Alternatives to incarceration for parents: a scoping review protocol

The USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 1 in 48 adults under correctional supervision. Approximately half of state and federal prisoners are parents, nearly 80% of women in jails are mothers, and an estimated 1 in 14 children have had an incarcerated parent. Incarceration increases the risk of physical and mental health issues, family strain and disconnection and housing and employment instability. Children of incarcerated parents are particularly vulnerable to health problems, behavioural issues and academic struggles. Given these impacts, there is growing interest in using strategies besides incarceration that address both community safety concerns and promote parental and family well-being. Efforts to keep people out of jail and prison most commonly include deflection (before arrest) and diversion or alternatives to incarceration (after arrest but before conviction, or after conviction but as an alternative to prison or jail). However, there is limited understanding of what is known about these approaches when used with parents and a lack of empirical evidence about their effectiveness. This scoping review aims to map concepts, document evidence and identify knowledge gaps about parent and caregiver-focused alternatives to incarceration in the USA.

This scoping review will characterise alternatives to incarceration across the criminal legal system for parents and caregivers and map existing concepts and research in the field. The review will be conducted and reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis Protocols Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines. Five interfaces with one or more databases will be searched including EBSCOhost, ProQuest, Web of Science, PubMed, HeinOnline and SCOPUS, in addition to Google Scholar and Google. All available published articles and grey literature on US-based alternatives to incarceration for parents and caregivers (18+) will be considered. Two research team members will independently screen sources based on inclusion criteria and resolve any disagreements through discussion or a third reviewer if necessary. The findings will be charted, synthesised and reported. The study will be conducted from approximately November 2025 to August 2026.

Ethics approval is not required for this scoping review. The findings will be disseminated through academic publications, conference presentations and to policy and practice audiences. The results will help inform a research agenda aimed at improving the development, implementation and evaluation of parent-focused alternatives to incarceration in the USA.

This protocol is registered with Open Science Framework registries (https://osf.io/39zn8).