Families, Imprisonment and Legitimacy

The Cost of Custodial Penalties

Cara Jardine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429827082
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines what it means to be a family within the restrictive, disruptive, and often distressing context of imprisonment. Drawing on original qualitative data, it looks beyond traditional models of the family to examine the question of which relationships matter to individuals affected by imprisonment, and demonstrates how family relationships are actively constructed and maintained through family "practices" and "displays" such as visits, shared experiences and continuing family memories and traditions. It sheds new light not only on the true extent of who is impacted by the imposition of a prison sentence, but also the barriers to family life that these individuals encounter throughout its duration.This book also contributes to our understanding of wider issues such as poverty and social marginalisation, the role of family relationships on desistance from crime, and legitimacy. It argues that the act of supporting an individual in custody can bring families into regular contact with the criminal justice system in ways that can be both distressing and problematic, and therefore contends that the prison system should minimise the damage caused by imprisonment not only to family relationships, but also to the perceived legitimacy of the criminal justice system.Generating new conceptual insights into the harms of imprisonment and how perceptions of legitimacy and fairness are shaped by the criminal justice system, this book will be of much interest to students of criminology and sociology engaged in studies of criminal justice, prisons, gender, social work, and punishment. It will also be of interest to policy makers, penal-reformers, and activists.

1
Theorising families affected by imprisonment

As recently as ten years ago, families affected by imprisonment were, rightly, argued to be all but forgotten, if not ignored, by both academics and the criminal justice system. Indeed, despite ground-breaking research by Pauline Morris in the 1960s, which found that these families can often experience profound hardships (Morris, 1965), they were often described as the “hidden” victims of the criminal justice process by the few researchers working to better understand their experiences (Light and Campbell, 2006). However, over the course of a few short years, these families have now become not only visible to criminologists, but have also attracted growing recognition by policy makers and campaigners.

This increased visibility is to be welcomed. As a consequence, it is now well established that while in some instances imprisonment may offer some respite from a violent or chaotic family member (Murray, 2005); very often the imprisonment of a family member has a range of negative implications for those left behind in the community. Families affected by imprisonment may experience a range of complex feelings including sadness, confusion, fear, anxiety, anger, loneliness, jealousy, shame, guilt, or relief (Moore, Convery and Scraton, 2011; Richie, 2002; Loucks, 2004). For children, the imprisonment of a parent can be particularly difficult, potentially causing extreme distress, regressive behaviours, and difficulties in central parts of their lives such as attending school, sleeping, or navigating relationships with new caregivers (Minson, 2018a). Often, this emotional distress is compounded by practical issues such as increased financial strains (Codd, 2008; Smith et al., 2007), or difficulties with housing, childcare, or other family responsibilities (Loureiro, 2010; Nesmith and Ruhland, 2008; Arditti, Lambert-Shute and Joest, 2003). Furthermore, many families affected by imprisonment are already experiencing high levels of poverty or social marginalisation, and therefore have few resources with which to resist these pressures (Jardine, 2018; Condry, Kotova and Minson, 2016).

Where the family choose to actively support the person in custody, there are also considerable extra expenses associated with legal proceedings, visits, phone calls, and gifts for the prisoner (Codd, 2008; Mills, 2005); and these are often increased by the distances which families are required to travel and the amount charged for telephone calls by the prison (Sharratt, 2014; Loucks, 2004). While visits may be a particularly valued means of maintaining relationships, these can be emotionally turbulent events, not least because families may be anxious about entering the prison environment, and security procedures can be experienced as humiliating and degrading (Boswell, 2018; Hutton, 2016; Mills and Codd, 2008). Again, the experience of visiting the prison may be especially difficult for children, who may find the surveillance and regulation of both their bodies and emotions to be terrifying, confusing, and overwhelming (Aiello and McCorkel, 2018).

