Breaking down barriers
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0264550516648395 |
| Author | Carla Reeves,Tahir Abass,Ben Raikes |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
Breaking down barriers:
2016, Vol. 63(3) 256–272
ª The Author(s) 2016
Understanding the
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DOI: 10.1177/0264550516648395
experience of British
prb.sagepub.com
Pakistani families
affected by imprisonment
Tahir Abass
University of Huddersfield, UK
Carla Reeves
University of Huddersfield, UK
Ben Raikes
University of Huddersfield, UK
Abstract
This paper explores the experiences and support needs of British Pakistani families of
prisoners through in-depth interviews with six family members of different prisoners:
four males and two females, ranging between 18 and 40 years. Key findings are that
British Pakistani family members of prisoners experienced the Criminal Justice System
as culturally inappropriate and insensitive, raising questions of direct, indirect and
institutional racism. Furthermore, family members were more likely to access support if
criminal justice and support services staff were drawn from the wider British Pakistani
community, but felt hindered from doing so if those staff were thought to have personal
relationships to the families’ own local communities.
Keywords
families of prisoners, british pakistani, support needs, institutional racism, cultural
identity, experience
Corresponding Author:
Carla Reeves, R3/07, Ramsden Building, Queensgate Campus, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield,
West Yorkshire, HD1 3DH, UK.
Email: c.reeves@hud.ac.uk
Abass et al.
257
Introduction
Research exploring the experiences of being a family member of a prisoner,
and the impacts this has, is an area of study that is only recently starting to be
fully considered. Traditionally, this field has tended to focus on the short- and
long-term impacts on children of prisoners, with a particular focus on the
intergenerational transmission of disadvantage, criminality and imprisonment
(cf. Clewitt and Glover, 2009; Daniel and Taylor, 2001; Lockwood and
Raikes, 2016; Murray and Farrington, 2005; Raikes, 2014). However, more
recently the experiences of other family members, including parents, siblings
and partners/spouses have been gathering attention (cf. Codd, 2000, 2007;
Department of Children, School and Families, 2007; Gan-Rankin et al., 2010;
Glover, 2009; Jones et al., 2013). This attention predominantly springs from
greater recognition that close family members’ relationships with prisoners are
vital to appreciating how prisoners cope with imprisonment and their resettle-
ment and reintegration into the community, as well as to their motivation to
engage with desistance work; and so has been brought into the remit of
rehabilitation and offender management (cf. Cochran, 2014; Codd, 2007;
McKiernan et al., 2013; Mills and Codd, 2008).
Despite this growth in academic scrutiny, studies remain few and restricted to a
relatively small number of penological researchers. Perhaps due to the difficulties in
accessing the target population and that most studies have been small-scale quali-
tative projects, to date research has tended to neglect differences in familial
experiences based on race, ethnicity or culture, instead focussing on various
categories of family relationships (such as children or partners of prisoners). Thus,
although there are some notable exceptions such as Light (1995), previous research
in this area has tended to homogenise the experience of a family member and
perhaps over-generalises from these findings to under-researched populations. This
paper addresses this directly by focussing exclusively on the experience of family
members of British Pakistani prisoners, where the family members were also all
British Pakistani. In doing so, this paper considers how they understand their
experience of having a family member in prison, their own expressed support needs
and barriers to accessing that support.
The focus on British Pakistani families is both timely and socially significant
in the context of continuing anti-Islamic sentiment, or ‘Islamophobia’, and the
growth in policing, political and media attention on Islamic radicalisation and
extremism. This focus has been argued to contribute to feelings of social alie-
nation and the social exclusion and isolation of British Pakistani communities
within wider society, although it must be recognised that not all British Pakistani
individuals or families are Muslim (Alexander, 2008; Quraishi, 2006; Toor,
2009). Thus, there is reason to believe that families of British Pakistani pris-
oners may have differing experiences from other ethnic, religious or cultural
groups because of their unique social position post 9/11, 7/7 and within the
context of the ‘war on terror’. These experiences have, as yet, been ill-
considered academically.
