Core findings of first year study of prisoners’ children

Do the children of prisoners follow in their parents’ footsteps?  Is crime somehow hereditary? Do children come to see a criminal life as just normal?  Or are the social, economic and emotional effects such that children are stuck in poverty with no apparent way out? 

These are some of the questions that we seek to answer in our three year study of the children of prisoners.  We begin, in fact, from a much more basic question:  How many children of prisoners are there at any given time in New Zealand?   Our preliminary and tentative answer is - about 20,000 at the moment, and increasing.

Our study interviewed prisoners, caregivers of the children, some children themselves and a wide range of stakeholders from community and government organisations with an interest in the prisoners of children.  In the first year we interview or surveyed over 250 people.

Our findings so far….

Children seem to be present in around 1 in 5 arrests.  The process of arrest ranges from relatively benign to quite traumatic.  In a small number of cases the arrest has lasting effects on the children. Most children do not go to view the trial, but for some it is an important part of coming to understand why their lives have changed.  Prison visiting is important for many in maintaining good family relationships, but distance, institutional practices and cost often make regular visiting difficult. For families that follow their imprisoned family member around the country, there is a cost to be borne.

Most of the families in this study subsist on a benefit.  They often face significant debt and costs associated with the imprisonment. Most of these families live well below the poverty line. There are few spare resources for meeting non-essential costs.

The children of prisoners may live with their other parent, a grandparent, older siblings, aunties and occasionally with non-family carers. They often move around quite a lot for a number of reasons, including housing costs, moving away from an area, to live with other people or to be near the prisoner.

These children suffer from an alarming array of physical, emotional and (in some cases) mental health issues. There is little evidence that their health needs are being addressed effectively.  Children seem to suffer from nightmares and separation anxiety when younger, then anger, emotional upset and bed-wetting in middle childhood and a worrying range of problems as adolescents.  Some have clear signs of mental ill health.

Not surprisingly, the children tend not to do well at school. Transience, low attendance rates, bullying (as victim and perpetrator), as well as difficulties in concentrating, added to the well-documented effects of poverty on educational achievement, mean that the odds are stacked against these children.

About two-thirds of Māori prisoners and one third of pakeha prisoners had lived with a family member who had gone to prison when they were a child.  The differences in these figures are wholly explained by the high (8 times higher) rate of Māori imprisonment over pakeha.  There are clear trends towards inter generational imprisonment, although the literature suggests the reasons are complex.

This is a study undertaken for the community sector.  Our study has begun to investigate the range of community and government services available to help these children and prevent them following their parents into prison. While health and education services are often supportive, the assistance they give appears not to make much difference. Work and Income, who provides the incomes for most of the families, has no specific understanding of any special needs this group has.  Services that are funded to offer programmes to these children always have large waiting lists or, in the case of PARS prison visiting fund, may run out of money well before the end of the year.

The study continues next year, as we seek to build a fuller and better informed picture.

You may download the full report on this Home Page (on the right).

Contact:

Liz Gordon, Network Research, 03 980 5422 or 027 454 5008