The Effects of Incarceration on Family - Term Paper Example

?Who is Punished? The Effects of Incarceration on Family The aim of this paper is to explore the effects of incarceration on the family of those who are incarcerated. These effects are various and severe. They should not be hidden behind a veil of social indignation and emotional reaction in which law-abiding citizens demand revenge, punishment, justice, and social sanction for those whose arrest and trial indicates that they are not law-abiding. The labeling of people as criminals is not as straightforward as the average person might imagine. Issues of race, social class, cultural and sub-cultural values, substance addiction, intelligence, life opportunities, mental and personality disorders, political persuasion, and other marginalizing factors complicate the designation of one citizen as law-abiding and another as criminal. Now there is a new category for incarceration, debtors, even for very small debts. In a bid for increased corporate welfare, businesses in some states (Illinois, Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio, Washington, for example) enlist the police, sheriff, and court system to imprison those who owe money and are not paying it quickly enough. A recent news article told about the case of Lisa Lindsay, a breast cancer survivor who ignored a $280 medical bill she was told was in error and not owed. A collection agency got jurisdiction over it and Illinois state troopers took her to jail in handcuffs (Sherter, 2012). In more than one third of the states in America, many poverty-stricken seniors, veterans, mothers, fathers, and the unemployed have been locked up in prison for the flimsiest of reasons, being unable to settle even the tiniest of debts. The marginalized poor are being increasingly criminalized. It is not the assumption of this paper that incarceration is totally without merit. There are people whose thinking is so distorted and whose actions are so dangerous that society must be protected from victimization. On the other hand, a rapidly rising prison population, unrepresentative of socioeconomic and racial parameters of the general population, and in comparison to the incarceration/population ratios of other countries, suggests a possibility that the USA criminal justice system is failing to solve crime through incarceration, and is worsening the situation. Incarcerating a person who is found to have broken the law removes a single threat from the street, perhaps, but there are less visible outcomes this paper intends to consider. Incarcerated prisoners, on any given day, represent more than 500,000 families being impacted by incarceration (Hairston, 1991). Those families need to be strongly bonded and assisted by personal and community networks. Maintaining strong family ties has been found to support prisoner and family mental health, increase the probability that the prisoner will have a family to return to after prison, and reduce the probability that the prisoner, once released, will have to return to prison for probation violations or other criminal activity (Hairston, 1991). In support of strengthening family ties, prisons are beginning to implement more generous family communication policies, marital and private family visits, children’s centers in the prison, and prison visitor hospitality houses. Families of prisoners are organizing to advocate for conditions and services that support prison families (Hairston, 1991). A lot more is needed, however, not only to provide a strong family network for the prisoner, but especially to counter the profound negative effects of incarceration on other members of the family. The effects of parent incarceration on children is a significant social issue because 56% of all state prisoners have minor children, and the majority of incarcerated adults are, in fact, state prisoners (Lengyel, 2006). Separation from an incarcerated father, the stigma attached to the incarceration, and deceptions played on the child around that incarceration have reportedly been associated with emergent aggressive and antisocial behavior, particularly in the sons of prisoners. This association is likely dependent upon how the child construes meaning about the incarceration, the psychological strength and stability of the non-incarcerated parent, the child’s relationship with the remaining parent, the strength and resources of the family (Gabel, 1992). Sharp says that America is waging war on women, many of whom are mothers, and that prisons have become the dumping ground for marginalized women (Sharp & Eriksen, 2003). Most incarcerated women are there for drugs or petty theft, not for crimes of violence. Two thirds of incarcerated women are mothers of minor children, and 64% were living with their minor children just before being incarcerated. In 1999, 126,000 children had incarcerated mothers (Sharp & Eriksen, 2003). About 70% of incarcerated women are non-White, and African American children are nine times more likely than White children to have an incarcerated mother. Furthermore, Black women are more likely to receive sentences of five years or more, regardless of the crime. White women are more likely to get a deferred judgment (Sharp & Eriksen, 2003). Incarcerating mothers has a profoundly devastating effect on children. One of the problems is that mothers are usually the children’s primary caretaker, and some arrangement has to be made for the care of these children, when the mother is incarcerated. When a man goes to prison, the children generally stay with the mother, but when a mother goes to prison, the children generally do not stay with the father, unless they are White. In many cases, the mother is a single parent or the father is out of the home. So when a mother is incarcerated, the children lose