Abstract
A person’s arrest and imprisonment often has a serious impact on the lives of several other people. In the case of close family — especially children — this impact can be very serious indeed and these individuals can suffer emotional, economic and psychological consequences. As already explained, imprisonment is wrought with taboos and stigmatisation, which will often affect children on top of all the other problems that follow from having a father or mother in prison. Taken together, the many and far-reaching ways in which imprisonment can affect close relatives has been termed an experience of “secondary prisonization”.1
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Notes
See Megan Comfort, Doing Time Together. Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
See, for example, Christopher Wildemann, “Paternal Incarceration and Children’s Physically Aggressive Behaviors: Evidence from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study”, Social Forces 89, no. 1 (2010), 287. See also Rodriguez, Smith and Zatz (2009, 182).
Hagan, J. and Dinovitzer, R., “Collateral Consequences of Imprisonment for Children, Communities, and Prisoners”, in Tonry, M.H. (ed.), Crime and Justice: A Review of Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1999, 122).
Joseph Murray, David P. Farrington and Ivana Sekol, “Children’s Antisocial Behavior, Mental Health, Drug Use, and Educational Performance after Parental Incarceration: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis”, Psychological Bulletin 138, no. 2 (2012), 190.
See Susan D. Phillips et al. “Disentangling the Risks: Parent Criminal Justice Involvement and Children’s Exposure to Family Risks”, Criminology & Public Policy 5, no. 6 (2006), 680;
and Joseph Murray and David P. Farrington, “Evidence-based Programs for Children of Prisoners”, Criminology & Public Policy 5, no. 4 (2006), 723 and 726.
The two quotes are from Murray and Farrington (2008, 187), and from Sytske Besemer et al. “The Relationship between Parental Imprisonment and Offspring Offending in England and the Netherlands”, British Journal of Criminology 51, no. 2 (2011), 422.
Joseph Murray, Parental imprisonment: Effects on Children’s Antisocial Behaviour and Mental Health through the Life-course, dissertation University of Cambridge, February 2006, 184. See also Besemer et al. (2011).
Sara Wakefield and Christopher Wildeman, “Mass Imprisonment and Childhood Behavior Problems”, American Society of Criminology 10, no. 3 (2011), 800 and 799.
Sara Wakefield and Christopher Wildeman, Children of the Prison Boom. Mass Incarecration and the Future of American Inequality, Oxford University Press: New York, 2014, 154 f.
See, for example, Christensen 1999 and Annelie Björkhagen Tureson, Mor i fängelse — mödrer och barn berätter. En analys av ungdomars resiliensprocess, doctoral thesis, University of Gothenburg, 2009.
Seena Fazel and John Danesh, “Serious Mental Disorder in 23,000 Prisoners: A Systematic Review of 62 Surveys”, The Lancet 359, no. 9306 (2002), 548.
Henrik Steen Andersen, “Mental Health in Prison Populations: A Review — With Special Emphasis on a Study of Danish Prisoners on Remand”, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica Supplementum 110, no. 424 (2004), 27.
Quoted from Sasha Abramsky and Jamie Fellner, Ill-Equipped: U.S. Prisons and Offenders with Mental Illness (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2003), 17.
Mette Ejrnæs, Morten Ejrnæs and Signe Fredriksen, “Anbringelser uden for hjemmet”, in Når man anbringer et barn. Baggrund, stabilitet i anbringelsen og det videre liv, ed. Signe Hald Andersen (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2010), 103.
Anette Molbech, Children of Prisoners. A Story about the Engelsborg Family House (Copenhagen: The Danish Prison and Probation Service, 2009), 26.
Carl Mazza, “And Then the World Fell Apart: The Children of Incarcerated Fathers”, Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Services 83, no. 5/6 (2000), 522. See also Boswell and Wedge (2007, 62).
Torben Tranæs, “Den uformelle straf og velfærdsstaten”, Nordisk Tidsskrift for Kriminalvidenskab 95, no. 3 (2008), 240.
