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Family life can be seriously disrupted when a mother is imprisoned. The separation changes and often reduces the type, frequency and quality of contact that can be achieved between family members, and especially for children when their mothers were their primary carers and living with them before her imprisonment. In England and Wales, prisoners are permitted contact with children and families through prison visits, telephone contact and letter-writing through the post, and in some prisons via email. Despite the recent policy interest in supporting prisoners' family ties, research has highlighted the challenges that families and prisoners face using these communicative mechanisms. Building on this, the chapter contributes new knowledge by shifting the lens to explore how family members construct and adjust their practices to promote mother–child contact during maternal imprisonment.

The empirical study draws on semistructured interviews with mothers in prison and family members (caregivers) to children of female prisoners. Guided by a ‘family practices’ theoretical framework (Morgan, 2011), the findings show innovative adjustments, a willingness to make sacrifices and alternative routes to improve contact utilised by mothers and caregivers to prioritise mother–child contact. We see the strength, resilience and autonomy shown by family members to promote their relationships in spite of communicative barriers. There are important lessons to be learned from the families' lived experience for policy and practice, which, without due and genuine consideration, might further hinder opportunities for mother–child contact during maternal imprisonment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the conditions that create a “good” prison visit, focussing on the role that a dedicated third sector-run prison visitors’ centre plays in creating a supportive environment.

This paper draws on a synthesis of empirical data gathering conducted over a decade at a voluntary sector-managed prison visitors’ centre based at a male prison in Northern England. The paper draws specifically on qualitative data gathered through four independent evaluations of the centre over a ten-year period.

An important point to emerge from the research is the unwavering importance of the prison visit in the life, well-being and regime of a prisoner. Prison visitors’ centres are shown to be an important part of creating positive visits experiences offering a space for composure and for support for families.

Many voluntary sector organisations are unable to commission large research and evaluation studies, but are often able to fund smaller pieces of work. Pooling qualitative evidence from smaller studies is a viable way to potentially strengthen commissioning decisions in this sector.

From June 2017 to May 2018, the Prison Reform Trust partnered with Families Outside to identify the particular impacts on children of a mother's involvement in the criminal justice system. This included a literature review and extensive consultations with 25 children and 31 mothers with lived experience. This chapter presents the main findings of the research, which identified five key themes: ‘Children with a mother in prison are invisible within the systems that are there to protect them’; ‘Every aspect of a child's life may be disrupted when a mother goes to prison’; ‘Children feel stigmatised when a mother is involved in the criminal justice system’; ‘Children affected by imprisonment face many barriers to support’ and ‘With the right support, children can become more resilient and develop the skills they need to thrive’. The material presented in this chapter constitutes a compelling case for reform. The chapter concludes with recommendations for action at local and national levels to protect children from the harm caused by maternal imprisonment.

The definition of the term “family” around the Western world is more heterogeneous than ever before and so are its roles and the social expectations of it. However, prisoners’ families (specifically parents and siblings) are expected to support their incarcerated son/brother as they are perceived responsible for his choices and as having the closest relationship with him. Based on a study of parents and siblings of incarcerated men in Israel, this chapter’s goal is to shed light on families’ choice to support their incarcerated son or brother and the struggles this choice entails. A thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 17 parents and 10 siblings of incarcerated men in Israel showed that nuclear family members may experience various struggles throughout the legal proceedings, including family hardships, negative social experiences, and negative experiences with formal institutions – all leading to social self-exclusion. Looking through the intersectionality lens, the findings show that when accumulating hardships that prisoners’ families experience encounter perceived harsh institutional systems of oppression, preordained marginalization can be deepened as families operate in opposition.

The chapter centres on a practitioners' experience of supporting children affected by maternal imprisonment for over a decade in Liverpool, Merseyside in the United Kingdom.

Using the data derived from my PhD ‘Bubbles, Brick Walls and Connectivity’, I offer ‘whole families’ experiences of support systems including their experience of statutory services, nonstatutory services, family and friends and ‘Good Practice’ suggestions are proffered.

Consideration is given to what support can look like, the successes and the challenges. Attention is paid to how to help children who have contact with their mothers and how this help might differ to children for whom contact has been severed.

