Effects of Parental Incarceration on Children Cross-National Comparative Studies

Children are the hidden victims of the prison boom. Parental incarceration can cause profound emotional and practical difficulties for them as they strive to cope with separation, financial loss, stigma, and highly restrained contact with their loved ones.

This book takes a hard look at possible long-lasting effects of parental incarceration on children in the United States, England, Sweden and the Netherlands. Four major studies of some 20,000 children, followed from childhood to adulthood, demonstrate the far-reaching consequences that parental incarceration can have for children in later years.

The worst effects occur in social contexts characterized by harsh penal attitudes and restrictive prison practices. These cross-national differences illustrate the need for reforms to better protect this vulnerable population.

Joseph Murray, PhD, is a senior research associate and Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellow in the department of psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. His main research interests are in developmental criminology, cross-national comparisons, and crime and violence in low- and middle-income countries. He was awarded the University of Cambridge Manuel Lopez-Rey Graduate Prize in Criminology in 2002; the University of Cambridge Nigel Walker Prize for his PhD in 2007; a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2006; a Darwin College Research Fellowship in 2007; and the Distinguished Young Scholar Award of the American Society of Criminology, Division of Corrections and Sentencing, in 2008.
 
Catrien C. J. H. Bijleveld, PhD, studied psychology and criminal law at Leiden University, earning her degree in statistical analysis of categorical time series. After working as an assistant professor at Leiden University she moved to the WODC Research and Documentation Center of the Netherlands Ministry of Justice. In 2001, she moved to NSCR in Leiden, and became professor of criminological research methods at the Vrije University in Amsterdam. Her main research interests are in the areas of criminal careers, female offenders, the intergenerational transmission of offenders, genocide, and sex offending. She is the author of several textbooks and the editor of other volumes on crime and justice in the Netherlands and on the association between employment and offending.
 
David P. Farrington, OBE, is Professor Emeritus of psychological criminology and Leverhulme Trust Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University. He received the Stockholm Prize in Criminology in 2013. His major research interest is in developmental criminology, and he is director of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, which is a prospective longitudinal survey of more than 400 London males from ages 8 to 56. In addition to more than 600 published journal articles and book chapters on criminological and psychological topics, he has published nearly 100 books, monographs, and government publications.
 
Rolf Loeber, PhD, is a professor of psychiatry, psychology, epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh. He is director of the Life History Program and is principal investigator of two longitudinal studies, the Pittsburgh Youth Study and the Pittsburgh Girls Study. He has published in the fields of juvenile antisocial behavior and delinquency, substance use, and mental health problems. He is an elected member of the Koninklijke Academie van Wetenschappen (Royal Academy of Sciences) in the Netherlands and the Royal Irish Academy in Ireland.