Trapped in a Bubble: Restorying the Effects of Youth Incarceration on Parental Relationships with Non-Incarcerated Siblings

Introduction

The United States has the highest youth incarceration rate in the world, with nearly 50,000 youth incarcerated in youth prisons, jails, adult facilities, detention centers, and secure homes on any given day. The literature suggests that families provide children with positive social bonds, that is, the kinds of invested relationships that promote psycho-social health and well-being, helping young people mitigate adverse experiences. The development of these bonds is continuous over the life course, providing youth with a sense of security and guidance in decision making, ultimately reducing instances of system involvement. But what happens when social bonds are broken or when positive social bonds are not given the chance to develop? Removing young people from their family system through incarceration can have detrimental effects on their psycho-social development and contribute to future criminal legal involvement. This study takes an inductive approach to investigate how youth incarceration can affect the relationship between non-incarcerated children and their parents.

Methods

This narrative study explores the impact of youth incarceration on 40 Black siblings around the country. Drawing on questions from an unstructured interview guide, participants discuss their relationship with their justice-involved siblings and other family members at three different time points: before their sibling’s incarceration, during their sibling’s incarceration, and after their sibling's release. Interview questions also focused on who they went to for support and what support they believe was needed during and after their sibling’s incarceration.

Results

This study utilized an inductive approach and analysis of narratives as the analytic strategy. This process takes a close examination of individual narratives and identifies re-occurring elements or themes to develop broader insight without pre-existing categories. This allows for a bottom up approach to exploring the data letting themes emerge from the narratives themselves. Preliminary findings suggest that protective factors expressed by parents as a result of an incarcerated child can lead to psychological splitting, diverted attention, parentification, isolation, or role ambiguity that is felt by the non-incarcerated siblings within the family. Having an incarcerated sibling can have disastrous effects that are felt by all members of a family system. It has the potential to not only affect the relationship between incarcerated and non-incarcerated siblings but it can also have an effect on the relationship between non-incarcerated siblings and their parents.

Conclusion

This work highlights the need for a more robust continuum of care where families of incarcerated youth are supported as soon as a young person is arrested. Many existing juvenile legal policies attempt to provide support to young people, some more effective than others; however there is a lack of support for families in understanding legal processes and in providing mental health services to family members directly impacted by the legal system. Mass incarceration has the power to impact not only the incarcerated but the many family systems and communities in which they come from.