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The Effects of Prison on Families

News articles for April 2014: The effects of prison on families by Michael Stewart

English 202-A April 17, 2014

While more and more people are incarcerated everyday across the world, we dont typically think about the impact that it has on the families of the inmates. Inmates can range from parents, children, siblings, husbands or wives, or very close friends to people. When someone is hauled off to prison the first thing that may come to mind is how that person is going to deal with being in jail for a specific period of time and not how it effects the people that are a key part in his or her life. The effects of a person going to a prison are life changing for that individual, but is also life changing for others that are closely involved in his or her life. Prison is a very difficult place to maintain any kind of formal relationship with people close to you, and it is often a difficult task for people on the outside to be able to keep a consistent amount of contact with the person in jail. Children are severely impacted by the departure of their parent in many instances such as not understanding why their mother or father is leaving, how their peers will treat them due to the severity of the crime, and having to live with just one parent opposed to both parents if that is not what they are use to. Also trying to be a parent from inside of prison can be a huge hurdle to jump being as though they cannot be there to support their child daily like they may have before incarceration.

With 1.4 million adults incarcerated in state and federal prisons this is clearly a big epidemic among our society and half of that 1.4 million people in prison are parents. Also over half of the children of incarcerated parents are less than 10 years old. More than half of the 1.4 million adults incarcerated in state and federal prisons are parents of minor children. The vast majority of parents incarcerated are male and are held in state prisons. Among the men held in state prison, 55 percent report having a minor as a child. Among the women, who account for 6 percent of the state prison population, 65 percent report having a minor as child. These are very troubling statistics as we do not want our youth growing up without their parents and ultimately going down the wrong path in life. Great distances typically separate children from their incarcerated parents. Women are housed in prisons an average of 160 miles from their children, while men are an average distance of 100 miles away. These distances serve as a barrier to prison visits by family members. While imprisoned, governments deprive parents of consistent contact and engagement with their children. More than half of incarcerated parents report never receiving a personal visit from their children. Their kids rarely visit them in prison because these parents are often isolated at great distances from their communities. A sad example is the recent decision of the federal bureau of prisons to relocate their inmates to prisons scattered around the country, making visitation impossible for many. Not only does that make it hard for children to see their parents, it is also rough for them to be able to speak to them by telephone because prison telephones have high costs for outgoing calls from inmates that can become too costly.

Having a parent go off to prison can be detrimental to a childs emotional, mental, psychological, and physical well being especially at a young age. Children sometimes do not understand why their parent is being taken away, and can also feel responsible for the departure of their parent. The immediate effects can include feelings of shame, social stigma, loss of financial support, weakened ties to the parent, changes in family composition, poor school performance, increased delinquency, and increased risk of abuse or neglect. Long-term effects can range from the questioning of parental authority, negative perceptions of police and the legal system, and increased dependency or maturational regression to impaired ability to cope with future stress or trauma, disruption of development, and intergenerational patterns of criminal behavior. Being a parent from inside of prison can be very difficult. Inmates tend to rely on their peers to be able to write letters and visit them frequently to try and stay updated on life outside of prison. They often sometimes get angry if they do not receive letters or visits within a certain time frame and may feel they are being neglected. Although being a parent from inside prison does not fit the ideal description of a good parent, it is still possible to feel connected to your parent and learn from his or her current situation. The lack of parental contact and engagement during imprisonment hurts kids of the incarcerated, psychologically and socially. Many kids of the imprisoned are teased and taunted, shamed and stigmatized for the actions and absences of their parents. Naturally, kids of the imprisoned try to hide the trauma of parental arrests, convictions, and incarceration. Others act out, resulting in school suspensions, dropouts, criminal arrests, and juvenile imprisonment.

The strain on a close knit family is truly substantial when someone is sentenced to a term in prison. It can put a family in a tight financial bond from just trying to pay lawyers to beat a case, or from just being put in a position to have to take on more financial responsibilities than usual. The length of the prison term may make some families feel like they are being punished as well. Andrea Strong shares an instance when her brother was arrested, tried and convicted in federal court for his involvement in a conspiracy to sell marijuana. This was his first time ever being convicted of any type of crime and he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. She expressed her grief in saying that she and her mother were devastated at the sentence, and felt as if not only was her brother serving being punished but their family as well. Strong states that during the time her brother was incarcerated she learned that this phrase is true: When a parent, sibling, or child goes to jail, the whole family serves the sentence with that person. When a loved one is shipped off to prison it leaves the partner in a world of confusion as to what to do now. Do I sit around and wait for him or her to be released and go from there? Or do I move on and find someone new? There are many people in this exact situation, assuming only a small portion of them are able to wait numerous years for their spouse to be released from prison to start their lives where they left off. The incarcerated spouse makes roles within the house or relationship change drastically. For instance, if a typically dominant husband is sent to prison it now leaves the wife as the sole head of the household. She now has to be the protector of the family as well as be the main provider without the help of a husband that she is use to. This migration from her normal lifestyle may cause her to become overwhelmed and stressed ultimately ending up in her being

resentful and angry with her spouse. Maintaining an intimate relationship from prison can be very troublesome. Restrictions to contact and communication, changes in family roles, and mental instabilities due to incarceration alter the development and upkeep of a serious intimate relationship. The statistics show that incarceration has many negative impacts on families. The inmate is not the only person who is put under extreme stress and deprived of the normal life that they may have lived on the outside. Children are left parentless and emotionally scarred, spouses are left with a much increased workload, and family members are left to deal with the absence of the inmate. Expert Interview To further my knowledge in this matter I intended to have an interview with a professor in the counseling psychology field to learn more about how prison affects families. Unfortunately I was not able to ask a professor: Does a strong support system help a family deal with a loved one going to prison? In what ways are children disadvantaged having a parent in prison? In what ways are a parent-child relationship altered when a parent is sentenced to prison? Do most children tend to be angry and neglectful when they lose a parent to prison? Is there a proven inevitable disconnect between family members and the prisoner? How is resiliency important? What kind of negative effects does a prison sentence evoke out of a child?

The answer to these questions would have opened up a much better understanding of the effects that prison has on families.

Conclusion The interpretation of my findings is that there are a select few of professors that may have dealt with this kind of issue. Also this topic can be quite sensitive to some because they may not want to disclose some information about it, or do not want to even work with criminals at all. If an interview would have taken place that I would have been able to get all the answers to my questions that I wanted and learned enough to help me further my research. Although things didnt work out how I hoped they would, I will still remain very interested in researching this subject and not let this minor setback reduce my passion for this research.

References Owens, M. (2013, August 19). 2.7 Million Children Under the Age of 18 Have a Parent in Prison or jailWe Need Criminal Justice Reform Now. Retrieved from

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/27-million-children-under-age-18-have-parentprison-or-jail?page=0%2C0 Strong, Andrea. (2013, February 11). Prisoners' Family Members Also 'Serve Time' When Relatives Go To Jail. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/prisonfamily-members_n_2664712.html

Travis, J, McBride, E, Solomon, A. (2005, June). The hidden costs of incarceration and reentry. Retrieved from http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/310882_families_left_behind.pdf