Parental imprisonment: Clearly and as shown above, what they do when present is

important but parents’ absence can be equally as important as was discussed earlier in family break-up. Absence can be caused in other ways, such as imprisonment. Criminal and anti- social parents tend to have delinquent and anti-social children, as shown in longitudinal studies in Boston by McCord in 1977 and in St Louis by Robins in 1979. The most extensive research on the concentration of offending in families was carried out in the Cambridge study (Maquire et. al. 2002, p670). Having a convicted father, mother, brother or sister predicted a boy’s own convictions, and all four relatives were independently important as predictors. An example being sixty three percent of boys with convicted fathers were themselves convicted, compared with thirty percent of the remainder (Farrington et. al. 1996). In the same study having a convicted parent or a delinquent older sibling by the tenth birthday, was consistently among the best age predictors of the boys’ later offending and antisocial behaviour. Having a convicted parent or a delinquent older sibling were also the best predictors, after poor parental supervision, of juvenile self-reported delinquency (Maquire et. al. 2002, p671). At all levels of self-reported delinquency in the Cambridge Study, boys with convicted fathers were more likely to be convicted themselves than the boys with un-convicted fathers (West and Farrington 1977, p118). West and Farrington suggested that poor parental supervision

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was one link in the chain between criminal fathers and delinquent sons (Farrington and Welsh 2007, p59).

Similar results were obtained in the Pittsburgh Youth Study. Arrests of fathers, mothers, siblings, uncles, aunts and grandparents all predicted the boys’ own delinquency. The most significant relative was the father, with arrests of the father predicting delinquency independently of all other arrested relatives (Farrington et. al. 2001). In this study it was suggested that arrested fathers tended to have delinquent sons because they tended to impregnate young woman, to live in bad neighbourhoods, and to use childrearing methods that did not develop a strong conscience in their children (Farrington et. al. 2001). Another explanation for the link suggested by Farrington, is that the statutory services within criminal justice, i.e. the police and courts, contain a bias against known criminal families, who also tend to be known to other agencies due to other social problems (Farrington and Welsh 2007, p60). The reasons behind the link was not explored in the thesis, but the analysis confirmed a link between parental imprisonment and criminal behaviour.

So, although often difficult to isolate exact causal effect, several studies suggest a definite link with a parental incarceration and offending and poor behaviour in young people. It is estimated that during 2005 there were approximately 160,000 children with parents of a British National in prison (Niven and Stuart 2005). Also seven percent of children will see a parent imprisoned during their school years (Social Exclusion Report 2002), and twenty five percent of young men in offender institutes either are or are shortly to become fathers (Fathers Direct 2004) therefore many young people are affected by this issue. Some of the effects on young people were described in a review carried out jointly by the Ministry of Justice and Department for Children, Schools and Families in 2007 and are discussed below, although the report concluded that whilst there was a strong correlation, there was no direct causal link between parental imprisonment and poorer outcomes for children.

Prisoners’ children have about three times the risk of mental health problems compared to their peers. They also have three times the risk of being involved in antisocial and delinquent behaviour (Murray 2007). Parental imprisonment can lead children to experience stigma, bullying and teasing (Boswell and Wedge 2002). Children’s caregivers often experience considerable distress during parental imprisonment (Murray 2005), and children are often

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subject to unstable care arrangements (Phillips et. al. 2006). Prisoners’ children experience higher levels of social disadvantage than their peers (Murray and Farrington 2005). This could be as imprisonment has a negative financial impact on families, leaving families vulnerable to financial instability, poverty and debt and potential housing disruption (Grimshaw et. al. 2007).

The review of outcomes for prisoners’ children, also found that the children were an invisible group, with very little knowledge of who they are or evidence of systems in place to monitor and assist them. Parental imprisonment does not automatically trigger an assessment of the child’s needs, so many of these children may be accessing services, but in numerous cases, services did not know that a parent was in prison. In fact interviewees for the report stated that prisoners’ children are rarely signposted to support services within their local communities. There were a few programmes that showed some promise but overall there was a lack of evaluation of any work that was taking place. The prison service and probation service did not always see the link and when prison staff did acknowledge the importance of maintaining family ties it was seen principally from the perspective of what would be beneficial to the prisoner. Finally there was a poor understanding of responsibilities under the Children Act 2004, so whilst it was clear that most probation and prison staff understood child protection responsibilities and that safeguarding principles were effectively embedded, few staff saw a responsibility around wider child wellbeing (Children of Offenders Review 2007).

As can be seen from this, one of the difficulties for statutory bodies is identifying the children who are affected by parental imprisonment. This is the same issue for the siblings of young people who have been sent to prison, as again statutory bodies have no operational systems in place to help identify such young people. This problem is exacerbated by the reluctance of young people to discuss sibling imprisonment (Howard League 2006). The effects of sibling imprisonment will be the next risk factor discussed as although the analysis of the research data for this thesis revealed the correlation was not as strong as parental imprisonment, it still showed as a strong indicator of criminal and antisocial behaviour.