Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Mariana Horta-Cappelli Humanities and Social Science

How have the drug wars affected the children of the incarcerated in California?

Since the 1980’s our country has been fighting a “war on drugs” that is aimed at the supply side of the drug economy. Domestically this effort caused our incarcerated population to grow much faster in the past 30 years than the total population. Consequentially, a growing proportion of children experience the negative externalities of a parent’s incarceration. My research question is “How have the ‘drug wars’ affected the children of the incarcerated in California?” I’ll focus on the challenges facing families touched by incarceration and the services available to them. This topic is particularly relevant at a time when the state estimates that about 9% of California children are affected by the incarceration of a parent.

Message To Sponsor

Mariana Horta is an interdisciplinary studies major. She is writing her senior thesis on the negative externalities of incarceration bore by children of incarcerated parents in California and the services available to mitigate those externalities. She will be using her SURF to conduct research for this project.