. The incarceration rates for U.S. mothers began to surge in the 1980s , fueled by the crack cocaine epidemic and tougher mandatory sentencing laws , experts said . A recent study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics found the number of incarcerated mothers rose 131 percent from 1991 to 2007 , while the number of fathers in prison increased 77 percent during the same period . According to the Sentencing Project , a Washington-based nonprofit , about 1.7 million children have a parent in prison . `` We should be alarmed , '' said Georgia Lerner , executive director at the Women 's Prison Association , a national nonprofit working with incarcerated women . `` Even when children have seen their mothers get arrested , they still want to be with their parents , '' Lerner said . `` They still love their mothers and want to be together . '' While some critics argue that criminals make poor parents , experts said there is no doubt that separation from a parent , particularly a mother , affects a child 's psychological development . When a father is imprisoned , the mother typically cares for the children ,
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- `` Get yourself together . '' Mary Williams repeated those three words often to her 28-year-old daughter , who served three years in a Kansas prison for a 1988 armed robbery . Donnie Belcher , 7 , visits her mother , Wanda Taylor , at Lansing Correctional Facility in Kansas in 1991 . Williams never judged her daughter , Wanda Taylor , for the crime or the crack cocaine addiction that fueled it . There was no need to pick at the past . Instead , Williams looked to the future . The future was her granddaughter , Donnie Belcher , a shy 4-year-old girl with curly hair who cried inconsolably from behind the glass the first time she visited her mother in jail . The little girl 's mother was locked up for three years , leaving her in the care of her grandmother . `` It was hard on me , '' said Belcher , now 25 . `` I never wanted to leave my mother . '' Belcher defied the odds , growing up straight as an arrow despite having a mother in prison . Her childhood was part of a national trend