Abstract
Studies suggest that maintaining family ties can help reduce the likelihood of reoffending, and that while parental imprisonment can increase a child’s likelihood to offend, positive responses to the situation can aid the children’s well-being, attitude and attainment. Drawing on findings from the EU-funded COPING Project on the mental health of children of prisoners, this chapter explores the factors that aid a child’s ability to cope with parental imprisonment and the actions that different stakeholders can take to support them. It identifies some of the mental health impacts at different stages of parental imprisonment, the roles played by non-imprisoned parents/carers and by schools, and suggests options for further clarifying the factors that help and hinder children of prisoners in the short and long term.
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Notes
- 1.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the United Nations Children’s Fund are among the key global intergovernmental actors who deal with children in conflict with the law and children as victims and witnesses of crime.
- 2.
One example is the finding from the COPING study (see below) that children are as affected by a father’s imprisonment as by a mother’s, which went against previous findings that a mother’s imprisonment had more severe effects (due at least in part to the greater likelihood for imprisoned mothers to be raising children on their own, meaning that children would be more likely to change carer and possibly home and school, as well as losing their parent). However, the COPING researchers speculated that this may be due to the cohort of children that participated, almost all of whom were in contact with their imprisoned parent and who were taken to visit by their non-imprisoned parent or carer.
- 3.
This is due both to the widespread non-recognition of this group by authorities and that children and parents may hide their status due to stigma or fears about the actions authorities may take upon discovery.
- 4.
The number is significantly higher than the prison population because many parents, like other prisoners, serve less than a year.
- 5.
SDQ scores refer to Goodman’s (1997) Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, which is a behavioural screening instrument eliciting children and young peoples’ perceptions of their conduct, concentration, emotions and social relationships. The SDQ incorporates five different subscales (hyperactivity; emotional symptoms; conduct problems; peer problems; and a prosocial scale) which, when summed, provide a total difficulties score (TDS). It is generally agreed that the SDQ instrument provides one means to measure a child’s mental health.
- 6.
The Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (SES) was devised by Morris Rosenberg (1965) and provides an indication of children and young people's perceived levels of self-esteem (self-evaluation). The scale consists of ten items which are summed to produce an overall score ranging from 10 to 40, where higher scores indicate higher levels of self-esteem. Self-esteem is one aspect of a child's well-being and influences aspirations, personal goals and interaction with others.
- 7.
The KIDSCREEN instrument elicits children and young peoples’ ratings of their health and well-being. This is a self-report instrument and covers five dimensions (physical well-being; psychological well-being; autonomy and parental relation; support and peers; and school environment) with a higher score indicating more positive health and well-being. The KIDSCREEN-27 is a shorter version (27 items) of the original KIDSCREEN-52 questionnaire (Ravens-Sieberer et al. (2007).
- 8.
The WHO Quality of Life-BREF instrument (WHOQOL) was used to ascertain the non-imprisoned parent/carer’s health-related quality of life as well as their aspirations, using a 26-item questionnaire. For more on the WHOQOL-BREF, see Skevington et al. (2004).
- 9.
In Sweden, a higher proportion of interviewed parents were entitled to temporary release/home leave, so this may account for the lower prison visiting rate.
- 10.
Note that participants in the study were almost exclusively recruited during prison visits and through NGOs working with prisoners’ families, which almost certainly affected the sample.
- 11.
Romania has four levels of security in the prison system: maximum security, closed, semi-open and open.
- 12.
There are guards outside the room, however.
- 13.
Since 1947 his work has inspired the UN and WHO crime prevention and health programmes for children (Redo and Platzer 2013).
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Robertson, O. et al. (2016). Children of Prisoners: Their Situation and Role in Long-Term Crime Prevention. In: Kury, H., Redo, S., Shea, E. (eds) Women and Children as Victims and Offenders: Background, Prevention, Reintegration. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28424-8_8
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