SEPTEMBER 2008 VOLUME 47  NUMBER 3

Incarceration and Family Relationships: A Call for

Systemic Responses
EVAN IMBER-BLACKw

Fam Proc 47:277–279, 2008

R osa came to see me for family therapy, bringing her 11-year-old daughter, Maria,
who was suddenly refusing to go to school and lying to her mother. Before I could
even begin to get initial family information, Rosa broke in to tears and exclaimed, ‘‘My
daughter will end up a heroin addict. She will go to prison, and I will end up raising
her children.’’ As we unpacked this disastrous prediction, I learned Rosa’s family
story, which Maria was hearing openly for the first time. ‘‘My mother was hooked on
heroin. She went to prison when I was exactly Maria’s age. My father had been
murdered just before I was born. I was sent to live with my grandmotherFshe hated
me because my skin was like my father’sFdark. Once a month we went to see my
mother in upstate New York. My grandmother and my uncle told me my mother was
in college. Of course, I knew this was a lie, but I pretended to believe it. We would sit
outside on benches surrounded by other prisoners and their children. I remember
asking why all the women were dressed alike. My grandmother told me to shut up.
After an hour’s visit we exited the locked gate. We did this for three years.’’ I asked
Rosa if she knew whether her mother had received any treatment while she was in
prison, or whether anyone had ever worked with her and her mother. ‘‘No one helped
my mother,’’ she replied, ‘‘and certainly, no one ever spoke to the two of usFnot while
she was in prison, and not after.’’ Rosa’s mother died of a drug overdose when Rosa
was 16, missing the birth of Maria by 2 months.

wEditor, Family Process

277
Family Process, Vol. 47, No. 3, 2008 r FPI, Inc.
278 / FAMILY PROCESS

This issue’s special section, Repairing and Enhancing Family Relationships

During and After Incarceration, offers original theory, potential interventions,
and qualitative and quantitative research to begin to address the profound impact of
imprisonment on parent-child, three-generation, and spouse/partner relationships
(Arditti & Few, 2008; Einhorn et al., 2008; Engstrom, 2008; Shamai & Kochal, 2008).
These papers arrived separately to the journal and were not part of a call for papers.
Rather, these papers represent a developing interest in an underdeveloped arena in
our field. During the review process, I began to think more about families like Rosa’s,
and the intergenerational consequences of incarceration. Three of the papers (Arditti
& Few, 2008; Engstrom, 2008; Shamai & Kochal, 2008) focus on women prisoners,
reminding us that these women are most often mothers and that living outside the
prison gates are their children, who may be lonely, confused, and ashamed, and
grandmothers most often providing kinship foster care, who may be disappointed,
exhausted, and unsupported. Rosa’s story, replete with secrets, lies, family conflict,
racism, drug abuse, and premature death, stands as a touchstone for hundreds of
thousands of families world-wide.
Women prisoners inhabit many roles and social locationsFmothers, daughters,
and very likely unacknowledged trauma victims. Marked by untreated depression and
other unrecognized mental health problems, severe family conflict, improperly diag-
nosed physical illnesses, lack of adequate education, training, and job skills, these
women enter a revolving door whose exits are drug abuse, prison, and frayed family
relationships.
While attending to the emotional and relational toll exacted by imprisonment,
we must also look at some political realities, and the lack of social justice these imply.
The prison population in the United States grew by 25,000 in 2007. For the
first time in American history, more than one in a hundred American adults is
in prison or local jails. These numbers reflect profound racial disparitiesF1
in 36 Latino men, 1 in 15 adult Black men, and 1 in 9 young Black men are in
prison. This disparity is seen in women, as wellF1 in 350 White women, ages 35–39,
compared with 1 in 100 Black women of the same age are in prison. Such racial
disparities in imprisonment also exist in Canada, Australia, England, and Wales.
In the United States, more people are imprisoned than in any other country
(Liptak, 2008). Our extreme rates of imprisonment reflect state budgets more
devoted to building prisons than to developing community and family preventive
programs.
While educational programs inside prisons have been shown to be highly
effective, most have been eliminated in recent years. The lack of educational
and therapeutic programs can be connected to a rearrest rate of 60%. The average cost
to keep a person in prison for a year in the United States is slightly over $23,000
(Liptak, 2008)Fan amount that, for nonviolent offenders, could easily cover
tuition costs at many colleges. As but one example, the state of Arizona spends
more to incarcerate Latinos and African Americans than to educate these same
populations at the state universities. And just as there are fewer and fewer
prevention and intervention programs inside prison walls, there is little to no
outreach or larger system coordination to address the needs of family members on the
outside.
In my work with Rosa and Maria, we looked closely at what happened to Rosa’s
mother. Through careful conversations with extended family members, Rosa was able

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to discover her mother’s terrible history of unaddressed traumaFphysical abuse and
rapeFthat led, in turn, to her heroin abuse, prostitution, and imprisonment. As we
began to make sense of all that had gone on and the previously unspoken impact on
Rosa, Maria returned to school. Rosa began to envision a different and positive future
for her daughter. ‘‘I wonder how things would have turned out,’’ Rosa asked, ‘‘if we
had had some help all those years ago?’’
As systems theorists, practitioners, and researchers, we can easily imagine the ever-
expanding influence of one imprisoned family member, whose emotional and rela-
tional needs are ignored, on an entire set of multigenerational relationships. This
special section is simply a beginning call for us to use our knowledge and expertise to
initiate both a political and therapeutic agenda for change.

REFERENCES
Arditti, J., & Few, A. (2008). Maternal distress and women’s reentry into family and community
life. Family Process, 47, 303–321.
Einhorn, L., Williams, T., Stanley, S., Wunderlin, N., Markman, H., & Eason, J. (2008). PREP
inside and out: Marriage education for inmates. Family Process, 47, 341–356.
Engstrom, M. (2008). Involving caregiving grandmothers in family interventions when mothers
with substance abuse problems are incarcerated. Family Process, 47, 357–371.
Liptak, A. (2008, February 29). More than 1 in 100 adults are now in prison in U.S. New York
Times, p. A14.
Shamai, M., & Kochal, R.-B. (2008). ‘‘Motherhood starts in prison’’: The experience of
motherhood in prison. Family Process, 47, 323–340.

Fam. Proc., Vol. 47, September, 2008