Submitted by crinadmin on
Children of imprisoned parents are often described as the forgotten victims of imprisonment. When a mother or father goes to prison, their children are affected, usually adversely. Yet these effects are rarely considered in criminal justice processes, which instead focus on determining individual guilt or innocence and punishing lawbreakers. The failure to consider or consult children of imprisoned parents at all stages of the criminal justice process – from arrest to trial to imprisonment to release to rehabilitation into the community – can result in their rights, needs and best interests being overlooked or actively damaged. Children may have to take on new roles following parental imprisonment in order to provide domestic, emotional or financial support for other family members. Their relationships with the imprisoned parent and others around them frequently suffer. They may have to move to a new area, a new home or a new school because of imprisonment. Yet these impacts are largely unacknowledged in criminal justice systems worldwide, many of which fail to record information about prisoners’ children, or even whether there are any. Efforts to compensate for these failings have primarily been individual or local endeavours rather than changes in official procedures and structures which put children’s interests at the centre of issues that affect them within the prison context. This neglect of the interests of children of imprisoned parents by officials and institutions is a foreseeable consequence of judicial systems “centred on the principals of ‘justice’ and ‘individual responsibility’”. The focus on the offender means that the people around them are regularly ignored, from arrest to post-release. Police officers may not consider the impact of a late-night arrest on a suspect’s children, even though children find it a frightening and traumatic experience. Too often judges do not consider an offender’s caring responsibilities when passing sentence. Prison buildings and regimes are created without considering the impact they have on young visitors, often resulting in remote and inaccessible facilities which are inappropriate for children. The return of a parent to a family following imprisonment is challenging for all concerned, yet families and prisoners are rarely given the support they need during this major change, which may be as disruptive as the imprisonment itself. Yet both anecdotal and academic evidence suggests that when children are considered then many of the negative effects of parental imprisonment can be ameliorated. By helping children to understand what is happening to their parent and themselves, thereby reducing the fear and uncertainty; by enabling children to stay in contact with an imprisoned parent, through letters, telephone calls and visits; by supporting children Although children are the obvious persons towards whom imprisoned adults have a caring responsibility and are the focus of this paper, there are other groups of people such as elderly or disabled adults, legal wards and those over whom the prisoner holds power of attorney for whom several of the issues raised here will be relevant. Helping families to maintain close relationships may also help to prevent future antisocial or criminal behaviour by imprisoned parents (because having a supportive family environment to return to is a major disincentive to committing further crimes) and by the children themselves. Given that a key goal of any justice system should be to prevent future crime and ensure that there are as few victims as possible from any criminal act, considering the children of imprisoned parents should be a welcome addition to crime-fighting and crime-prevention toolkits. Further information
pdf: http://www.crin.org/docs/Quakers_parental_imprisonment.pdf