Incarceration For Families Research Articles

“Whether my Body Breaks or the Plum Tree Withers”: Iwanaga Maki, Social Welfare Pioneer, and the jūjikai Women's Religious Order

Maria Iwanaga Maki (1849–1920) was 23 years old in 1873 when she returned home after a community exile and persecutions of more than 3000 people carried out by the Meiji government. Historians in the public record refer to Iwanaga as otoko‐masari (man‐nish) when she stood up to a representative of the Shogun, while in her public work she became known as the sister of the intersection. She was a social‐work pioneer, believed to have cared for upwards of 900 children. During her family's imprisonment in Bizen (Okayama), Iwanaga's younger sister, Fui, and her father died. Iwanaga and her compatriots started the jūjikai Cross Society, that was the first Japanese Catholic women's order post‐persecution in 1879, working to assist those affected by epidemics and beginning one of, if not the first orphanage in the Meiji era in Japan. In this article by including a family tree, I consider how memory and emotion is transmitted across generations, drawing on Marianne Hirsch's “postmemory,” in the light of the narratives about Iwanaga. I examine three primary sources, including two spoken records and a photograph, to better understand the emotional person of Iwanaga, and her institution of onnabeya, or women's rooms.

Trends in Women's Incarceration Rates in US Prisons and Jails: A Tale of Inequalities

Women's rates of imprisonment and incarceration in jails grew faster than men's rates during the prison boom in the United States. Even during the recent period of modest decline in incarceration, women's rates have decreased less than men's rates. The number of women in prisons and jails in the United States is now at a historic high. Yet research on mass incarceration most often ignores women's imprisonment and confinement in jails. This review examines trends in women's incarceration, highlighting important disparities for Black, Latina, and American Indian/Indigenous women. It contextualizes these trends in terms of the economic and social disadvantages of women prior to incarceration as well as inequalities that are created by women's incarceration for families, communities, and women themselves. The review concludes by calling for improved data on women's imprisonment and jail trends, particularly regarding race and ethnicity, as well as more research and theoretical development.

Family Imprisonment, Maternal Parenting Stress and Its Impact on Mother-Child Relationship Satisfaction

Parental imprisonment, and more recently other close family imprisonment, has been associated with long-term harms to children. A number of researchers have proposed that parenting stress caused by family imprisonment could impact on caregivers’ ability to offer a secure parent–child relationship after a close family member is imprisoned. Such relationship problems might then mediate further harms to children. The Family Stress-Proximal Process (FSPP) model conceptualises family imprisonment as an ongoing stressor that influences relational processes in families. Using HILDA, a nationally-representative Australian survey, we test key aspects of this theoretical model for women affected by close family imprisonment. We demonstrate that recent close family imprisonment does indeed significantly increase risks of high maternal parenting stress. Women affected by this high parenting stress are also significantly more likely to report feeling less satisfied with their relationship with their child one year later. Nonetheless, only a third of women experiences high parenting stress after close family imprisonment. And, women who experience close family imprisonment without high parenting stress do not have a greater risk of subsequent relationship dissatisfaction. We conclude that the prevention or reduction of parenting stress in families affected by close family imprisonment could have a protective effect on subsequent mother-child relationships.

Representing Children of Prisoners in the Public Domain: Comparing Children’s Views and Policy Documents

ABSTRACTAustralian adult prisoner numbers continue to rise to what have been described as unprecedented and unsustainable levels. Research highlights that there are wide-ranging consequences of incarceration for families, and particularly for children. Despite the available research describing the negative impact of parental incarceration on children, it has been argued that these children remain virtually invisible to policy makers and social programs. Using a combination of policy analyses and findings from a research project undertaken in the Australian Capital Territory aimed at identifying the needs of children who have a parent in prison, we examine how this group of children is constructed and responded to by the systems that surround the children. It is argued that it is only when children are seen in a more holistic way that systems can respond more collaboratively to effectively support children.IMPLICATIONSChildren of prisoners have needed to rely on adults to recognise the problem of parental incarceration and petition for them.It is time for those who inform and develop social policy to consider the impact of current policies on children.It is only when children are seen in a more holistic way that systems can respond more collaboratively to effectively support them.