their home (Sharp & Eriksen, 2003). African American and Hispanic children are usually sent to live with the mother’s parents or other relatives. About 10% go to foster families or come under the care of agencies. Siblings do not usually remain together but are dispersed during the mother’s incarceration. To add to the instability of the situation, children are often moved from place to place, rather than remaining in one location for the duration (Sharp & Eriksen, 2003). Children cared for in foster homes and agencies are also frequently moved, and an incarcerated mother can easily lose track of where they are, or even have her parental rights terminated. Children cared for by maternal grandparents often face the same violence and abuse that their mother faced in childhood, since well over 60% of incarcerated women were reportedly physically or sexually abused by their families. The economic and emotional strain of caring for the children of an incarcerated woman exacerbates the risk of abuse occurring (Sharp & Eriksen, 2003). Research indicates that infant and toddler care is about the same, whether with family members or in foster care. However, 3-6 year old children do not receive enough verbal stimulation, realistic expectations, or appropriate discipline in family care that they do in foster care (Gaudin & Supphen, 1993). Research findings from interviews with drug offender mothers, incarcerated in Oklahoma, indicate that the family destabilized. Less than one fourth of the women were married, legally, at the time of incarceration, but more than half of them lost the marriage. Parent-child relationships were negatively impacted or terminated, and children had trouble at school and problems with substance abuse and depression. These women also reported feeling afraid for children in the care of violent and abusive grandparents and other relatives (Sharp & Marcus-Mendoza, It's a family affair" Incarcerated women and their families, 2001). A lot of women are pregnant and give birth while incarcerated. Incarcerated women are routinely shackled during pregnancy and even while in labor. During the delivery, these women are routinely kept in restraints. This treatment increases risk to mother and child. This worsens the already higher risk of delivery, considering that poverty, drug use, and domestic violence may already be factors (Sharp & Eriksen, 2003). Newborns are routinely removed from the mother in a majority of cases, and so bonding cannot take place. This has an extremely negative impact on the baby and the parent-child relationship. The incarcerated mother has severe difficulty in notifying a family member to immediately take the newborn and, if no one comes immediately, the baby is removed to state care. Although there are some few model programs which allow a few months of bonding, eventually the baby is removed from the mother, and both suffer (Sharp & Eriksen, 2003). It is difficult for incarcerated mothers to maintain contact and relationship with their non-infant children, as well, even when the children are placed with family members. Letters are not viable for toddlers and support may be lacking for older children. Telephone calls must be collect and are therefore prohibitively expensive for most families. Also, it can be many months before an incarcerated mother is allowed to use the telephone, and even then the prison schedule and competition for phone time pose problems (Sharp & Eriksen, 2003). Women are usually incarcerated over 100 miles to more than 500 miles away from family. It is too expensive for poor families to visit, and not feasible for scheduling and accommodation reasons as well. There is no public transportation available to most women’s prisons, so a car is needed. Visits are rare to non-existent (Sharp & Eriksen, 2003). This does not support family relationships. Given these losses in support for family bonding, it is not surprising that research documents children’s problems in academic performance, engagement in alcohol, drug abuse and criminal activity (Bilchik & Kreisher, 2001; Johnston & Gabel, 1995). Partially this is due to the stigma of having an incarcerated parent, which socially isolates the individual and causes a sense of shame that diminishes the relationship. Disenfranchisement results (Arditti, 2005). The incarcerated person becomes socially dead, but the stigma of incarceration means that the family cannot publicly mourn, or receive sympathy from friends and community. They have to keep their grief to themselves, and this is very damaging (Arditti, 2005). This is especially true when the relationship was not a legal one, but an informal bond of lovers, best friends, roommates, etc. Being a prison widow elicits no real public sympathy, and the state does not recognize her status as widowhood, so state support is highly inadequate as well (Arditti, 2005). She is forced into becoming a single parent and is often ill-prepared for that level of responsibility. That, too, elicits no public sympathy, because being a prison widow and/or becoming an involuntary single parent, through a partner’s incarceration, is a shame that is wrongfully blamed on the victim, as voluntarily complicit (Arditti, 2005). Children are invisible and silent sufferers when adults are busy with their own grief and in making arrangements to negotiate the risks in the situation. Adults do not usually understand the grief experience of the child, especially the younger child (Arditti, 2005). Children may act out, regressively, in reaction to the situation and the feelings of loss and confusion around the situation. Adults may interpret this call for attention as adding to adult stress, and try to put a firm stop to it, leaving the child no way to process their loss and confusion. That loss has two aspects. One is the