The effects of the penal system on marriage and family are still far too little focussed on. In view of the immense importance of this topic, Christoph Thiele therefore deserves great thanks for his comprehensive treatment of it in his dissertation Marriage and Family Protection in the Prison System .
When a person, usually a man, is imprisoned, it is not only the prisoner himself who is punished. Almost everyone has family and relatives who, through no fault of their own, are also penalised. Thiele (p. 54) reports estimates that 50,000 – 100,000 families with children are affected by imprisonment throughout Germany.
The mother, the father, the husband, the partner, the friend, the family breadwinner is lost, and often for a long time. The prisoner enters a new environment, a new world that has little to do with the world outside the prison walls. Relationships with the outside world are forcibly severed. Visits are only possible for a few hours a month. In some federal states, prisoners can at least make regular phone calls to the outside world, but they cannot be called there either. There are commendable attempts with Skype, for example in Saxony, but as a rule prisoners throughout Germany are primarily dependent on correspondence. Family ties are thus massively disrupted, often destroyed.
Increasing alienation from relatives and friends is unfortunately still the norm in prison. An alienation that can have fatal consequences. For children who grow up without their father, for prisoners who are left without a family network after their sentence, and for the general public, into which almost every prisoner is released at some point.
The author cites studies (p. 85) according to which around 50% of prisoners who were living in a marital or non-marital partnership when they entered prison had their marriage or partnership break down during the period of imprisonment. And even if the relationship does not break down completely, it is usually painfully disrupted by imprisonment. With a few exceptions, the possibility of sexual contact is also massively impaired, both for prisoners and their partners. Psychosomatic complaints and sexual frustration are the consequences.
The situation is particularly stressful for the children of prisoners. Thiele (p. 90) refers to studies according to which around half of parents deceive their children about their father’s imprisonment. The reasons given for this were the fear that the child would not be able to cope mentally, would be stigmatised or would lose the father’s reputation. The children themselves reacted differently to the absence of their father, depending on their age. A large majority of the children described aggression, a drop in performance at school, somatic reactions or taking over the father’s functions (this was particularly the case with older children). The opportunities for contact with the father were seen as particularly problematic in various studies. Fathers were often placed at a great distance from their own family. This goes hand in hand with increased financial expenditure for travelling. The design and visiting atmosphere of the visiting rooms were hardly suitable for children. Children themselves were perceived as rather disruptive during the visits and the situation was described as inhibited. Overall, there were fears that the child would become seriously alienated from their father as a carer.
This issue is not only a burden for the detainees and their children themselves. According to empirical surveys (p. 91), 48% of boys whose fathers were imprisoned were themselves offenders, compared with only 25% of boys who were separated from their fathers for reasons other than imprisonment. This is perhaps the most poignant example and saddest sign of how society’s current approach to the penal system ultimately cuts itself to the quick, often exacerbating crime rather than mitigating it.
This is true not only with regard to the children who later become offenders themselves, but also with regard to the correlation between family ties and the development of criminality among the prisoners themselves.
Various long-term studies (p. 60) confirm the theory of the turning point and show that the frequency of committing a criminal offence decreases after entering into and consolidating a functioning marital relationship.
As with criminological life course research, the results of recidivism research (p. 63) also indicate that stable marriages as interpersonal emotional bonds can have a favourable effect on the legal behaviour of offenders.
These correlations have been recognised in progressive federal states such as Saxony (p. 309). The family-orientated penal system has been developed and expanded there for years.
Waldheim Prison, for example, has set up a father-child ward, Dresden Prison a family-oriented residential group and various other measures, Torgau Prison an art-oriented father-child project and the other prisons family meeting days and various group work programmes.
At least one specific family support programme has been set up in all Saxon prisons (p. 309): Monthly father-child groups or parent-child groups (with six to 15 places) in three institutions and quarterly family programmes in two institutions.
It is assumed that many prisoners (also) commit offences because they were never allowed to experience positive relationships. This makes it all the more important to motivate them and support them in building such bonds. This is only possible with the involvement of family or close friends. Fritz Bauer has already written about this in: „Die Rückkehr in die Freiheit – Probleme der Resozialisierung“, in: Schuld und Sühne. Thirteen lectures on the German criminal process. Edited by Burghard Freudenfeld. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1960, p. 139 – 149, here p. 145, said the following about offenders: „They lack confidence in themselves and confidence in people. They do not accept their environment, but reject it because they themselves are rejected or at least feel rightly or wrongly rejected. The feeling of being unloved by parents, family or the whole world, whether it is justified or not, is acted out through unkindness, indifference or hostility towards others. Because they cannot bear their own suffering, they pass it on – consciously or unconsciously.“
Anyone who wants to limit the damage that we humans inflict on each other is therefore well advised to react to criminal offences consistently, but with understanding and also with heart. There is no other way to break the cycle of violence. If prisoners are more likely to reoffend after prison, partly due to the harmful consequences of the prison system in its current form for marriage and family, and if the children of prisoners are significantly more likely than average to become offenders themselves at some point, then this is unjust, harmful, inhumane and stupid.
We need to find new ways to promote the maintenance, development and expansion of healthy and crime-preventive bonds, even in the context of punishing an offender. Locking up hundreds of offenders together in a confined space in the „total institution“ of prison in order to manage them as cheaply as possible is exactly the wrong way to go.
Thiele’s excellently researched, comprehensive work is a milestone in this new approach to the penal system. A milestone that no one who deals with the topics of marriage, family and the penal system can ignore. Thiele shows the legal framework and connections between family relationships, criminal offences and the penal system. He analyses and documents the (damaging) consequences of the penal system for marriage and family as well as the consequences of this damage for the development of criminality. It precisely describes innovative and exemplary projects and approaches in the penal system that can counteract these harmful consequences.
Conclusion : highly recommended!