Prisons, Punishment, and the Family ― Towards a New Sociology of Punishment

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.

Rachel Condry is Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Hilda's College. She has previously been a lecturer in criminology at the University of Surrey, and a lecturer and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics. She is the author of Families Shamed: The Consequences of Crime for Relatives of Serious Offenders (Willan, 2007), shortlisted for the BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize. Rachel's work focuses on the intersection between crime and the family and has included studies on the families of serious offenders, parenting and youth justice, and adolescent to parent violence.

Peter Scharff Smith is Professor in the Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo. He has previously worked at the Danish Institute for Human Rights and has been a visiting scholar and researcher at, among other places NYU and Cambridge University. He has published numerous books and articles in Danish, English, and German on prisons, punishment, and human rights, including works on prison history, prisoner's children, and the use and effects of solitary confinement in prisons. He has also written books and articles on the Waffen-SS and the Nazi war of extermination at the Eastern front. His publications include more than ten research monographs and edited collections and more than seventy articles and chapters published in Scandinavian and international journals and books.