Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications

A growing body of scholarship faults existing risk/needs assessment models for neglecting the risk factors most relevant to women offenders. In response, a series of gender-responsive assessment models were tested for their contributions to widely used gender-neutral risk needs assessments. In six of eight samples studied, subsets of the gender-responsive scales achieved statistically significant contributions to gender-neutral models. Promising results were found for the following: (a) parental stress, family support, self-efficacy, educational assets, housing safety, anger/hostility, and current mental health factors in probation samples; (b) child abuse, anger/hostility, relationship dysfunction, family support, and current mental health factors among prisoners; and (c) adult victimization, anger/hostility, educational assets, and family support among released inmates. The predictive validity of gender-neutral assessments was strong in seven of eight samples studied. However, findings for both gender-n...

Women’s Risk Factors and Their Contributions to Existing Risk/Needs Assessment: The Current Status of a Gender-Responsive Supplement

The number of children experiencing parental imprisonment is increasing in Western industrialized countries. Parental imprisonment is a risk factor for child antisocial behavior, offending, mental health problems, drug abuse, school failure, and unemployment. However, very little is known about whether parental imprisonment causes these problems. Parental imprisonment might cause adverse child outcomes because of the trauma of parent‐child separation, stigma, or social and economic strain. Children may have worse reactions to parental imprisonment if their mother is imprisoned or if parents are imprisoned for longer periods of time or in more punitive social contexts. Children should be protected from harmful effects of parental imprisonment by using family‐friendly prison practices, financial assistance, parenting programs, and sentences that are less stigmatizing for offenders and their families.

/pdf/the-effects-of-parental-imprisonment-on-children-1lr7ngt2pl.pdf

The Effects of Parental Imprisonment on Children

In the United States, lawbreakers are treated as social isolates, and the sentences imposed upon them are conceived of as affecting a discrete individual. However, people who commit or are suspected of committing crimes are generally embedded in kinship webs and social networks that draw others into the ambit of the state's punishment apparatus. Through their association with someone convicted of a crime, legally innocent people have firsthand and often intense contact with criminal justice authorities and correctional facilities, they experience variants of the direct and indirect consequences of incarceration, and they are confronted by the paradox of a penal state that has become the primary distributor of social services for the poor in the United States. Collectively, studies investigating punishment beyond the offender contribute to the understanding of the wide and multi-faceted impact of punitive sanctions and spotlight the importance of considering this full range of repercussions when evaluating...

Punishment Beyond the Legal Offender

(2016). Preventing child abuse and neglect: A technical package for policy, norm, and programmatic activities.

/pdf/preventing-child-abuse-and-neglect-a-technical-package-for-19z6cmnw7b.pdf

Preventing child abuse and neglect: A technical package for policy, norm, and programmatic activities

Incarcerated mothers (n = 357) at a maximum-security prison participated in a study of the relationship between contact and parenting stress, using the parenting stress index for incarcerated women (PSI-IW; Houck & Loper, 2002). The study examined contact before incarceration and the frequency of telephone, letter, and visitation contact during incarceration, as well as stress related to attachment, parental competence, and visitation. Mothers who were responsible for their child's care before incarceration were more likely to write letters at least several times a week, speak with their child on the telephone at least once a week, and receive visits from their child at least four times a year. Results indicated that higher levels of contact between mothers and their children were associated with reduced levels of parenting stress. In particular, letter writing during incarceration was associated with increased attachment and improved sense of parental competence.

Contact Between Incarcerated Mothers and Their Children: Assessing Parenting Stress

Increases in the number of incarcerated parents have led to the implementation of parent training programs in prisons. Although many programs exist, programs differ in their design and methods of s...

Parenting Programs for Incarcerated Parents Current Research and Future Directions

Incarcerated mothers at a state prison participated in an eight-session parenting class designed to help them manage the stress of separation from children and to improve communication patterns with children and home-caregivers. In comparison to a waitlist control group (n = 46), inmates who received immediate intervention (n = 60) experienced less parenting distress regarding upcoming visitation experiences; however, waitlist and immediate treatment groups did not differ on other intervention measures. Additional analyses contrasted pre- and post-intervention differences on adjustment measures for inmates from either treatment condition who completed the parenting program (N = 90). After intervention, mothers reported reduced parenting stress, improved alliance with home caregivers, increased letter-writing, and reduction of mental distress symptoms. Large drop-out rates in both subgroups may have reduced the benefits of the random assignment used to form groups. Results support the value of interventions for incarcerated mothers that focus on ways to manage the emotional distress and poor communication patterns associated with being a parent in prison.

Improving the Emotional Adjustment and Communication Patterns of Incarcerated Mothers: Effectiveness of a Prison Parenting Intervention

Comprehensive treatment for co-occurring child maltreatment and parental substance abuse: outcomes from a 24-month pilot study of the MST-Building Stronger Families program.

This article summarizes and illustrates the collaboration strategies used by several family therapies. The strategies used within multisystemic therapy (MST) are emphasized because it has demonstrated high rates of treatment completion and favorable outcomes in multiple clinical trials. Many of the collaboration strategies in family work are common to other forms of evidence-based psychotherapy (e.g., reflective listening, empathy, reframing, and displays of authenticity and flexibility); however, some strategies are unique to family systems treatments, such as the identification of strengths across multiple systems in the youth's social ecology and the maintenance of a family (versus a child) focus during treatment. A case example illustrates collaboration and engagement in the context of MST.

Elena Hontoria Tuerk

Papers

Contact Between Incarcerated Mothers and Their Children: Assessing Parenting Stress

Parenting Programs for Incarcerated Parents Current Research and Future Directions

Improving the Emotional Adjustment and Communication Patterns of Incarcerated Mothers: Effectiveness of a Prison Parenting Intervention

Comprehensive treatment for co-occurring child maltreatment and parental substance abuse: outcomes from a 24-month pilot study of the MST-Building Stronger Families program.

Collaboration in Family Therapy