The relationship between childhood trauma and incarceration is complex and interconnected.  Individuals who experience trauma in their early years from abuse, neglect, or exposure to violence are put at a risk of engaging in behaviours that lead to incarceration later in life.  Trauma effects the brain and can lead to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and PTSD that can contribute to criminal activities. Many who experience childhood trauma develop survival-based coping strategies that can increase the likelihood that they will become involved in the criminal justice system. Adverse Childhood Experiences like abuse and household dysfunction are contributing factors to incarceration.  Early exposure to the criminal justice system through juvenile detention leads people to further trauma of being incarcerated as an adult.

Through my professional experience working with youth who are in foster care, some of which are incarcerated in juvenile detention centers and working as a student in parole and  as a Prisoner Advocate with many men and women who are incarcerated, I have seen first hand that childhood trauma of contributed to their criminal behaviour.  Through my personal experience as a Prison Wife to a Wrongfully Convicted Indigenous Lifer I see that childhood trauma has long-term effects on people later on in life.  I watched my husband suffer from his childhood trauma and after years of suffering from his past, growing up in foster care, being wrongfully convicted, serving life and the abuses that he went through in prison he has healed.  I share our story of trauma and healing to bring awareness to those who work with incarcerated individuals to be mindful of what brings an individual to engage in criminal activity and to bring hope to those who suffer from childhood trauma hoping  to prevent others from going through all that we have endured.