By Johana Calderon Suarez
A recent study published in Prison Journal examined the impact of incarceration on prisoners and their families. In “The Pill Line is Longer Than the Chow Line: The Impact of Incarceration on Prisoners and their Families,” DeHart et al. (2018) identify the unique impacts of incarceration on prisoners and their families; the challenges that it effects on their communities, health, mental health, finances, and involvement with community supports such as friends, church, and human services.
The greatest challenge researchers face is gaining the trust not only from the family members but the prisoners in a situation so frustrating, with various limitations from both sides, and feelings. Full transparency may not be there due to maintaining and controlling their emotional state along with avoiding the reality of the situation; the feeling of being alone.
The current study, which drew from survey research, found that the keyways families were impacted by incarceration involved communication. Which not only decreased the quality of communication and experiences of family conflict but also prisoners along with family members withholding information in their conversation to protect one another from distress. Another major area of impact involved mental health, particularly increased stress felt by prisoners and family members. Outside all these stressors, prisoners and their families alleged little support from friends and communities. Researchers recommend that to effectively address impacts across all these areas, we must break down service silos to develop networked interventions. Families are the context to which prisoners will return upon reentry, and planned approaches may help assure that the offender’s path out of prison includes support to address complex family struggles.