Social exclusion in families affected by paternal imprisonment
| Published date | 01 June 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865817701530 |
| Author | Susan M Dennison,Kirsten L Besemer |
| Date | 01 June 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
2018, Vol. 51(2) 221–238
Social exclusion in families
! The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865817701530
imprisonment
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Kirsten L Besemer and Susan M Dennison
Griffith Criminology Institute, Griffith University, Australia
Abstract
Although social exclusion is often described as an outcome of paternal imprisonment, few
studies have directly measured the extent of social exclusion in prisoners’ families or bench-
marked it against the general population. This paper compares social exclusion among care-
givers of children affected by paternal incarceration with overall estimates of social exclusion
across the Australian population and with estimates of social exclusion among a matched
subset. Caregivers of children with imprisoned fathers were much more heavily excluded
than adults in the general population. Compared to a matched sample, differences were
smaller and mostly related to inadequate financial resources. We propose that single
parent status and financial hardship are key mediators of the relationship between paternal
incarceration and social exclusion.
Keywords
Financial hardship, intergenerational effects of paternal imprisonment, paternal incarceration,
poverty, social exclusion
Date received: 21 December 2016; accepted: 6 March 2017
Introduction
Social exclusion of children of prisoners and intergenerational social inequality have
emerged as outcomes of an era of mass incarceration in the United States (Foster &
Hagan, 2015, in press; Wildeman & Wakefield, 2014). As most imprisoned men are
fathers, increasing imprisonment rates are thought to place growing numbers of children
at risk (Geller, Garfinkel, & Western, 2011). With substantial long-term human and
societal costs associated with exclusion and inequality, policies protecting these children
from a cycle of disadvantage could have far-reaching impacts.
However, research on the specific social exclusionary effects of paternal imprisonment
is lacking in comparison to research directed towards the behavioural, mental health and
Corresponding author:
Susan M Dennison, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Mt Gravatt Campus, Griffith University, 176 Messines
Ridge Road, Mt Gravatt, Queensland 4122, Australia.
Email: Susan.Dennison@griffith.edu.au
222
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 51(2)
offending outcomes of prisoners’ children. Furthermore, rather than measuring social
exclusion directly, studies in this area typically use proximate measures of social exclu-
sion such as low income, homelessness and unemployment (e.g. Foster & Hagan, 2007;
Murray, 2007). Recently, Foster and Hagan (2015) proposed that inequality and social
exclusionary outcomes for prisoners’ children are directly impacted by paternal impris-
onment, but also indirectly impacted through a number of mediating factors previously
considered to be direct outcomes of paternal incarceration (i.e. children’s educational
outcomes, emotional and behavioural problems, social psychological factors, and family
resources and processes). These proposed mediating pathways to children’s inequality
and social exclusion are yet to be empirically tested.
Using data collected from 34 caregivers, with a total of 78 children, we examine
whether paternal incarceration is associated with greater social exclusion in families of
prisoners living in Queensland (Australia) compared to (1) the general Australian popu-
lation and (2) a matched household sample. Building on Foster and Hagan’s (2015)
multilevel framework for the study of the effect of parental incarceration on child
inequality and social exclusion, we focus specifically on the impact of paternal incarcer-
ation on the social exclusion of caregivers of children with incarcerated fathers. We also
consider the ways in which caregiver social exclusion may mediate the social exclusion of
children in the household. By using a narrower definition of social exclusion that can be
measured more directly, we are able to consider likely risk factors and causal mechan-
isms of social exclusion separate from its outcomes.
