The effects of parental imprisonment on children’s education and health

The effects of parental imprisonment on children’s education and health Written by Egil Kjerstad, Research Director at the NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, this article discusses a research project aimed at understanding how parental imprisonment affects children’s education and health. Over the last 40 years, incarceration rates have risen dramatically in most Western countries. The effects on the individual prisoner and possible societal consequences are widely discussed. Research on the effects of incarceration has focused rather narrowly on the offender and the prison experience itself. The prisoners’ family members and children have been relatively invisible, despite being a sizable population. Estimates show that in Norway, between 6000 and 9000 individuals experience parental incarceration each year. It has long been recognized that the families of prisoners experience multidimensional and intersectional forms of inequality. Children with incarcerated parents are ‘invisible’, limiting their access to necessary support, and we are concerned that too little is known concerning these children`s health status and their achievements at school. How children are affected by this adverse childhood experience depends on, for example, what incarceration does to their parent and their parent’s experience. The Nordic countries have become known for their low rates of imprisonment and relatively humane conditions of imprisonment. The different correctional interventions to which parental offenders are exposed may result in positive processes or personal reform and in maintaining behavioral change, which is also favorable to their children. At the same time, in other cases, the effects of imprisonment are detrimental. It is important to gain more knowledge on how different forms of incarceration affect the prisoners’ children. It is further of interest to investigate the role of the child welfare services in the context of parental imprisonment. Child welfare services may have a dual role for the children in question. The child welfare services can potentially give protection against detrimental conditions at home or add resilience to a child and their family when a parent is incarcerated.