This book examines what it means to be a family within the restrictive, disruptive, and often distressing context of imprisonment. Drawing on original qualitative data, it looks beyond traditional models of the family to examine the question of which relationships matter to individuals affected by imprisonment, and demonstrates how family relationships are actively constructed and maintained through family "practices" and "displays" such as visits, shared experiences and continuing family memories and traditions. It sheds new light not only on the true extent of who is impacted by the imposition of a prison sentence, but also the barriers to family life that these individuals encounter throughout its duration. This book also contributes to our understanding of wider issues such as poverty and social marginalisation, the role of family relationships on desistance from crime, and legitimacy. It argues that the act of supporting an individual in custody can bring families into regular contact with the criminal justice system in ways that can be both distressing and problematic, and therefore contends that the prison system should minimise the damage caused by imprisonment not only to family relationships, but also to the perceived legitimacy of the criminal justice system. Generating new conceptual insights into the harms of imprisonment and how perceptions of legitimacy and fairness are shaped by the criminal justice system, this book will be of much interest to students of criminology and sociology engaged in studies of criminal justice, prisons, gender, social work, and punishment. It will also be of interest to policy makers, penal-reformers, and activists.

Every year millions of families are affected by the imprisonment of a family member. Children of imprisoned parents alone can be counted in millions in the USA and in Europe. It is a bewildering fact that while we have had prisons for centuries, and the deprivation of liberty has been a central pillar in the Western mode of punishment since the early nineteenth century, we have only relatively recently embarked upon a serious discussion of the severe effects of imprisonment for the families and relatives of offenders and the implications this has for society. This book draws together some of the excellent research that addresses the impact of criminal justice and incarceration in particular upon the families of offenders. It assembles examples of recent and ongoing studies from eight different countries in order to not only learn about the secondary effects and 'collateral consequences' of imprisonment but also to understand what the experiences and lived realities of prisoners' families means for the sociology of punishment and our broader understanding of criminal justice systems. While punishment and society scholarship has gained significant ground in recent years it has often remained silent on the ways in which the families of prisoners are affected by our practices of punishment. This book provides evidence of the importance of including families within this scholarship and explores themes of legitimacy, citizenship, human rights, marginalization, exclusion, and inequality.

This book brings together internationally renowned academics and professionals from a variety of disciplines who, in a variety of ways, seek to understand the legal, conceptual and practical consequences of parental imprisonment through a children’s rights lens. Children whose parents have been incarcerated are often referred to as "invisible victims of crime and the penal system." It is well accepted that the imprisonment of a parent, even for a short period of time, not only negatively affects the lives of children but it can also result in a gross violation of their fundamental human rights, such as the right of access to their parent and the right to have an input into decision-making processes affecting them, the outcomes of which will without doubt affect the life of the child concerned. This collection foregrounds the voice of these children as it explores transdisciplinary boundaries and examines the practice and development of the rights of both children and their families within the wider dynamic of criminal justice and penology practice. The text is divided into three parts which are dedicated to 1) hearing the voices of children with parents in prison, 2) understanding to what extent children’s rights informs prison policy, and 3) demonstrating how law in the form of children’s rights can help frame both court sentencing and prison practice in a way that minimises the harm that contact with the prison system can cause. The research drawn upon in this book has been conducted in a number of European countries and demonstrates both good and bad practice as far as the implementation of children’s rights is concerned in the context of parental incarceration. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of law, children’s rights, criminology, sociology, social work, psychology, penology and all those interested in, and working towards, protecting the rights of children who have a parent in prison.

It has long been argued that families play a crucial role in helping support prisoners during and beyond their time in prison. Through harnessing material and emotional support offered through family, prisoners can have a stronger commitment to move towards prosocial pathways via these important social ties. Yet, often overlooked are the experiences of families themselves in providing support for prisoners. This book focuses on parents whose adolescent male children are sent to prison. Charting many of the adversities which parents face – from violence, psychological stress, to stigma and shame – the book provides one of the first empirical assessments of the ways parents manage the consequences of serious crime and navigate relationships with their children in prison. As well as documenting major social hardships of imprisonment, the book will also assess the heterogeneous impacts on relationships between parents and their male children, including cases where relationships may improve or worsen over the sentence. With sensitivity to issues of gender, ethnicity and inequality in families, this book sheds new light on many of the problems of youth crime and presents a highly topical insight into the effects of imprisonment on parents. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, youth justice, sociology and all those interested in the role of families in supporting prisoners.

