Imagine being five years old and waking up to police officers at your front door to arrest your parent.
For thousands of Kentucky children, that moment isn’t hypothetical. It’s a memory. And it’s one that follows them for years, shaping their sense of safety long after the sirens fade.
Parental incarceration is one of the most common, and often overlooked, adverse childhood experiences (“ACEs”) in our state. This past legislative session, Kentucky lawmakers took a meaningful step toward changing that with Senate Bill 122, which asks judges to consider something they haven’t always been required to weigh: whether the person standing in front of them is the person a child depends on to survive.
What Are ACEs and Why Does a Parent’s Incarceration Count as One?
Adverse childhood experiences (“ACEs”) are the potentially traumatic events researchers have linked to worse health, education, and life outcomes decades later. Things like abuse, neglect, domestic violence in the home, or the loss of a parent can have significant long-term impacts on our health and wellbeing, well into adulthood. Since the original ACE study in the 1990s, the incarceration of a parent or guardian has been included on that list, right alongside abuse and neglect.
That’s not just a technicality. Research consistently shows that kids with an incarcerated parent are exposed to nearly five times as many other ACEs as kids who don’t have that experience (an average of about two additional adverse experiences, compared to less than half of one for their peers). Losing a parent to incarceration rarely happens in isolation; it tends to arrive alongside housing instability, lost income, and disrupted caregiving, each of which compounds the harm.
The Kentucky Numbers
Roughly 1 in 9 Kentucky kids grow up with a parent who's been incarcerated — a rate higher than every state but one. This burden isn’t distributed evenly either; close to 6 in 10 incarcerated women in Kentucky, and just over half of incarcerated men, are caretakers for minor
children. Because mothers so often hold together a family’s daily caregiving, their incarceration carries a steeper cost. Kids with an incarcerated mother land in foster care at roughly five times the rate of kids whose incarcerated parent is their father.
Every one of those numbers represents a kid whose daily life (school pickup, bedtime, the person who knows their favorite snack) was upended, often with little warning and no say in the matter.
What Senate Bill 122 Does
Section 1 of SB 122, titled the Family Preservation and Accountability Act, amends Kentucky’s core probation statute (KRS 533.010) to give judges a clearer path to keep caregivers out of prison when a safer, effective alternative exists.
Here’s what changes in practice: before a judge sentences someone to prison, they must now specifically consider whether that person is a “caretaker” (someone who has consistently provided housing, health care, education, or other support for a dependent child or family member, or a woman who is pregnant or gave birth while awaiting sentencing). That caretaker status becomes part of the same risk-and-needs evaluation courts already use to decide between probation and incarceration.
More importantly, this isn’t a “get out of accountability free” card. The bill still requires restitution and no-contact conditions to protect victims. Where a judge determines prison isn’t necessary for public safety, there are real, structured alternatives: home incarceration; residential treatment; halfway houses; probation paired with substance use treatment, parenting classes, vocational training; and even restorative practices that hold the person accountable directly to their victim. Judges retain full discretion to send someone to prison when public safety demands it. What SB 122 adds is a requirement that they actually look at the caregiving relationship before making that call—and a fuller toolbox of alternatives when incarceration isn’t the safest option for everyone involved, including the child.
Why This Matters for Kids
Other states have already found that this kind of reform works. Programs that keep caregivers connected to their kids, through alternative sentencing or diversion rather than straight incarceration, tend to produce better outcomes across the board: fewer kids entering foster care,
lower recidivism, and real savings for state budgets that would otherwise go toward incarceration alone. Keeping a family together isn’t just kinder; it’s often the more effective public safety strategy.
For the kids of Kentucky, that matters enormously. A child whose parent successfully completes treatment and comes home is a child spared from the added ACEs that so often follow incarceration. Recognizing parental incarceration as a preventable harm, not just an unavoidable consequence of the justice system, is exactly the kind of shift ACE-informed policy is supposed to produce.
We know SB 122 won’t solve every challenge facing those Kentucky families who are impacted by the justice system. But it reflects something we should all be able to agree on: that when it’s safe to do so, keeping a parent and child together is worth building into the law, not just hoping for. That’s a step in the right direction for Kentucky’s kids. And one we’re glad to see our lawmakers take.
Sources:
1. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), BOUNCE, https://bouncecoalition.org/what-are-aces/ (last visited July 22, 2026).
2. Children who had a parent who was ever incarcerated, THE ANNIE E. CASEY FOUNDATION, https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/line/9688-children-who-had-a-parent-who-was-ever-incarcerated?loc=27&loct=2 (last visited July 22, 2026).
3. Crystal Willis, Breaking Barriers: Understanding the Impact of Parental Incarceration on Kentucky Families, KENTUCKY YOUTH ADVOCATES (Oct. 24, 2023), https://kyyouth.org/breaking-barriers-understanding-the-impact-of-parental-incarceration-on-kentucky-families/ (last visited July 22, 2026).
4. Family Sentencing Alternative Pilot Program: Report to the Senate and House Committees on Judiciary, OREGON DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES (Jan. 23, 2019), https://www.oregon.gov/cjc/SAC/Documents/FSAPPJointReport2019.pdf (last visited July 22, 2026).
5. Incarcerating Caregivers Hurts Kentucky Families, ACLU KENTUCKY (Sept. 27, 2024), https://www.cjcj.org/news/blog/let-kids-be-kids-the-effects-of-parental-incarceration-on-children (last visited July 22, 2026).
6. Let Kids Be Kids: The Effects of Parental Incarceration on Children, CENTER ON JUVENILE & CRIMINAL JUSTICE (Aug. 17, 2023), https://www.cjcj.org/news/blog/let-kids-be-kids-the-effects-of-parental-incarceration-on-children (last visited July 22, 2026).
7. We Can Prevent Childhood Adversity: The Science of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Shows We Can Improve People’s Lives and Help Them Thrive, CDC, https://vetoviolence.cdc.gov/apps/aces-infographic/ (last visited July 22, 2026).
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Author: Tiffanie Tagaloa
Tiffanie Tagaloa is an attorney in Children's Law Center's Lexington office, where her work is grounded in public-interest advocacy focused on protecting the rights of children, youth, and underserved communities. Her work is grounded in public-interest advocacy, focusing on the protection of the rights of children, youth, and underserved communities.
Tiffanie earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law, where she served as a staff editor on the Kentucky Law Journal. During law school, she interned and externed with the Fayette County offices of the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy and held a limited practice license that allowed her to represent indigent clients under supervision. She also interned with the ACLU of Kentucky, where her work centered on legal advocacy for underrepresented youth, including issues related to gender-affirming medical care and access to health services, and researched the application of the death penalty in Kentucky and its disproportionate impact on communities of color.
While in law school, Tiffanie worked with Street Law to educate high school students on their constitutional rights and launched a relief effort during the 2022 Eastern Kentucky floods to assist impacted families with accessing FEMA aid. Before joining the Children’s Law Center, she practiced in both criminal defense and civil litigation in Kentucky. Outside of work, Tiffanie enjoys hiking, rafting, and spending time outdoors, usually accompanied by her husky, who has the confidence and attitude of a spoiled teenager.