Social exclusion – Definitions
Although the term social exclusion itself is recent, concerns about individuals requiring
access to a ‘decent life’, including not only physiological functioning but also ‘valued
activities’, can be traced back as far as Aristotle (Sen, 2000). In the 18th century, Adam
Smith expanded the concept of social requirements by recognising that every society has
items that are ‘indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without’
(Smith, 1776/1999); these requirements are contextually dependent and changeable over
time. In the 20th century, Townsend’s (1979) seminal definition of poverty combined the
contextually dependent social requirement for material possessions with Aristotle’s
‘valued activities’. This focus on social expectations has become the basis of most
widely used concepts of social exclusion. For example, Burchardt, Le Grand, and
Piachaud (2002, p. 32) defined people as excluded if ‘he or she does not participate in
the key activities in the society in which he or she lives’. Other common definitions
combine a lack of participation in key activities with a lack of access to customary
living conditions, sometimes also including measures of labour market exclusion and
service exclusion (e.g. Pantazis, Gordon, & Levitas, 2006; Saunders, Naidoo, & Griffiths,
2008; Scutella, Wilkins, & Horn, 2009).
For the purposes of this study, we identified people as excluded if they lacked access to
the activities and living conditions that are customary in the society in which they live.
Though otherwise similar to Burchardt et al. (2002), our operational definition differs by
combining customary living conditions, as measured by common possessions, with par-
ticipation in social life, including social participation and service use. This decision was
based on two key insights. First, in recognition of the profound effect material
Besemer and Dennison
223
possessions may have on the experience of social participation (Smith, 1776/1999), we
argue that a comprehensive definition of social exclusion needs to combine both social
participation and a basic acceptable living standard. At the same time, by avoiding a
more complex set of additional components such as labour market participation and low
income, we maintain a conceptual separation between the concept of social exclusion
and its associated risk factors, causal mechanisms and consequences (Hobcraft, 2002).
Social exclusion and paternal incarceration
There are few studies that have examined social exclusion in the context of paternal
incarceration specifically. Foster and Hagan (2007), defining social exclusion as ‘being
shut out from conventional society’, measure a combination of homelessness, lack of
health care coverage and an absence of political participation in the United States. In the
United Kingdom, Murray (2007) proposed a variety of components of social exclusion,
including administrative exclusion, stigma, constraints on visitation, lack of political
engagement and pre-existing disadvantage. In their recent study of parental imprison-
ment and the social exclusion of offspring in young adulthood, Foster and Hagan (in
press) focus on socio-economic inequality as an indicator of social exclusion by assessing
personal and household income, perceived socio-economic status and feelings of power-
lessness. A recent study on social exclusion of prisoners’ children in the United States
focused on material hardship and exclusion from medical care (Sykes & Pettit, 2015).
Broadly speaking, on most of the social exclusion indicators measured, children and
caregivers affected by paternal incarceration were found to be disadvantaged. As sug-
gested by Sykes and Pettit (2015), the American criminal justice system, which is both
highly stratified by race and class and characterised by almost unparalleled imprison-
ment rates, may form a context in which the social exclusion risks of paternal incarcer-
ation are especially high. The high levels of social exclusion found in American
prisoners’ families may thus be due to the very high concentrations of imprisonments
in a subgroup of already disadvantaged communities. These circumstances may be quite
different in the Australian context.
A number of qualitative studies have described behaviours and effects that are sug-
gestive of social exclusion in a narrower definition, without using the concept itself. For
instance, Bocknek, Sanderson, Britner, and Preston (2009, p. 328) describe children with
imprisoned relatives as ‘feeling isolated and different from those around them’ leading
them to avoid contact with others. A much wider range of studies have reported on
mechanisms that are likely to relate to social exclusion (see Foster & Hagan, 2015 for a
comprehensive review), as well as on social inequality more widely (Turney, 2014). Most
recently, Foster and Hagan (2015) built on existing research on the effects of maternal
and paternal imprisonment on children and drew on ecological and life course perspec-
tives to develop a comprehensive ‘multilevel framework for the study of regimes and
parental incarceration and their effects on child inequality and social exclusion’ (p. 137).
At the macro level the authors propose state and cross-national regimes are either exclu-
sionary (e.g. state...
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