Much of the research initially generated in this renewed attention toward families affected by imprisonment was interdisciplinary and often policy-focussed in nature (Comfort, 2007). However, more recent scholarship has begun to theorise the experiences of these families in increasingly sophisticated ways, which attempt to address important questions of penal power, social inequalities, human rights, and social justice (Condry and Smith, 2018). For instance, Megan Comfort has argued that, when visiting the prison, families are subject to a weakened version of the prison regime, and therefore also suffer multiple “pains of imprisonment” through a process of secondary prisonisation. Thus, in attempting to maintain her relationship with her partner the woman often forfeits her privacy or emotional wellbeing; but may also gain feelings of emotional intimacy or even safety from their partner’s behaviour and lifestyle, causing the experience of secondary prisonisation to be characterised of profound ambivalence (Comfort, 2008).

Despite this emotional ambivalence, the broader social effects of this exercise of penal power over families can be both far-reaching and serious. In the US, policies of mass incarceration have exposed large numbers of women and children of colour to the imprisonment of a partner or father, which, in turn, reduces incomes, contributes to relationship breakdown, and heightens childhood inequalities (Wildeman and Western, 2010). This diminishes the life chances of children and, given the highly racialised way in which imprisonment is used in the US, deepens racial and social inequalities on a large scale (Wakefield and Wildeman, 2014). Similarly, recent work by Comfort suggests that the resources families dedicate to supporting “hypermarginalised” relatives experiencing repeated, but low-level, criminal justice contact could be an important factor in explaining both racial disparities in women’s health outcomes, and a lack of social mobility for low-income women of colour (Comfort, 2016).

Thus, of particular concern is that the imprisonment of a family member may not only exacerbate and reinforce social marginality, it also distances and excludes families from the very social and political mechanisms that purport to promote social mobility. In part, this may be attributable to the very large amounts of time that supporting a person in custody requires, as this may leave few opportunities to engage with other civic institutions such as community groups, schools, or political organisations (Lee, Porter and Comfort, 2014). As families affected by imprisonment can attract considerable stigma, some may also choose to withdraw from social life or community activities for fear of being shamed or victimised (Condry, 2007). Indeed, children and young people have been found to adopt strategies of secrecy and concealment in an attempt to manage feelings of shame which flow from the imprisonment of a parent (McGinley and Jones, 2018; Knudsen, 2018).

The socialising effects of the criminal justice system itself cannot be ignored; not least because children of imprisoned parents in particular have been argued to be subject to administrative social exclusion, in that they (and their needs and interests) are overlooked and ignored by both official agencies and public policy (Smith, 2014; Murray, 2007). Consequently, the hardships experienced by many families affected by imprisonment, together with frequent disparaging or disinterested treatment at the hands of criminal justice professionals, can erode feelings of trust in the government, political participation and civic identities (Lee, Porter and Comfort, 2014). Indeed, recent research demonstrates that not only a does the imprisonment of a partner dampen political participation amongst women, but also that this is directly attributable to the political socialisation that they receive through this contact with the criminal justice system (Sugie, 2015).

Together, these studies paint a troubling picture of the prison as an institution which not only has the ability to negatively affect families lives throughout the duration of the sentence, but as one which also has the power to create long-term and damaging consequences for families and communities. This book seeks to contribute to this discussion by way of an in-depth study of the impact of imprisonment on families and family relationships in Scotland. By drawing on the accounts and experiences of men and women in custody and families visiting the prison, alongside those of relevant criminal justice professionals, I aim to explore three key questions:

• Who is affected when a prison sentence is given?
• What impact does this have on family life?
• How does imprisonment affect the way in which families view, and interact with, the criminal justice system?

Families affected by imprisonment: the Scottish context

Before these questions can be addressed, it is necessary to explore how this resurgence of interest has led to these families being constructed and understood in Scottish penal policy. Scotland has a separate criminal justice system from the remainder of the UK, and also a distinct civic and political culture (McAra, 2005, 2008). However, while Scotland is often characterised as having a greater emphasis on communitarian or welfarist values than south of the border, it has been questioned whether this has truly led to more progressive penal policy (Brangan, 2019). Indeed, Scotland has long grappled with high rates of imprisonment, and in 2008 the Scottish Prisons Commission argued that Scotland was facing a crucial juncture in terms of this issue. The Commission noted that not only had the Scottish prison population grown by more than 20% in less than ten years, but that it was projected to continue to do so, potentially reaching an average daily population of 8,700 by 2016/17 (Scottish Prisons Commission, 2008). Accordingly, the Commission recommended that Scottish Government should work towards reducing the prison population to 5,000; somewhat lower than the average daily population of 5,868 recorded at the turn of the century (SPS, 2019).

