended.
Earlier this year, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear signed the bipartisan Family Preservation and Accountability Act, Senate Bill 122, into law.
Herrington added that another barrier is a lack of automatic expungement. Herrington noted that in Kentucky, if you have a felony conviction, it stays on your criminal record forever, which prevents many people from returning to a normal life after serving time.
“Automatic expungement would allow people to prove that they've changed, to prove that they're trying and to get their record cleared so they can live productively and earn a livable wage,” Herrington emphasized.
According to the ACLU of Kentucky, the state also incarcerates women at one of the highest rates in the world, which rips many young children apart from their primary caregiver and contributes to an overcrowded foster care system.
