Impact of punishment : how does a prisoner’s incarceration affect families?

Abstract

Very little information is found on the experience of families affected by incarceration; however, current trends show that millions of families have a family member who is imprisoned. A large number of these prisoners also have children, and parental incarceration is a big concern. In this study a detailed description of punishment and also the types of punishments used in Malta are explored in detail. Incarceration causes a wide variety of difficulties which may include financial problems, mental health issues and feeling of unrest between couples and families. This is much more of a burden to those families who have children, or when the incarcerated person is the main breadwinner of the family. In other cases, punishment may come as a relief to families, especially when that prisoner was violent and bullied family members. Therefore, the study of the relationships and parenthood is included, since even though incarceration causes a lot of stress on all the family, it still has a bigger effect on the child of the household due to the fact that when they experience this traumatic event of having one of their parents imprisoned, it will affect him/her mentally throughout his/her whole life and labelling might also occur. Data was gathered through interviews with professionals and results show that more attention should be given to the families of the incarcerated.