Parenting Young Offenders: Shaping and Re-Shaping Social Networks following Custody

Lead Research Organisation: University of Surrey
Department Name: Sociology

Abstract

61% of young offenders serving custodial sentences return to their family after completing their prison term (HM Inspectorate, 2011), with a total of 3,925 children (aged 10-17) incarcerated (Ministry of Justice, 2011/12). The importance of social ties and family relationships has been well linked to factors explaining desistance from offending as well as positive resettlement following imprisonment (Sampson and Laub, 1993, Farrall, 2004). As has been operationalized in these studies, practical, emotional and financial support are key attributes associated with more positive resettlement prospects on release from prison, including greater chances of finding work, training or education. Whilst the role of families and social ties can be important mechanisms in supporting offenders, few studies have focused on the experiences of family members in the imprisonment process, especially parents with children (aged 10-17) imprisoned. Besides the key role which parents can play in relation to desistance and resettlement, parents can suffer considerable impacts and social pressures as a result of a child's imprisonment which can ultimately impair parental roles in supporting resettlement and desistance. These include challenges in their capacities to seek support amongst friends, extended family, and via a range of community networks and social services (Patillo et al, 2004, Rose and Clear, 2001), in addition to impacts on finances and employment, stress, physical and mental health problems, and additional pressure on parenting duties (e.g. Ambert, 1999).

This project will examine which networks prove barriers to parents, and which serve as facilitators and supporters in helping parents cope with the impact of having a child imprisoned. Here the research will conduct 60 in-depth interviews with parents of young men imprisoned, including those with community penalties or licenses attached to their sentence. This will gather data from parents about their experiences with a child imprisoned, as well as analysing the outcomes on parental social networks. Social network analysis contributes to the analysis how showing how markers of social capital, such as family ties, friendships, formal support agencies, are altered as a result of a child imprisoned. The project is based on two field locales - Parc YOI in Bridgend, South Wales, and London (working with Lambeth Youth Offending Team, and Prisoners' Families and Friends Service (PFFS). The organisations involved have established initiatives which support families cope with the effects of imprisonment, including parenting support, counselling, and group support sessions. The project will also investigate the experiences of practitioners from the Prison Service, Youth Justice Service and Third Sector in supporting parents, including the challenges in organisational and cultural environments, resources, and modes of engagement.

The project focuses on assessing the ways in which imprisonment creates wider impacts on family life, such as on parenting duties, physical and mental health of parents, as well as wider sources of social and economic disadvantage. As well as providing a comprehensive picture of the needs and experiences of parents, the research will be used to support and provide recommendations to the Prison Service, Youth Justice Service and Third Sector for creating more effective family-support policies and strategies, especially those which impact on resettlement and desistance where a number of gaps in policy and service provision have been identified (Prison Inspectorate, 2011, Youth Justice Board, 2012).

Planned Impact

The direct beneficiaries for the project consist of three main groups 1.) Practitioners from within the prison service and youth justice system, 2.) Policy makers in central government (including think tanks and charities with emphasis on issues of prisoner rights and resettlement), 3.)Families with a child punished by the Youth Justice System, 4.) The wider public.

The relevance of the research and potential impacts arising from the research can be summarised as follows:

1. For prison, youth justice, and third sector practitioners, the research will deliver outputs consisting of core research findings in a user-friendly document, along with working papers available on the project website. These will also be advertised through the social networking site twitter. At the end of the research, a workshop will take place with the practitioners and parents participating in the research. This is designed as an opportunity to discuss ways of translating the research findings into service policies and practices. At the short-medium term, the research will help inform organisational practice (e.g. how to use existing resources, partnership working, ways of engaging families in order to reduce re-offending risks).

2. For policy makers, including those in government, charities, think tanks, and the third sector, the research is designed to evidence and reflect on policies and guidance. At a central government level this will principally concern policies through the Home Office and Ministry of Justice - the government departments in charge of youth justice and prisons. Research findings will be presented to the Home Office/Youth Justice Service towards the end of the research (medium-long term impact). The emphasis of the project in examining the ways parents use voluntary and statutory services will also be used in helping see where policies can be most effective in supporting families in dealing with the secondary effects of youth offending (medium term impact). Charities and think tanks will also be encouraged to use the research to help inform their research strategies and campaigns, which may also have an additional lobbying/pressure group role in some situations (medium-term impact).