experience of the incarcerated family member being psychologically present but physically absent. For example, the father’s authority may be held over the children’s heads, like a sword of Damocles, to assist in discipline and motivate academic achievement. The image and threat sustain psychological presence, without physical presence. The other type of loss experience is physical presence without psychological presence. This type of loss is experienced when the family visits an incarcerated family member, only to find that he/she is moody, withdrawn, and psychologically damaged from incarceration, and is therefore unable to engage in the anticipated manner with family members (Arditti, 2005). Nor is the damage of incarceration temporary. When adults are released from incarceration, it is more difficult for them to find a job, so they often turn again to illegal activities, in order to survive. Unemployed adults are far more likely to be arrested (Watts & Nightingale, 1996). This llegal activity and incarceration cycle becomes a lifestyle, and this lifestyle is the context in which their children grow up and are socialized. Incarceration of a family member contributes to the identity formation of the child, so children come to see themselves as necessarily preparing for this kind of a future. Moreover, neighborhoods with economic deprivation tend to produce group crime, even more than individual crime, based on perceived conditions, irrespective of actual conditions (Watts & Nightingale, 1996). In this way, crime becomes rooted in the neighborhood and community of the child. Juvenile delinquency has a more severe negative impact on the future employment opportunities of minority youth than on White youth (Watts & Nightingale, 1996). With reduced employment opportunity for youth, the cycle of illegal activity, especially group or gang activity, leads to incarceration and being caught in the same cycle as adult offenders. Youth without role models, to emphasize a different pathway in life, fall easily into the cycle that has caught their fathers, elder brothers, uncles, and neighbors. When young women, in these communities, become pregnant, due to lack of adequate supervision and adult guidance, conformity to community standards, competition with peers, an effort to establish themselves as adults, or through rape or incest, or other reason, the fathers of the baby are at higher risk of incarceration than non-marginalized fathers, and are unprepared to provide for a family through stable, legal employment. The young woman and her child require welfare and food stamps. Getting off of welfare, especially muti-generational welfare, is improbable. Welfare keeps the young family in poverty, so there is incentive to increase resources through birthing additional children and/or resorting to illegal activities, especially drugs, prostitution and theft. This may eventually lead to incarceration of the mother. Removing an abusive, violent, irresponsible and dangerous person from home and community will offer some benefits to the family, especially in the presence of domestic abuse (Wildeman, 2009), but the incarceration of an otherwise responsible family person will result in a lot of damage to family members, including economic deprivation, social and emotional support (Watts & Nightingale, 1996). The ramaining family members will likely become more reliant on social services and welfare, and poverty will become more entrenched. Nor will the situation improve much after release from incarceration, because illicit activities are more likely than employment; the formerly incarcerated family member has lost authority within the family; and all family members have sustained damage, in terms of attitude and emotion (Watts & Nightingale, 1996). Thirty years of longitudinal research, conducted on a cohort of African American mothers whose sons were in the first grade, resulted in findings about their distressingt experience with the incarceration of their sons. During the study, 22.4% of the sons became incarcerated. The distress of their mothers was based on the increased responsibilties of being grandparents under the given conditions, and increased financial problems associated with the situation (Green, Ensminger, Robertson, & Juon, 2006). Psychological and financial distress are not the only responses to incarceration of a family member. On any given day, there are about 664,000 homeless Americans. About 2% of American children are homeless and, for Black infants, toddlers and preschoolers, the risk of being homeless is about 35 times the risk for White children (Wildeman, 2009). Homeless children are vulnerable to victimization, infectious disease and other health risks, mortality, higher rates of abuse, less academic success, and are much more likely to suffer parental incarceration (Wildeman, 2009). Children of incarcerated fathers are more likely to become homeless, due to diminished finances, limited access to organizational and network supports, and compromised maternal capacity (Wildeman, 2009). This, of course, keeps these children in a cycle of social failure and also suffering the damages accruing to children with incarcerated parents. If and when an incarcerated offender is released, a homeless family is not a promising situation. The father is likely to engage in survival activities that earn incarceration. The family spirals down more. Incarceration does not reduce the crime rate. It increases it for several reasons. It focuses on minority neighborhoods and not as much on White crime, corporate or white collar crime. It creates damaged people (the offender and his or her children and other family members) who now have less capacity to survive without crime. It creates damaged communities (Watts & Nightingale, 1996) that serve as breeding