See, for example, J. A. Arditti, Parental Incarceration and the Family: Psychological and Social Effects of Imprisonment on Children, Parents, and Caregivers (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 32; Condry (2007b). See also Murray and Farrington (2008, 275).
Social Development Centre, Børn som på rørende [Children as Relatives] (Co-penhagen, Social Development Centre, 2004), 6. Subsequently, SUS has expanded the booklet (When Children are Relatives, 2006), which contains a separate chapter about prisoners’ children.
Quoted from Anne Nesmith and Ebony Ruhland, “Children of Incarcerated Parents: Challenges and Resiliency, in Their Own Words”, Children and Youth Services Review 30, no. 10 (2008), 1125.
Richard Steinhoff and Anne H. Berman, “Children’s Experiences of Having a Parent in Prison — We Look at the Moon and Then We Feel Close to Each Other”, Sociologie Si Asistenta Sociala 5, no. 2 (2012), 77.
Joseph Murray, Parental Imprisonment: Effects on Children’s Antisocial Behav-iour and Mental Health through the Life-course, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, February 2006, 184. See also Besemer et al. (2011).
Statistic Denmark’s Børns Familier (Children’s Families), 2008, 204 (table 12.6.2).
John Irwin and Barbara Owen, “Harm and the Contemporary Prison”, in The Effects of Imprisonment, ed. Alison Liebling and Shadd Maruna (Cullomp-ton, UK: Willan Publishing, 2005), 94.
Beth Grothe Nielsen, Straf. Hvad ellers? [Punishment: What Else?] (Copenhagen: Tiderne Skifter, 2006), 117.
In the quoted context, Nielsen refers to Paul Leer-Salvesen, Menneske og straf [Human Beings and Punishment] (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1991).
Shadd Maruna, “After Prison, What? The Ex-prisoner’s Struggle to Desist from Crime”, in Handbook on Prisons, ed. Y. Jewkes (Cullompton, UK: Wil-lan Publishing, 2009), 661.
Kristin Turney, Christopher Wildeman and Jason Schnittker “As Fathers and Felons: Explaining the Effects of Current and Recent Incarceration on Major Depression”, Journal of Health and Social Behavior 53, no. 4 (2012), 13. See also Minke (2012) on prisonization and parenthood.
Raikes and Lockwood (2011, 19). See also Pat Carlen and Anne Worrall, Analysing Women’s Imprisonment (Cullompton, UK: Willan Publishing, 2004), 64.
See also Ria Wolleswinkel, “Children of Imprisoned Parents”, in Developmental and Autonomy Rights of Children: Empowering Children, Caregivers and Communities, ed. Jan Willems (Antwerpen: Intersentia, 2002), 203.
Jesper Ryberg, Retsfølelsen. En bog om straf og etik (Frederiksberg: Roskilde Universitetsforlag, 2006), 10–11 and 25.
Regarding Danes’ sense of justice, see Flemming Balvig: Danskernes syn på straf [Danes’ View of Punishment] (Copenhagen: Advokatsamfundet, 2006).
Hans Jørgen Engbo, “Ret og etik i straffuldbyrdelsen”, in Straffens men-neskelige ansigt? En antologi om etik, ret og religion i fængslet, ed. Lene Kühle and Carl Lomholt (Frederiksberg: ANIS 2006), 58.
Translated from Danish. See Tobias Møller, Den fængsledes børn. Forslag til forbedring af vilkårene for børn af fængslede [Prisoners’ Children. Proposal for Improvement of the Terms for Children of Prisoners], unpublished text, presented at a round table held by the Danish Institute for Human Rights on 9 February 2006.
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© 2014 Peter Scharff Smith
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Smith, P.S. (2014). The Problems and Reactions of Prisoners’ Children: A Review of Research. In: When the Innocent are Punished. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137414298_5
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