Exploring the Factors Influencing Family Members

1
Exploring the Factors Influencing Family Members
Connections to Incarcerated Individuals

• Johnna Christian, Ph.D.
• Rutgers School of Criminal Justice

2
Prison Population

• Nationwide 2,131,180 people incarcerated in
  prisons and jails in 2004
• New Jersey adult prison population 26,239 in 2004
• In New Jersey 63 of adult, male inmates are
  African American and 17 Hispanic

• Bureau of Justice Statistics survey of prison
  inmates found 55 of State and 63 of Federal
  inmates have children under age 18
• Nationwide, 7 of black children have an
  incarcerated parent

3
Systems Approach to Studying Incarceration

• Expands focus to family and other individuals in
  the prisoners network as well as the larger
  community
• Explores the unintended consequences, hidden
  costs, or collateral damages of incarceration
• Incarceration geographically concentrated in a
  small number of communities

4
Policy Considerations

• Prisoner Reentry
• 600,000 individuals per year returning to
  communities
• Families viewed as a primary means of successful
  reentry
• We know little about the nature of families
  attachments to prisoners during incarceration or
  in the pre-incarceration phase. This may have
  implications for the reentry period.
• We know little about how family connections to
  prisoners impacts their ability to connect to
  social capital in their neighborhoods.

5
What do we know about prisoner connections to
family?

• Bureau of Justice Statistics Report
• 57 of fathers never had a personal visit with
  their children since admission to prison
• 62 have had contact of some sort (42 phone,
  50 mail, 21 visits)
• Surveys of prisoners in specific facilities
• Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study
  (Western, Lopoo, and McLanahan, 2004)

6
Approaches to Studying Connections

• Typically use cross sectional data to determine
  the connection/nature of the relationship at one
  point in time
• Relationships are complex, fluid, and dynamic
• Life history approach needed

7
Data Sources

• Observation on five bus rides taking families
  from Columbus Circle to upstate New York prisons
• Attendance at family support group meetings for
  Prison Families of New York
• Open ended, in-depth interviews with 18 family
  members of prisoners

8
Family Interview Sample Characteristics

• 17 women, 1 man
• 14 African American, 4 Hispanic
• 7 wives, 4 mothers, 5 girlfriends, 1 sister, 1
  brother
• Visiting frequency ranged from weekly to every
  six months
• 7 families have multiple incarcerated individuals
  in their lives

9
Maintaining Connections With Prisoners

• Resources
• Tradeoffs with other areas of life
• Setting boundaries with the prisoner

10
Resources

• Time
• For families traveling from New York to upstate
  prisons, the process takes 24 hours
• Routines of preparation before the ride
• Navigating prison bureaucracy
• Money
• Average 100 for one family member to visit (bus
  ticket, food while traveling and in the facility,
  packages)
• Providing goods for the inmate
• Energy
• Exhaustion from the ride affects the quality of
  the visit

11
Tradeoffs

• Resources are diverted from other needs and areas
  of life
• Time spent with children/supervising children
• Generation of social network/connections to
  neighborhood institutions
• Free time/relaxation
• Familys material needs

12
Setting Boundaries

• Families learn to protect their resources/social
  capital from the prisoner
• Restrict calling frequency, block calls, limit
  visits, take a break from visiting
• Failure to do this could lead to short or long
  term severed ties

13
Potential Benefits of Connection

• Social bonding for family and children
• Fewer disciplinary infractions for inmates
• Decreased likelihood of recidivism
• Easier transition into the family upon release

14
Potential Costs to Families

• Demands of visiting at prison
• Monitoring the prison system
• Helping children understand incarceration
• Multiple incarcerated family members
• Isolation from social networks
• Maintaining family emotionally
• Maintaining family financially

15
Elements of Life Course Approach

• Relationship prior to incarceration
• Prisoners efforts at rehabilitation and
  repairing harm to family
• Incarcerations impact on familys economic
  resources
• Incarcerations impact on social resources
• Familys social support network

16
Policy Considerations

• Identify critical points in the life course of
  the family relationship
• Provide extra resources or intervention at these
  points
• Increase attention to options for maintaining
  contact. (internet, video conferencing,
  transportation, reasonably priced phone calls)