The chapter also focusses on supporting children and families post release and the challenges of engaging the mother in the service. Stories which highlight how the mother/child relationship can become fragmented/disrupted, either prior to or owing to imprisonment, are shared.

The basic family unit is an important institution whose scope and function has changed greatly over the past one hundred years. The contemporary form of the family is understood as “conjugal and nuclear.” This implies a greater emphasis than previously on individual roles and relationships within the private sphere of the contemporary family. Additionally, the family is understood to have lost many of its former functions, further separating itself from the external world. The separation has further stripped the family from many of the roles it once had, with traditional familial functions performed by other institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the course, “Designing Education for Better Prisoner and Community Health,” which provided students with the knowledge, skills and resources needed to build real-world health education materials for persons who are criminal justice involved.

A multiphase engaged scholarship course was designed and implemented through the Brown University School of Public Health in Rhode Island, USA.

Students collaborated closely with instructors, subject matter experts and affected community members to develop highly tailored health education projects across six topic areas. The structure and outcomes of the paper are described with the hope that other instructors and institutions might replicate components of the model.

Engaged scholarship in public health can provide students with rich, collaborative learning experiences, and when executed effectively, these endeavors can provide underserved communities with robust and informed health education interventions and programs.

Intergenerational confinement is an under-recognized, policy-driven issue which greatly impacts Indigenous and racialized peoples in countries with ongoing colonial legacies. Numerous policy solutions enacted over colonial history have exacerbated instead of mitigated this situation. This chapter advances an improved understanding of the impacts of carceral legacies, moving beyond the dominant focus of parental incarceration in the literature. Focusing on Indigenous peoples, multiple generations in families and communities have been subjected to changing methods of confinement and removal. Using critical policy analysis and interview research, this chapter interrogates these intergenerational impacts of carceral policy-making in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 124 people in the three case countries, this chapter centers perspectives of people who have been intergenerationally confined in carceral institutions. With a goal of transformation, it then explores an alternative orientation to policy-making that seeks to acknowledge, account for, and address the harmful direct and indirect ripple-effects of carceral strategies over generations.

The purpose of this monograph is to present the first English translation of a unique French colonial report on women living under colonial rule in West Africa.

The issue begins with a discussion of the contribution this report makes to the history of social development policy in Africa, and how it serves the on‐going critique of colonisation. This is followed by the English translation of the original report held in the National Archives of Senegal. The translation is accompanied by explanatory notes, translator’s comments, a glossary of African and technical terms, and a bibliography.

The discussion highlights contemporary social development policies and practices which featured in identical or similar forms in French colonial social policy.

As the report demonstrates, access to basic education and improving maternal/infant health care have dominated the social development agenda for women in sub‐Saharan Africa for over a century, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future in the Millennium Development Goals which define the international community’s agenda for social development to 2015. The parallels between colonial and post‐colonial social policies in Africa raise questions about the philosophical and cultural foundations of contemporary social development policy in Africa and the direction policy is following in the 21st century.

Though the discussion adopts a consciously postcolonial perspective, the report that follows presents a consciously colonial view of the “Other”. Given the parallels identified here between contemporary and colonial policy‐making, this can only add to the value of the document in exploring the values that underpin contemporary social development practice.

Whilst small, the number of women in Cambodian prisons has been growing rapidly. These women are often first-time offenders, detained on drug or poverty-related offenses. Most women are detained pre-trial, then sentenced harshly. Children in Cambodia can accompany their mother in prison, but there is no standardized process for this to occur. Conditions within the prisons have been described as substandard and extremely challenging, with a lack of appropriate nutrition, health care, and environmental stimulation. There is also a lack of humanitarian programs addressing the specific needs and challenges faced by women prisoners, and their children. This chapter provides an overview of the work of This Life Cambodia, a Non-Government Organization (NGO), which delivers targeted programs to both women and their children, during and after imprisonment. It discusses the role of the This Life in Family (TLIF) program, which provides valued support to vulnerable families at risk of separation. The program primarily targets mothers in prison from poor, disadvantaged and multiple deprived communities, who are accompanied by, or separated from, their children.