Ten years on, and the Scottish prison population has not grown to the levels feared by the Commission. Recent years have seen slight reductions in the prison population, with an average daily population of 7,464 being recorded in 2017/18, against a peak of 8,179 in 2011/12 (SPS, 2019). However, this figure remains almost 50% higher than the target set by the Commission, and must be understood within the context of significant declines in offending and, in particular, serious offences (McVie, Humphreys and Francis, 2014). These substantial declines have not been reflected in the prison population, and Scotland continues to imprison its citizens at much higher rates than other Western European jurisdictions. In 2015, which was the most recent year in which comparative data was available, the rate of imprisonment has risen to 145 per 100,000 in Scotland compared to 146 in England and Wales, with each jurisdiction ranking 9th and 8th highest in Europe respectively (Sturge, 2018). This is remarkable given that England and Wales is widely regarded as facing a period of both enduring crisis and expansion in its prison estate (Pakes and Holt, 2017; Chamberlen and Carvalho, 2019; Hart and Schlembach, 2015).

Another issue of considerable concern to the Commission was the question of who Scotland imprisons. Many people in custody have experienced a range of social difficulties such as unemployment, drug or alcohol problems, relationship breakdown, poor mental and physical health, low levels of education, and backgrounds of abuse, victimisation, or neglect (SPS, 2017a; Tombs and Piacentini, 2010; Scottish Prisons Commission, 2008). Further, the Commission noted the disproportionate impact that imprisonment has on Scotland’s poorest communities, citing the landmark study by academic and former prison governor Rodger Houchin. This found a linear relationship between the deprivation experienced by a particular community and the number of its residents who were in custody on the night of 30 June 2003. In other words, the rate of imprisonment was higher for poorer communities, albeit that deprivation alone could not explain these patterns (Houchin, 2005). Recent research has reached similar conclusions. While considerable variations were found between imprisonment rates in equally deprived neighbourhoods, suggesting that a range of factors impact local imprisonment rates, the overall prison population is nonetheless disproportionately drawn from Scotland’s poorest communities, indicating that poverty remains an important factor in this analysis (McVie and Matthews, 2018).

The connections between poverty and imprisonment are of interest here because just as it would be fair to conclude that Scotland has struggled with long-standing difficulties with imprisonment, it also faces considerable challenges in terms of poverty and inequality (McKendrick, 2016). Recent years have seen increases in both inequality and poverty, with 19% of the Scottish population, or one million people living in relative poverty (Scottish Government, 2018). In addressing this issue, the Scottish Government has sought to distance itself from the policies of austerity and welfare reform introduced by the 2010 Coalition UK Government by positioning its own welfare policies as more progressive and socially inclusive (Wiggan, 2017). This notwithstanding, it is clear that austerity as had damaging consequences for social life in poor Scottish communities, limiting the resources and social capital available to the people who live in them (McKendrick et al., 2016).

Families as an aid to desistance

In terms of criminal justice policy, the last ten years have seen increasing shifts to tackling these entrenched social problems through a more preventative and increasingly research-led approach (McAra, 2017), with theories of desistance being particularly influential (Morrison and Sparks, 2016; McNeill, 2015). This is evident in the Scottish Government’s own evidence review of what works to reduce reoffending (Sapouna, Bisset and Conlong, 2011). This review underpins the Scottish Government’s flagship Reducing Reoffending Program which, amongst other initiatives, introduced the new Community Payback Order as a robust community alternative to short prison sentences (Scottish Government, 2013). In this review, families are seen as a crucial part of what “works” to reduce recidivism. Drawing heavily on the wider literature on desistance, this review concludes that while anti-social peer groups may...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Theorising families affected by imprisonment
• 2 Difference
• 3 Sameness
• 4 Being a family
• 5 Entrenching marginalisation
• 6 Beyond the family: prisons and legitimacy
• 7 Conclusion
• Appendices
• Index