The Lived Experiences of Claiming Wrongful Conviction in Prison focuses on the lived experience of maintaining innocence in the prison environment and highlights the struggles and pain that such a claim can cause. Using the novel means of conducting an interview via a series of letters, the book details the experiences of sixty-four prisoners maintaining innocence in England and Wales and examines in-depth what is unique to this population. The chapters cover coping mechanisms, relationships maintained with relatives, relationships formed with prisoners and staff, and the perceived effect of their claims on matters of progression and parole. It draws on material from criminology, sociology, law and psychology to provide a holistic account of this populations’ experiences. The Lived Experiences of Claiming Wrongful Conviction in Prison will be of great interest to students and scholars across Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law, Sociology and Psychology.

This original study of the lives of prisoners’ families adds a feminist perspective on the understanding of carceral geography. She relates the testimonies of families as they navigate new challenges, and measures the impact of imprisonment on their emotions, relationships, identities and experiences of spaces, both inside and outside prison.

Because people’s contact with the criminal justice system comes in different shapes and forms, scholars are now broadening their analytical scope and examining the overall repercussions of criminal justice contact on families of offenders. Compared to Western societies, Japan is known for its lower crime rates and more pronounced use of informal social control. Thus, it offers a useful research site for examining how families in a low-crime society experience criminal justice contact and how they function as an integral part of the nation’s crime control mechanism. This book considers the role of the family in the lives of offenders and the criminal justice system in Japan. Looking particularly at gender and patriarchal power relations, it reveals how cultural notions of femininity prompt the criminal justice system to rely on women as its proxy. This book explores how families of offenders often step in to fill the voids left by criminal justice institutions and social services to provide offenders with all-inclusive care. The burden of supervising and rehabilitating offenders on top of the expectation to atone for the crimes also renders families ambivalent and ashamed. Whereas the state and criminal justice authorities tend to see offenders’ families as a crucial resource for prisoner reentry, this book highlights the necessity for addressing families’ needs before automatically assuming their support. It also pushes the boundaries of feminist criminology by showing how women can be affected by male criminality and male-dominated criminal justice institutions, other than as victims and offenders. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, gender studies, Japanese culture and all those interested in learning more about the criminal justice system in Japan.

This book highlights recent developments in the field, presented at the Social Simulation 2015 conference in Groningen, The Netherlands. It covers advances both in applications and methods of social simulation. Societal issues addressed range across complexities in economic systems, opinion dynamics and civil violence, changing mobility patterns, different land-use, transition in the energy system, food production and consumption, ecosystem management and historical processes. Methodological developments cover how to use empirical data in validating models in general, formalization of behavioral theory in agent behavior, construction of artificial populations for experimentation, replication of models, and agent-based models that can be run in a web browser. Social simulation is a rapidly evolving field. Social scientists are increasingly interested in social simulation as a tool to tackle the complex non-linear dynamics of society. Furthermore, the software and hardware tools available for social simulation are becoming more and more powerful. This book is an important source for readers interested in the newest developments in the ways in which the simulation of social interaction contributes to our understanding and managing of complex social phenomena.

This book provides an up-to-date, accessible introduction to the relationship between families, prisons and penal policies in the United Kingdom. It explores current debates in relation to prisoners and their families, and introduces the reader to relevant theoretical approaches. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book incorporates perspectives drawn from criminology, sociology, social work and law. The book includes: a current exploration of key aspects of the consequences of imprisonment for prisoners and their families an assessment of the role of current prison policies and practices in promoting and maintaining family relationships a summary of the current law in relation to prisoners and their families, with reference to the relevant legislation and recent case law.

Modern family life exhibits a huge variety of new forms. Legal responses to these new forms illustrate the continuing differences between European nations. Nonetheless, the Strasbourg Court has been increasingly active in this area, which provides fertile ground for testing the legitimacy of the Court's interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights. When national law refuses to recognize a claimed right, litigants regularly reassert that right before the Strasbourg Court. This has forced it to seek answers to complex domestic controversies, such as the legal recognition for same-sex partners and transgender persons, the ethics of adoption and reproductive rights, the legal regime for cohabitants, or the accommodation of immigrants' aspiration to family reunion. Placing family rights at the core of the judicial legitimacy debate, this book provides a critical analysis of the standards of family rights protection under the Convention. It evaluates the Court's interpretive methodology and discusses the tensions inherent in its supranational quasi-constitutional function. These include the risk of excessive deference to national authorities, at the expense of the effective enforcement of universal rights; the addition of 'new rights'; and inattention to the division of responsibilities between democratic processes within sovereign States and the subsidiary international review.