The justice system and the
children of prisoners
Policy and practice to prevent intergenerational offending – preliminary
findings from our research
Background
It is roughly estimated that 1 per cent of children under 18
experience parental imprisonment each year in England and
Wales. It is argued that prisoners and their children are
vulnerable to multiple types of social exclusion, including: preexisting deprivation; loss of material and social capital following
imprisonment; stigma; ‘linguistic exclusion’; political exclusion;
poor future prospects; and administrative invisibility.
Despite the apparent prevalence and urgency of the problem,
the population of children of prisoners is unmonitored, underresearched and unsupported by the statutory sector.
In the UK, failure to support children of prisoners reflects an era
of punitive penal policy, and a lack of commitment to reduce
social exclusion by the Government.
Murray, The Cycle of Punishment, 2007.
Pre-existing deprivation
The evidence from our study on this was mixed. While most
families ended up on a benefit, not all started there. For some,
the fall from economic and social stability was extremely
difficult, with houses, businesses and cars either having to be
sold or being repossessed. There were additional issues for
people who had previously been well off, such as fear of people
in their community knowing, children being shunned and so on.
In one poignant example a teenager had previously told her best
friend’s family that her father worked for ‘the government’, as
she figured he did, as he tended the gardens at the prison.
However, one day…..
Pre-existing deprivation
Many of the children in our study do come from extremely poor
homes, and they bring with them to the imprisonment situation
difficulties and deprivation that is nearly always only made
worse, not better, by the incarceration of a parent.
Aren’t they better off with the violent/ murdering/ dishonest/
abusing/ vicious/ alcoholic/ drug-crazed/ bitter and whatever
else the criminal is behind bars?
Yet love has no boundaries, does it? A bad person can be a good
Dad, can’t he?
It is convenient for society to think we are doing these children a
favour by removing their parent. Sometimes we are, but our
research has found that mostly we are not. These children are
left at the bottom of the heap, often angry and feeling betrayed.
Loss of material capital
The children and families are poor. Most live in households
where the main and often only source of income is the benefit or
pension – 90% of our families in year one were in that position.
Adding to the baseline poverty, some had debts that arose
because a family member was in prison (e.g. business failure)
and most faced costs associated with prison - money into trust
accounts for phones calls etc, travel for the children to see their
parent, and so on.
A major effect of this poverty is that when the children have
problems, there appears to be nowhere for the family to turn for
high quality free assistance.
Loss of social capital
Prison is heavily stigmatised in our society. While in one case we
were told that the child had no problems because most of the
kids at his school had a parent in prison, most tried to keep the
situation quiet. There was a lot of fear that people would find
out and the children would suffer. For example in one case,
where a man was in prison for sleeping with a 15 year old girl he
groomed over the internet, the same-aged daughter was seen as
particularly at risk. In another, the family lived in a very socially
exclusive rural area, and the mother only told one person in the
whole community – the driver of the school bus.
Telling teachers…
Loss of social capital
Māori rates of imprisonment in 2007 were stated to be around
700 per 100,000, which is around the same rate as the ‘mass
incarceration’ of the United States.
The high Māori imprisonment rate means that the loss of social
capital is far less within Māori communities and among Māori.
But this is a two-edged sword.
When operating in the Pakeha world, the fact of high Māori
imprisonment stokes prejudice and discrimination that impacts
on life opportunities. At our Christchurch launch last year, one
person spoke about a kaumatua who criticised penal policy by
stating “they are building new prisons for tamariki who are not
yet born”.
Stigma
Prisoners are stigmatised in our society as scumbags, losers,
druggies, bad parents, people who should be sterilised, should
live in tents on the Desert Road and so on. The dominant
discourse is of punishment and retribution, not of rehabilitation
and integration. This spills over onto the children, causing health
and educational problems, bullying, anti-social behaviour and
thus leading directly to the potential for intergenerational
offending.
We were asked last year by officials whether there was any
difference between these children and other children living in
poverty. The answer is yes. The burden of stigma is a huge one
to carry.
Political exclusion
Until the release of our first year findings last year, the public
policy discussion around the children of prisoners was almost
entirely limited to the issue of babies in prison with mothers.
There has been widespread interest in our findings, with this the
second seminar to policy agencies (first health).
Research released into a punitive and noxious environment
where the ‘rights’ of ‘victims’ trump all other discourses.
In order to take steps to prevent the children of prisoners
populating the prisons in a generation, the situation and needs
of the families and children of prisoners need to be brought to
the centre of policy.
There is a need to challenge weakness in the current approach,
in particular to point out that it is within the capacity and
capability of a variety of state agencies to introduce policies to
prevent these children ending up in prison.
Disenfranchisement of prisoners and their families.
Poor future prospects
Two thirds of Māori and one third of pakeha prisoners we
interviewed last year had, as a child, seen between one and
eight family members go to prison.
According to NZ research, prisons are full of people with poor
educational outcomes and emotional and mental illnesses.
The families and children we interviewed spoke of a wide range
of physical, emotional and emerging mental health problems in
the children, and a variety of factors that prevented the children
learning and doing well at school.
Most live in poverty, which is itself a huge risk factor. We have a
bunch of emotionally upset, ill, under-educated, stigmatised
children who are about to become adults, with virtually no
services in place to defuse the time bomb that many of them
represent.
In conclusion
The report can be found at www.networkers.co.nz or
www.pillars.org.nz
We have now completed the second and final year of the study
(unless funding can be found for year 3).
Our research shows that changing policies and practices in health,
education, social services, income support and the agencies of
justice could together eliminate the factors that cause the children
of prisoners to become prisoners in the next generation.
How then can we change the dominant discourses around policy
so that politicians and the public embrace this as the best route to
a crime free society?