258
Probation Journal 63(3)
What is known about the experience of
families of prisoners?
Research focussing on the children or partners of prisoners have been the greatest
growth areas in this field of research (cf. Clewitt and Glover 2009; Codd, 2007;
Daniel and Taylor, 2001; Jones et al., 2013; Lockwood and Raikes, 2016; Raikes,
2014), however, the impact of imprisonment on other close family members such as
siblings, parents or cousins is very sparse and under-researched. Families of pris-
oners’ research can be traced back to Morris (1965), who explored experiences of
women who were affected by the imprisonment of their partners. Morris (1965)
found that there were issues around income, stigma and social exclusion and an
increase in household duties and responsibilities with little, if any, support available.
As families of prisoners have gained some increasing attention within academia
and research more recently, these issues are found to continue to be prevalent and
to extend to other family members as well. Within the family unit imprisonment can
impact on a significant source of family income, which not only results in greater
financial hardship for partners and children, but often pushes them and other family
members into taking on new and additional familial, gender and social roles in
order to manage the loss of income. This can result in changes in the balance of
power within the family, which can be challenging to adjust to (Codd, 2007).
Imprisonment of a family member may also lead to isolation from wider familial
networks or external social relationships as a consequence of not wishing to dis-
close family secrets and/or difficulties (Jones et al., 2013). This self-imposed iso-
lation of families was also noted by Codd (2007), although she also found that the
fear of the negative reactions of others to the disclosure was greater than the realties
experienced. Despite this, families have been found to commonly face varying
degrees of social stigmatisation and exclusion by their peers, social networks and
local communities, and are sometimes regarded as guilty by association to the
imprisoned individual (Murray, 2007; Raikes, 2014).
The impacts of these practical, emotional and social challenges to the families of
prisoners have been associated with higher levels of stress and anxiety than in the
general population (Gan-Rankin et al., 2010). Correlated to this have been higher
recorded rates of substance and alcohol misuse, and lower levels of confidence and
self-esteem (Department of Children, School and Families, 2003). Mental health
concerns have similarly been reported as more common amongst this group, par-
ticularly for younger family members and children (Clewitt and Glover, 2009; Jones
et al., 2013). Whilst such correlations are not evidence of a causal link they do
indicate the need to explore the experience of the family of prisoners in order to
understand fully how they are affected and the short- and long-term impacts which
may be detrimental to the family’s own resilience and individual members’ positive
future outcomes as well as broader social safety and security. This need for
understanding is required to underpin the design, delivery and effectiveness of
support provided to families and policies governing how they are managed and
communicated with whilst their family member is within the criminal justice system
(CJS). This needs to be in the context of appreciating that the disadvantages often
Abass et al.
259
found to result from being the family of a prisoner tends to compound the social
disadvantage already experienced. Imprisonment of a family member is more likely
to occur in families who already face social deprivation and come from low-income
and low social-status backgrounds (Department of Children, School and Families,
2007). The loss of income and additional financial and social costs associated with
the imprisonment of a family member can, therefore, be detrimental to a family’s
wellbeing and amplify pre-existing disadvantages (Christian, 2005; Gan-Rankin
et al., 2010; Glover, 2009; Raikes 2014).
What is known about the experience of British Pakistani
families of prisoners?
Although there is a significant, though still relatively small, body of research exploring
the impact of imprisonment on families, there is dearth of research exploring the
impact of imprisonment on family members of any specific minority ethnic or cultural
community within the UK. The lack of research is an important gap in our knowledge
of the experience of families of prisoners as, according to the Prison Reform Trust
(2015), British national ethnic minority prisoners make up 26% of the prison popu-
lation compared to 14% of the general population (Office for National Statistics,
2012), with 8% of...
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