Rachel Condry - Böcker

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.

This book examines the experiences of relatives of those accused or convicted of serious crimes such as murder, manslaughter, rape and sex offences. A broader literature exists on prisoners' families, but few studies have looked specifically at those related to serious offenders, or considered their experience other than as prison visitors. Many of the difficulties faced by 'mundane' prisoners' families are magnified for the relatives of serious offenders, first by the length of sentence, and secondly by the seriousness and stigmatizing impact through association of the offence itself. Families Shamed draws upon intense qualitative research which combines long, searching interviews with the relatives of serious offenders with ethnographic fieldwork over a period of several years. The book focuses on how relatives made sense of their experiences, individually and collectively: how they described the difficulties they faced; whether they were blamed and shamed and in what manner; how they understood the offence and the circumstances which had brought it about; and how they dealt with the contradiction inherent in supporting someone and yet not condoning his or her actions. This is the first book to tell the story of serious offenders' families, the difficulties they face, and their attempts to overcome them. At the same time a focus on offenders' families also draws our attention to the ways in which women are affected by crime, illuminating the broader effects of crime and the criminal justice process on the proportionately greater number of women involved. It contributes also to wider debates about the social organization of the meanings of crime, and questions the tenability of some core policy assumptions about offenders and their families; the relationship between the state and the family, and its bearing especially on expectations about family responsibilities.