grounds for multi-generational criminal lifestyles. Incarceration adds to poverty which is a determinant of minority neighborhood crime . Incarceration places the offender with other offenders, increasing criminal contacts and training him/her in more sophisticated crime methodology. Incarceration reduces the likelihood of future gainful employment that is legal (Watts & Nightingale, 1996). Incarceration supports a lifestyle which serves as a socializing role model to neighborhood children and offender offspring, who identify with the cycle and engage in what is familiar. It punishes family members to a greater extent than it does the offender. By focusing more arrests, more convictions, and lengthier sentences on minority offenders, incarceration contributes to prejudice in the community and the reactive anger, resentment, hopelessness, and sense of social division experienced by the offender and families. Incarceration becomes an increasingly casual administrative response, in which punishment, rather than assistance, becomes the state and federal goal. This is a wrong approach because it does not address the causes and consequences of incarceration, the social inequality and psychosocial damage that is responsible. Therefore, being focused incorrectly, incarceration has the opposite effect of society’s stated intention. Crime is greatly increased, not reduced. Moreover, incarceration is very expensive social control. Based on 2001 figures by Aos, cited by Lengyel (2006), a violent crime such as rape or aggravated assault costs about $50,000 per incarcerated person, including police and sheriff’s office, court, and a year of incarceration. Additional years of incarceration cost add about another $17,047 per year. A non-violent property or drug crime costs about $20,612, with sheriff and police, court, and one year of incarceration. These costs might be seen as money we pay to bring about very undesirable outcomes for families. Adult community supervision, as an alternative, saves $14,359 per person, for one year (Lengyel, 2006). Research on cost/benefit analysis for drug offender cases in Hawaii’s prisons, in 2006, indicate the cost of incarceration is far greater than any benefit to society, the state, the prisoner, and the prisoner’s family (Lengyel, 2006). In fact, for a 39 month average incarceration, the costs exceed the benefits by $600,000. The state of Hawaii spent $15.6 million to incarcerate the cohort of drug offenders that were released in 2006 (Lengyel, 2006). However, adding the costs to the prisoner and to the prisoner’s family, the total costs of incarceration actually come to $102 million, for that cohort. For prisoners who are parents, the state pays about 24% of the net cost. The parent pays about 32% of the net costs. The family and relatives bear about 44% of the net cost. Since the family is the biggest loser in this process, it is they who are being punished, more than the prisoner (Lengyel, 2006). While incarceration cannot be avoided, in many cases, it can be avoided in many other cases, with a substitution of treatment facilities, social assistance, education, public awareness, community service sentences, and support programs, thus saving money and families. We have a social responsibility to pay close attention to this situation and find satisfactory solutions so that the epidemic of incarceration does not continue its current astonishing rate of widespread and long term damage. References Arditti, J. A. (2005). Families and incarceration: An ecological approach. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 86(2):251-260. Bilchik, S., & Kreisher, K. (2001). Parents in prison. Corrections Today, 63:108-114. Gabel, S. (1992). Behaviorl problems in sons of incarcerated or otherwise absent fathers: The issue of separation . Family Process, 31(3):303-314. Gaudin, J. M., & Supphen, R. (1993). Foster care vs. extended family care for children of incarcerated mothers. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 19(3-4):129-147. Green, K. M., Ensminger, M. E., Robertson, J. A., & Juon, H. S. (2006). Impact of adult sons' incarceration on African American mothers' psychological distress. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68(2):430-441. Hairston, C. F. (1991). Family ties during imprisonment: Important to whom and for what. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 87:87-98. Johnston, D., & Gabel, K. (1995). Incarcerated parents. In K. G. Johnston, Children of incarcerated parents (pp. 3-20). New York: Lexington Books. Lengyel, T. E. (2006). Spreading the pain: The social cost of incarcerating parents. unpublished manuscript, www.convictcriminolgy.org/pdf/SpreadingthePain.pdf. Sharp, S. F., & Eriksen, M. E. (2003). Punishing the families: Effects of incarceration on the families of women prisoners. In B. H. Thomas, Gender and Social Control in Women's Prisons (Chapter 6). Denver: Lynne Rienner. Sharp, S. F., & Marcus-Mendoza, S. T. (2001). It's a family affair: Incarcerated women and their families. Women & Criminal Justice, 12(4):21-49. Sherter, A. (2012, April 23). Jailed for $280: The return of debtors' prisons. Retrieved from Yahoo Finance: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/jailed-for--280--the-return-of-debtors--prisons.html Watts, H., & Nightingale, D. S. (1996). Adding it up: The economic impact of incarceration on individuals, families, and communities. Journal of the Oklahoma Criminal Justice Research Consortium (electronic version) Retrieved from the State of Oklahoma: http://www.doc.state.ok.us/DOCS/OCJRC/Ocjrc96/Ocjrc55.htm. Wildeman, C. (2009). Parental incarceration, child homelessness, and the invisible consequences of mass imprisonment. Retrieved from Fragile Families, Princeton: www.rcw.princeton.edu/workingpapers/WP09-19-FF.pdf Read More