Incarceration of a Parent or Caregiver
Executive Summary
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Parental incarceration may interfere with the attachment relationship between a child and their parent or caregiver, cause financial hardship, disrupt care and living arrangements, and subject children to stigmatisation and shame. This may impact upon a child’s emotional, behavioural and psychological development and educational performance. These potential impacts may have more severe consequences for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children when cumulated with other forms of disadvantage.
The 2022 Victorian Inquiry into Children Affected by Parental Incarceration found that ‘[b]eing pregnant while incarcerated risks various poor maternal and neonatal outcomes’. The Inquiry received cross-jurisdictional evidence that the negative outcomes of incarceration for mothers during pregnancy and childbirth include anxiety in addition to the stressors of the prison environment, and separation from baby immediately after birth and the anticipated grief associated with separation, as well as ‘increased risk of “poor maternal and neonatal outcomes” … “including through an increased risk of maternal and infant mortality, gestational complications, traumatic births, premature births, low birth weight babies, and low APGAR scores at birth”.’
The Inquiry also received evidence that:
- maternal separation due to incarceration is severely traumatic for infants and young children and usually results in the termination of breastfeeding;
- maternal caregiving capacity is undermined by maternal separation; and
- the long-term health, development and wellbeing of infants and young children is negatively impacted by maternal separation due to incarceration.
A range of negative impacts for children of incarcerated parents and caregivers has been acknowledged by Australian governments and research bodies. The NSW Committee on Children and Young People ‘heard that children can be severely impacted when one or both of their parents are taken into custody’, experiencing a broad range of negative outcomes, including:
- poorer physical and mental health;
- developmental delay;
- financial and housing stress;
- poorer educational and employment outcomes; and
- an increased risk of being placed in the child protection system or having adverse contact with the justice system themselves.
In 2021, the NSW Justice Health & Forensic Mental Health Network found:
Parental Incarceration (PI) has an enormous impact on affected children, and a negative ripple effect on families and communities. Children and young people bear the greatest
burden of disadvantage, with disruption to care-giving, placement into care, contact with the Department of Communities and Justice, disruption of schooling, impoverishment, post-traumatic stress disorder and other adverse mental health outcomes, increased likelihood of Substance Use Disorders, disruptive behaviours and contact with the criminal justice system. Despite the serious adverse outcomes for children and young people, PI carries great stigma for families, and it remains an under recognised risk factor.
In consultations with children and young people aged 10 to 22 years who had a parent in custody, the South Australian Commissioner for Children and Young People in 2022 heard that children with incarcerated parents feel punished and blamed for factors outside their control, in addition to facing many other emotional, financial, educational and social impacts. The financial impacts of parental incarceration on family income often affected their ability to live in a safe environment, eat regularly, participate in education, and undertake social activities and organised sport. Having a parent in prison also impacted relationships beyond their parental relationship, with many of them observing that they had ‘learnt not to trust people’ as a result of their experience with the law and government social services.
The impacts of parental incarceration may have particularly negative consequences for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, who are more likely than non-Indigenous children not only to experience the imprisonment of a parent, but also to experience repeat parental imprisonment:
Separating Aboriginal children and parents due to incarceration can disrupt connection to culture, land and family. Removal of children from communities into out of home care, particularly into non-Aboriginal care placements, can perpetuate the impacts of historic trauma.
In sentencing proceedings, evidence of parental incarceration has potential relevance to assessing moral culpability, moderating the weight to be given to general deterrence, and determining the weight to be given to specific deterrence and protection of the community. It may also be relevant to the likelihood of hardship in custody, a finding of special circumstances, and the shaping of conditions to enhance prospects of rehabilitation.