Parental imprisonment, child victimization and adult problems
| Author | Karin Hellfeldt,Åsa Källström,Per-Åke Nylander |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370818775286 |
| Published date | 01 November 2019 |
| Date | 01 November 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370818775286
European Journal of Criminology
2019, Vol. 16(6) 671 –688
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370818775286
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Parental imprisonment,
child victimization and
adult problems
Åsa Källström, Karin Hellfeldt and
Per-Åke Nylander
Örebro University, Sweden
Abstract
This study addresses, in a Swedish sample, whether exposure to violence and/or crime during
childhood, and mental health and/or behaviour problems as an adult, are overrepresented
among young men and women who had a parent in prison at some time when they were a child.
Results show that almost all the studied types of childhood victimization and adult problems
were overrepresented, but verbal victimization, neglect, witnessing violence, Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and depression were significantly overrepresented. Although
the associations between having a parent in prison and childhood victimization as well as having
mental health and behaviour problems are weak, these results indicate that it is important for
practitioners who meet such children to be aware that they are more likely than other children
not only to suffer from mental health and/or behaviour problems but also to have experienced
violence and/or neglect.
Keywords
Prison, child, victimization, problems, parental imprisonment
Introduction
Family members of a person sentenced to prison often find the situation hard to deal with
in many ways, but this experience is largely neglected in research, media and statistics
(Murray, 2005; see also Arditti et al., 2003; Comfort, 2007). In particular, having a parent
in prison has been found to be related to many hardships for children. First, it is related to
childhood mental health problems (Geller et al., 2009; Jones et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2013;
Murray et al., 2009). Based on a research review, Murray and Farrington (2008) conclude
Corresponding author:
Åsa Källström, Department of Law, Psychology and Social Work, Örebro University, Örebro, 701 82, Sweden.
Email: asa.kallstrom@oru.se
775286EUC0010.1177/1477370818775286European Journal of CriminologyKällström et al.
research-article2018
Article
672 European Journal of Criminology 16(6)
that parental imprisonment is probably associated with at least twice the risk of mental
health problems for children. Recently, Turney (2014) found that parental imprisonment
is associated with a number of mental health problems, including Attention Deficit
Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD), anxiety and depres-
sion. Parental imprisonment in childhood has been found to be significantly related to
depression in young adulthood even after controlling for other relevant risk factors (Miller
and Barnes, 2015; Wilbur et al., 2007). More research is needed, however, to understand
the relationship between having had a parent in prison as a child and long-term problems
in various social contexts.
Second, having a parent in prison as a child entails an increased risk of developing
antisocial delinquent behaviour (Huebner and Gustafson, 2007; Murray et al., 2007).
Specifically, criminal behaviour seems to ‘run in families’ (Farrington et al., 2001) and
Huebner and Gustafson (2007) found that children of imprisoned mothers were signifi-
cantly more likely to be involved in the criminal justice system as adults. Murray and
Farrington (2008) found that almost twice as many boys who were separated from their
parents because of parental imprisonment before age 10 were convicted of crimes as
adults compared with boys who were separated for other reasons. Similarly, Wildeman
(2010) found that paternal incarceration is associated with increased physical aggression
in boys, but not in girls. Murray (2005) claims, however, that the evidence is slim about
the magnitude of the increased risk of the child also being imprisoned later in life.
Therefore, more research is needed to understand the relationship between having had a
parent in prison as a child and antisocial behaviours in adulthood for both genders and in
different social contexts.
Several hypotheses are proposed by researchers to explain why parental imprison-
ment is related to these hardships for their children. Many stress, for example, that a
period of incarceration often involves a worsened relationship between parent and child,
and many families are likely to be dissolved; thus children may be directly affected by
the experience of separation and enduring loss (Murray, 2005; Western et al., 2004). As
an example, Nylander, Hellfeldt and Källström (2018) found that young adults who had
a parent in prison during childhood experienced less close contact with their father (who
was most often their imprisoned parent) and fewer feelings of being loved during child-
hood, as well as less support from both their parents as adults, than did other young
adults. Notably, the available evidence suggests that the separation itself is not likely to
be the most salient cause of children’s later problems (Murray, 2005). When it comes to
antisocial behaviours, another possibility is that parental imprisonment entails a risk of
the child identifying with the imprisoned parent’s criminality and imitating that parent’s
behaviour (Murray, 2005). This suggests that both separation and a parent’s criminal
lifestyle may explain why parental imprisonment is related to child difficulties.
Theoretically, if this separation limits the child’s possibilities to identify with a parent
with a criminal lifestyle, while in other ways the child’s and the other parent’s social situ-
ation is maintained, parental imprisonment may protect children from starting a criminal
career. Also, relationships between children and their imprisoned parents may be of dif-
ferent qualities, such as positive, fragmented or harmful (Sharratt, 2014).
However, child–parent separation and the parent’s crime may not be the only roots of
problems in childhood. Compared with children with no history of parental
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