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Government must tackle impact of prison on families

Prisoners’ families face high rates of depression, poverty and housing disruption, with the estimated cost of imprisonment rising by almost a third when the social impact is taken into account, a new report finds.
Children in particular suffer hardship according to the research, carried out by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) and the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College, London and published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
The report, Poverty and Disadvantage among Prisoners’ Families, calls on the government to take ‘immediate action’ to protect the families of prisoners and to review its social welfare policy for them.
It finds high rates of depression and physical illness, increased vulnerability to poverty and debt and claims that expertise in the charity and statutory sector to address these disadvantages is ‘limited’.
About 4% of children experience the imprisonment of their father during their school years, according to government figures in its green paper Every Child Matters.
Dr Roger Grimshaw, director of research at CCJS, says: ‘Prospects for mental health, child development and prisoner resettlement are all placed at risk by impoverishment of the most vulnerable. Unless there is a real change of policy direction, we have to be worried that the collateral damage of imprisonment will scar families for years to come.’
(Booth, 2007a, p. 718)