3. Families with a child punished by the Youth Justice System - as primary participants in the research process, the parents/carers of young offenders will be given opportunities to discuss the research findings and ways of informing suitable policies and practices through the Prison and Youth Justice Service. Whilst benefits will take longer to take place through policy change which impacts directly on such groups, the research will help carry through their experiences to wider audiences, including youth justice practitioners, policy makers, and the wider public.

4. Wider public
The research intends to help inform public understandings of youth imprisonment, and the wider impact this has on families. The research will be disseminated via television, radio and newsprint sources, as well as via twitter. Here the University of Surrey media office will work with the PI to devise a suitable strategy for disseminating core findings, including providing guidance on suitable media outlets. The public dissemination is likely to be delivered at a short-term time-frame, with the actual effects on public understandings longer-term.
 
Description We identify several interesting findings from the study which have been identified as follows:

1. Patterns of relationship quality between caregivers and young men in prison - We asked questions to caregivers about the perceived change in relationships with the young men in prison, most of whom had been in prison for between 9 months and 2 years at the time of interview. Just under half of our sample of caregivers reported that their relationship had improved since the sentence, largely as a result of substantial conflict before the sentence and time to recover relations. Prison time was reported as an important stage for some caregivers to gain respite from the effects of parenting the young men, as well as to re-build ties during the sentence via visitation. Some caregivers also reported improvement in the behaviour of prisoners during the sentence, thus helping generate commitment to support the young men further. We identify these improvement contexts as most likely for mothers than other caregiver groups. These findings have been published in the British Journal of Criminology:

McCarthy, D., & Adams, M. (2018). Can Family-Prisoner Relationships Ever Improve During Incarceration? Examining the Primary Caregivers of Incarcerated Young Men. The British Journal of Criminology. Advanced access

2. Support networks and offence disclosure - The majority of our sample concealed information about the imprisonment of the young men from friends and family. We argue that the pressures of maintaining secrecy place significant strains on families, including their capacities to seek support from others in their social network. Often living in poverty in conjunction with a child in prison results in many caregivers experiencing social isolation, impacts on mental health and wellbeing, and tensions within family relations. In fact, only a small number of our sample of interviewees actually sought help from independent support organisations. Currently findings are being developed into a journal article which is currently under review. Once accepted, details will be published on Researchfish.

3. Race and parenting - We have recently completed focusing on a sub-sample of Black and minority ethnic (BAME) parents in their experiences of parenting. This paper is one of the first to examine BAME parents and some of the unique hardships they go through. Three key features are identified compared to our white sample; the focus on community-level difficulties associated with policing and the pressure placed on parenting, the experiences of cultural shaming as a result of the perceived and actual reactions of others to being a parent of a young prisoner, and the coping and resilience skills exhibited (the role of faith and religion being key). How and why race matters in explaining parenting hardships is unpacked in the paper. The article is currently re-sent to a journal following revisions. Details will be added here once hopefully accepted.

4. Parenting from a distance - We show that parenting can be severely compromised by a range of social/community and institutional factors pertaining to the prison setting. We have published a paper (details below) which documents the struggles parents go through in maintaining ties with their children in prison, including the constraints placed of responsibility and welfare. Due to pressures induced by social disadvantage outside the prison, combined with major restrictions on visitation and other aspects of relationship maintenance in prison, we highlight how and why parenting can be impaired.