Risk Marker or Risk Mechanism? The Effect of Family, Household, and Parental Imprisonment on Children and Adults’ Social Support and Mental Health

There is robust evidence of associations between parental imprisonment (PI) and a variety of harms to children, but the consequences of other forms of family imprisonment are largely unknown. Using Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA), a nationally representative Australian data set, this article looked at the direct effects of PI, household member imprisonment (HI), or close family member imprisonment (CFI) on the social support and mental health of nonincarcerated adults and young people. Recent PI, HI, or CFI had no association with social support. Recent CFI did increase men’s risk of poor mental health, but not women’s or young people’s. We consider the implications of these findings in the context of strong negative effects of paternal imprisonment on mothers in the United States.

Health and Justice: Framing incarceration as a social determinant of health for Black men in the United States

AbstractThere has been growing interest in improving the health of Black men and the social determinants of health affecting them. In this paper, we argue that incarceration is an important social determinant of health in contemporary U.S. society for Black men and their families. Mass incarceration has deleterious health effects for those directly affected by it (the incarcerated), and mass incarceration contaminates the communities where it is geographically concentrated. Given the enormous differences in exposure to incarceration for Black men, this group is the most burdened by its effects. By extension, the larger Black community is disproportionately impacted due to the cascading effects of incarceration for families and neighborhoods. Therefore, it is necessary to include incarceration in research and policy addressing the health of Black men in the United States.

Mass Imprisonment and the Extended Family

This study employs microsimulation techniques to provide an accounting of exposure to imprisoned or formerly imprisoned kin. We characterize the risk and prevalence of imprisonment within full kinship networks and find that the life course trajectories of familial imprisonment experienced by black and white Americans take on qualitatively distinct forms: the average black American born at the height of the prison boom experienced the imprisonment of a relative for the first time at age 7 and by age 65 belongs to a family in which more than 1 in 7 working-age relatives have ever been imprisoned. By contrast, the average white American who experiences the imprisonment of a relative does not do so until age 39 and by age 65 belongs to a family in which 1 in 20 working-age relatives have ever been imprisoned. Future reductions in imprisonment rates have the potential to meaningfully reduce these racial disparities in family imprisonment burden.

The costs of incarceration for families of prisoners

AbstractFamily members of incarcerated people are often faced with financial, social and emotional costs related to the imprisonment of their loved ones. These costs can be conceptualized as investments both in the sustenance of personal relationships and in a greater social good in the form of assisting with the reintegration of former prisoners. In this article, we draw upon data from a mixed-methods study to elucidate the costs of detention on families of prisoners. We demonstrate that financial, social and emotional costs associated with imprisonment of a family member are interrelated and often compound each other, indicating the importance of addressing them in a holistic framework.

Incarceration and Household Asset Ownership.

A considerable literature documents the deleterious economic consequences of incarceration. However, little is known about the consequences of incarceration for household assets-a distinct indicator of economic well-being that may be especially valuable to the survival of low-income families-or about the spillover economic consequences of incarceration for families. In this article, we use longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine how incarceration is associated with asset ownership among formerly incarcerated men and their romantic partners. Results, which pay careful attention to the social forces that select individuals into incarceration, show that incarceration is negatively associated with ownership of a bank account, vehicle, and home among men and that these consequences for asset ownership extend to the romantic partners of these men. These associations are concentrated among men who previously held assets. Results also show that post-incarceration changes in romantic relationships are an important pathway by which even short-term incarceration depletes assets.

Surveys, Records, and the Study of Incarceration in Families.

More than 2 million American children have a parent incarcerated, making the consequences of parental incarceration for families critical to understand. A growing literature documents significant challenges not only among incarcerated men, but also among their spouses, partners, and children. Much remains to be learned about these experiences; however, and the data available for doing so are limited. This analysis takes steps to improve the quality of available data on paternal incarceration by supplementing a leading population-based survey of families with administrative criminal history records from a state criminal justice agency. While this administrative supplement provides only a lower-bound on the extent of criminal justice involvement in our sample, it increases the number of fathers identified with criminal histories by more than 20%. Building upon such a supplement, in our current survey or future ones, stands to improve the identification of justice-involved fathers on a broader scale.

