Beyond prison walls
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0264550516648394 |
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Beyond prison walls:
The experiences of
prisoners’ relatives
and meanings
associated with
imprisonment
Rafaela Granja
Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal
Abstract
An analysis is presented of how prisoners’ relatives experience and attribute meanings
to the imprisonment of one or more family members. Drawing on 30 interviews
conducted in Portugal with men and women taking an active role in supporting
prisoners, the article explores the collateral consequences associated with both male
and female imprisonment. Empirical findings point to the heterogeneous, ambivalent,
complex and dynamic character of prisoners’ relatives experiences and meanings. In
addition, the results also highlight the significant impact of gender relations and access
to social and economic resources on the social implications associated with
imprisonment.
Keywords
family, gender, imprisonment, social implications, relationships
Introduction
For several years, studies about the penal sphere have focused mainly on what
happened behind prison walls, such that a full understanding of the unforeseen and
Corresponding Author:
Rafaela Granja, Centro de Estudos Sociais, Universidade de Coimbra - Centro de Estudos Sociais, Centro
de Estudos Sociais Cole
´gio de S. Jero
´nimo Apartado 3087 Coimbra, Portugal 3001-401.
Email: rafaelagranja@ces.uc.pt
Probation Journal
2016, Vol. 63(3) 273–292
ªThe Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0264550516648394
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The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
unintended social consequences of imprisonment has not been presented. More
recently, this tendency to focus on life inside prison has been deconstructed. The
increasing permeability of prisons has shifted attention to perspectives that chal-
lenge their physical boundaries and to the need to place correctional facilities in
permanent intersection with the social implications both behind and beyond prison
walls. The increased regulation and control exercised by external organizations,
the gradual similarity promoted between the prison environment and external
contexts, based on the principle of normalization, and the increasing flow of goods,
services and people circulating between the inside and the outside of prisons all
problematize approaches solely focused on the internal dynamics of the prison
(Cunha, 2014).
Within the several groups of people that move behind and beyond prison walls,
prisoners’ relatives are especially significant because what binds them to prison is
not based on professional commitments and/or legal obligations. Their engage-
ment with the criminal justice system results from their relatives’ incarceration. This
positioning thus invites us to reflect upon on how prisoners’ relatives experience and
attribute meanings to imprisonment. This article explores two main dimensions: (i)
familial reconfigurations enacted upon imprisonment; and (ii) implications in the
social, economic and relational realms. The central questions guiding this article are
the following.
How do prisoners’ relatives adapt to changes in the household during the
penal confinement of one or more family members?
Which social position factors underpin the reorganization and reallocation of
resources?
What strategies and negotiations underlie relationship management in the
shadow of prison?
In short, this article sets out to contribute to research on the social implications of
imprisonment by highlighting the relevance of considering its effects beyond prison
walls and providing a full understanding of its heterogeneous, ambivalent and
sometimes contradictory collateral consequences.
In the following section, the article discusses the emergence, development and
current status of research about prisoners’ families. Then, the methods used in this
study are presented and, in the empirical findings, it is shown how the lives of
prisoners’ relatives are shaped by the penal scenario, exploring how they experi-
ence a ‘parallel sentence’ beyond prison walls. The final section discusses how the
influence of the prison might be complex, inasmuch as it is riddled with ambivalence
and its effects might not be entirely distortive and disruptive. Lastly, challenges for
future research are addressed.
Collateral consequences of imprisonment
The pioneer research on prisoners’families is a work by Pauline Morris,Prisoners and
Their Families, published in the UK in 1965 (Morris, 1965). Although published
274 Probation Journal 63(3)
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