McCarthy, D., & Adams, M. (2017). "Yes, I can still parent. Until I die, he will always be my son": Parental responsibility in the wake of child incarceration. Punishment & Society, advanced access

5. Compared to most research in the field of prisoner-family ties, we actually highlight that the experience of caregivers was most acute in the period preceding prison and in the early weeks of the sentence. This finding is significant in informing us that the damage inflicted by incarceration may matter more for some families than others, as well as at different time periods. In fact, we identify that families were experiencing a host of social problems besides a child in prison, resulting in questions about the independent effects of prison as a causal factor in caregiver outcomes on health, wellbeing, and parenting resolve. Larger-scale statistical studies should pay close attention to the causality of prison as an independent harm to family relationships, especially in cases of primary caregivers of young men (and women) in prison.

6. Methodological strategies - Besides the scholarly findings of the study, we also helped devise new methodological strategies for collecting data among prisoners' families - a topic which is quickly growing in academic focus. Our study has gone beyond the common use of non-random convenience samples, or samples generated from formal support groups. Whilst we recognise limitations in our approach, using survey data alongside interview data has allowed us to more adequately assess bias in our sample and to report differences in the characteristics of participants. Using questionnaires in closed spaces such as prison visiting centres needs to be used cautiously, where we envisage publicising some guidance for future researchers to operationalise such methods.
Exploitation Route For academic audiences, the focus of the study on the primary caregivers of young men in prison marks one of the first to develop a research area beyond the typical focus of intimate partners or children of adult prisoners. As such, the scholarly impact of the study will be bolstered through further reconsiderations of our results within the social scientific community. We would especially like to see longitudinal data collected for such a sample in assessing some of our inferences about change in family relationships. For practitioners and policy audiences, we have already begun disseminating findings and working with the prison service to devise possible ways of changing policy, especially in the area of prison visitation and community-level support for caregivers. Given the difficult climate of prisons in England and Wales, this has led to some challenges (mostly regarding resources) implementing our findings, although our interactions with practitioners have been productive with much receptiveness to the findings as far.
Sectors Government