Parental Incarceration and Intergenerational Transfers to Young Adults

This study extended work on the consequences of incarceration for families by linking parents’ incarcerations to their material support of children entering adulthood. It examined two categories of support, parental transfers of cash and shared housing, that are known deficits among young children of incarcerated parents and that play important roles in young adult attainment and well-being. Propensity score analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health ( N [Wave3] = 14,023; N [Wave4] = 14,361) revealed that previously incarcerated mothers were less likely to give money and housing support to young adult children, as were previously incarcerated fathers. Some evidence of cross-parent effects was found; a given parent’s incarceration may increase the odds of the other parent’s financial support and decrease the odds of their housing support. The study confirms that the impact of parental incarceration extends beyond childhood and may disadvantage youths during the transition to adulthood.

The Intergenerational Consequences of Mass Incarceration: Implications for Children's Co-Residence and Contact with Grandparents

In response to the rapid growth in mass incarceration, a burgeoning literature documents the mostly deleterious consequences of incarceration for individuals and families. But mass incarceration, which has profoundly altered the American kinship system, may also have implications for relationships that span across generations. In this paper, I use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal data source uniquely situated to understand the collateral consequences of incarceration for families, to examine how paternal incarceration has altered two important aspects of intergenerational relationships: children's co-residence and contact with grandparents. Results show that the association between paternal incarceration and grandparent co-residence results from social selection forces, but that paternal incarceration—especially incarceration lasting three months or longer and incarceration for violent offenses—is associated with less contact with paternal (though not maternal) grandparents. More than one-quarter of this negative relationship is explained by separation between parents that often occurs after paternal incarceration, highlighting the potentially “kinkeeping” role of mothers and the role of fathers in structuring children's relationships with grandparents. Additionally, these negative consequences are strongest among children living with both parents prior to paternal incarceration and among children of previously incarcerated fathers. Taken together, the results provide some of the first evidence that the collateral consequences of incarceration may extend to intergenerational relationships.

THE COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES OF INCARCERATION REVISITED: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS ON CAREGIVERS OF CHILDREN OF INCARCERATED PARENTS*

While policy makers have long extolled the benefits of incarceration, criminologists have expended considerable effort demonstrating the harmful collateral consequences of incarceration. Sampson (2011) recently challenged researchers to move beyond this dichotomy and to assess the “social ledger” of incarceration, where both the potential benefits and harms associated with incarceration are examined. To shed light on the variation in the collateral consequences of incarceration, we focus on the experiences of a valuable group of individuals directly impacted by imprisonment: those caring for children of incarcerated parents. Drawing from in‐depth interviews with a diverse group of caregivers (N= 100), we examine the various consequences (both positive and negative) that occur in their lives as a result of incarceration, as well as the causal processes responsible for the outcomes we observe. Our findings reveal marked variation in the effects of incarceration on caregivers. Such effects are shaped by (1) the prisoner's prior parental involvement, (2) the interpersonal relationship between caregiver and prisoner, and (3) the caregiver's family support system. These findings have important implications for future work conducted on the collateral consequences of incarceration for caregivers, children, and families.

Research to Action

Over the past two decades, Congress has helped states develop demonstration projects enabling mothers at risk of incarceration for drug offenses to be diverted to community-based facilities to serve their sentence. Many of these projects allow mothers to live with their children while serving their sentence and completing a treatment program. While these demonstration projects are a step in the right direction, there are not enough of them to address the growing needs of mothers at risk of incarceration and children at risk of placement in foster care. With concentrated and thorough research assessing the effectiveness and possibilities for improvement of current demonstration projects, researchers can help demonstrate that it is sound for policy makers to move toward a nation-wide implementation of comprehensive community-based treatment programs for mothers and their children as an alternative to incarceration and foster care placement for families struggling with drug addiction.

Saturday Morning at the Jail: Implications of Incarceration for Families and Children*

Little is known about the experience of families affected by incarceration, yet current trends indicate that millions of children have a parent who is imprisoned. Using a conceptual framework that acknowledges the losses associated with a parent's incarceration, 56 caregivers visiting an incarcerated family member during children's visiting hours were interviewed. The interview gathered information about family, health, economics, and the legal aspects of the inmate's situation. Overall, families were at risk economically before incarceration, and the most vulnerable became even more financially strained afterward. Other problems believed to be created by incarceration included parenting strain, emotional stress, and concerns about children's loss of involvement with their incarcerated parent. Implications for family practice and policy are discussed.