Parental imprisonment: everyone's business

Paula Akyol. Firstly, it is important to emphasise that children and families who experience parental imprisonment are not a monolithic group. There is no universal experience of parental imprisonment: the impact on children and on the parents themselves is absolutely unique to each family. Many contextual factors combine with the imprisonment of a parent: the length of the sentence, family dynamics prior to imprisonment, the age of the child, the type of correctional facility and whether it is a highly publicised case or not. These different factors will shape the impact of imprisonment on children and family relationships. For some families, a parent’s imprisonment might lead to a major loss of income, for others, not. Some families may remain in the same household while some children may be placed in state care or the care of other family members.

Despite the many variations in experiences, a parent’s imprisonment is recognised as an adverse childhood experience (ACE) and can put children at risk if they do not receive the right support. Children who have a parent in prison often face a series of challenges in addition to being separated from their primary caregiver.

They are more likely to experience discrimination, stigma, social exclusion, increased poverty, instability as well as a breakdown of family ties, violence and bullying.

Whilst a parent’s imprisonment can have profound impacts on a child’s life, it does not define it. Children’s reaction are often wrongly assumed to be a direct result of the parent’s imprisonment. For instance, if a 15-year-old has a conflictual relation with their caregiver, it is assumed that this is due to the imprisonment of the parent. Yet it can also be simply because they are going through a developmental stage of what a 15-year-old goes through. Similarly, a child’s sadness is not always due to the parent’s imprisonment. One child told us that he was sad because his dog had just died and his teacher asked him if it was related to his father’s imprisonment, as if everything was related to this situation¹.

If detention does not deprive parents of their parental authority, it significantly reduces the autonomy of a parent in prison. It is indeed much more difficult for them to make decisions and choices in the daily life and education of their children. Being a parent is not just about loving the child, it is also about being responsible for them. If a parent remains in prison for a very long time, their sense of responsibility can sometimes be dwindled and the child-parent relationship can even be reversed. The child may feel that they are responsible for the happiness of the parent, sometimes leading to a kind of reversal of attachment and roles.

PA. Release can often be a very difficult and tumultuous period for families: readjustment to the family dynamic might be very natural in some situations, and more challenging in others. This is particularly the case if the parent’s sentence has been lengthy and/or the children have not had frequent contact with the parent. Readjustment can also bring with it gender-specific difficulties for the child or the parent. For instance, some of our members who work directly with children have observed that boys can sometimes enter into a real competition for the role of dominant male when the father returns to the family unit after a long period of incarceration, which can cause a lot of tension.

It is therefore important to prepare the children for their parent’s return. The Council of Europe recommends that prisoners should be granted home leave so that they can prepare to resume their full role as parents and the responsibilities that go with it on release. It considers that it is essential, to ensure the smoothest possible release, to implement pre- and post-release reintegration programmes tailored to the specific needs of prisoners with a parental role in the community.

Relatives also need to be prepared for release, and this dimension is really missing. There is no community-based support provided for them. Yet, they are the ones who look after the children during the parent’s imprisonment and must prepare them for the parent’s release. Moreover, this period can be very complicated for these persons: they have taken care of the children, sometimes for years and then, overnight, the parent is released and parental authority prevails over everything else.

PA. According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, parents have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of the child. States are therefore obliged to support parents in fulfilling their child-rearing responsibilities, when this is in the best interests of the child. Furthermore, children’s right to regular and ongoing contact with a parent in prison is recognised by the European Court of Human Rights.

To ensure regular and meaningful contact between family members and to maintain the child-parent bond, it is essential to have adequate facilities to accommodate family visits in child-friendly conditions. Face-to-face visits between children and parents should be prioritised; a video call is no substitute for a visit. It is also important to have moments where the parent can spend a special time just with the child. When children visit their parents in prison, they are usually accompanied by another family member. However, during these visits the needs of the child are not at the centre of the discussion. To address this shortcoming, the organisation Relais Enfants Parents organises, in France and Belgium, child-centred visits twice a year, at Christmas and on Mother’s/Father’s Day. During these visits, there are no other family members: it is a privileged moment between the child and their parent supervised by a volunteer from the Relais Enfants Parents.

Prison staff should be trained in how to address children, to ensure a child-friendly communication. They should also be made aware of the benefits of maintaining the child-parent bond for both parents and children.

Indeed, at present, no one seems to see it as their responsibility to foster child-parent relationships. Understanding why it is essential to maintain these links could encourage the various stakeholders to become more involved in this issue.

Schools also play a very important role: they can provide support to children and their relatives outside and act as a bridge between children and parents in detention. We currently have a project, which is in its early stages, to train teachers, school staff and the wider school administration on their role in supporting and maintaining parent-children ties. In Wales, a project allows teachers to be invited into prison for a child-parent evening, where they can, among other things, bring the child’s homework. This project allows the imprisoned parents to feel more involved in their child’s education and the teacher to have a much more solid and advanced understanding of what it is like for a parent to be incarcerated and the impact it can have on the child. It also allows teachers to avoid stigmatising the issue and to talk about it with empathy and understanding to the children.