Democracy and Justice

Other
 
Description Like many aspects of impact at a relatively early stage in the life cycle of dissemination, this project has laid the foundations for impact to develop, but demonstrating direct impact on re-shaping policy is difficult to fully show at this stage. This report details the impact work delivered so far, and provides information about future activities which it is hoped will further extend the possible influence on prison policy. It should be prefaced that policy impact in such a field of research is notoriously challenging. Currently the prison service in England and Wales has a number of financial and political pressures which have impeded aspects of work. During the course of the fieldwork, by way of example, regular turnover of staff in key management roles was a common occurrence, resulting in challenges re-affirming the importance of the research, and potential impact. Therefore, it is important to note these contexts of policy making, which ultimately impinged heavily on the abilities to witness direct and quick impact following the research project. As far what I term phase 1 impact activities started from the publication of materials from the project. Reports have been completed for the two prisons where the fieldwork took place (the prisons are unnamed due to ethical reasons), as well as a report to the National Offender Management Service detailing key findings from the research. The latter document is sent as a briefing to senior prison service staff and prison Governors in England and Wales. A day conference was also organised with Her Majesty's Prison Inspectorate (HMIP) which disseminated aspects of the research. This event was formed from discussions especially about the situations of young offenders and more general factors associated with barriers to re-entry from prison. The presented work included key findings from the project, covering issues about the hardships faced by families and the impacts on supporting young men in prison, the challenging circumstances pertaining to many of the current young male prison population, and what factors have impeded the wellbeing of prisoners in the current prison estate in England and Wales. Measurable impact from the event is difficult to discern (i.e. on informing policy), however approximately 30 policy makers and researchers working in government social research attended the event, with feedback from the day very positive. Extensive written evidence has also been supplied to Lord Farmer's review into the state of prisoner-family relations within the prison system, detailing steps the government should take in best supporting prisoner-family relations. In total over 10 pages of evidence was submitted to the consultative review. Currently discussions in central government are in progress regarding ways of introducing tangible policy changes in the area of prisoner-family ties. Furthermore, following the submission of evidence, I have been in recent conversations with the management committee of HMP Send about ways of developing and evaluating revisions to their current prisoner-family infrastructure. I have developed strong business links with the prison following a series of other programmes which I have since developed after completing the ESRC project (e.g. Learning Together teaching partnership, and Surrey Business School 'Start-up' Project). Whilst HMP Send is a women's prison (the ESRC project focused on the young male prison estate), conversations with staff have highlighted several similarities concerning the impact of prison on caregivers, especially surrounding the role of mothers in supporting many of the young women in prison. Updates of tangible policy changes emerging from these discussions will be updated in any future Researchfish returns (this was delayed in 2020 due to Covid). Finally, within the study sample several examples of young men convicted under the Joint Enterprise doctrine (JED) were noted, typically for serious crimes. In the case of the parents interviewed, I understood acutely their emotional struggles coming to terms with a child serving a long sentence, in what were often cases with ongoing legal battles. I was approached by a charity called JENGbA (Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association), initially to carry out some workshops with my students to increase understanding of the JED, and to develop work on reviewing active legal cases as part of an outreach legal project. Since these examples of ongoing work and with awareness of the focus on young men in prison, JENGbA have given permission for me to carry out analysis of case file data covering over 500 persons convicted under the JED (this work will be conducted alongside Dr Maria Adams who served as research assistant on the ESRC project, along with a colleague from the School of Law at the University of Surrey, Dr Noreen O'Meara). This research is being prepared by JENGbA to comprise a parliamentary briefing to current Members of Parliament involved in a review of the JED. Although this example of impact work is informed by, rather than solely attributed to the findings of the ESRC grant, subsequent work has built on the foundations of the project conducted, resulting in a focus on a sub-theme of the research - the long-term wellbeing of young men serving lengthy sentences in prison, and their families left behind. Overall, this work with JENGbA has significant potential to play some role in re-shaping the law on Joint Enterprise. As expressed above, instances where direct impact can be evidenced will be reported in future Researchfish submissions. As of February 2020, I am in discussion with Her Majesty's Prison Service/Ministry of Justice regarding a submission of best practice evidence stemming from the research. This will form part of a government review into the provision of family services in the criminal justice system. This concludes the summary of impact work conducted as far. To re-emphasise, the typically 'slow wheels of motion' in policy change in prisons and criminal justice make direct and immediate impact from research highly challenging. Many of the activities already described will continue, although some additional activities will be developed. This includes development of a bespoke training course with prison staff and officers based on examples of best practice in working with prisoners and their families, including implications from my research. This also takes aspects of the Lord Farmer review and assesses ways of implementing change to policy in the prison service. At a national level this has already been completed, however local implementation of the Farmer proposals, alongside implications of my research have yet to be developed. Further opportunities for running the training course in other prisons are currently in progress - these have been delayed due to the effects of Covid-19. Further funding has been sought to develop parenting guidance/intervention, working with the youth justice service, which I hope to be able to report on next year.
First Year Of Impact 2018
Sector Government, Democracy and Justice,Other
Impact Types Policy & public services
 
Description Submission to Falmer Review into Prisoners' Families
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Contribution to a national consultation/review
 
Description prison project - pilot scheme from research findings
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Influenced training of practitioners or researchers
 
Description Her Majesty's Prison Inspectorate conference 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact Over 30 research staff/policy makers from Her Majesty's Prison Inspectorate (HMIP), alongside researchers from the University of Surrey, participated in a day conference to discuss key issues in prison research. Presentations were given across a number of research areas pertaining to the project, including consequences of visitation for family and prisoners outcomes, issues on mental health and wellbeing of prisoners and family members, as well as wider implications for resettlement following prison. The event is part of a developing working group between Surrey and HMIP to generate further collaboration in the area of prisons research.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016
 
Description Presented paper at Australian and New Zealand Criminology Conference 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact Presented paper to a panel comprised of policy makers and academics. Contacted by Senior Probation Officer in Thailand about results.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description Training package to prison service 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact This activity is still ongoing. Because of challenges associated with delivering impact from the research, a training package has been produced designed to communicate best practice with prison officers. This package is currently being assessed in collaboration with prison management, who have made suggestions on its content and structure. It is hoped that this information will be presented to the prison service during the next year, in an effort to show what prisons could do better to enhance prisoner-family ties during and after prison.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019