Family Criminology: An Introduction 3030711684, 9783030711689

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FAMILY CRIMINOLOGY An Introduction

AMANDA HOLT

Family Criminology “That courses on the sociology and psychology of the family are routinely taught as part of the established canons in the two respective disciplines is assumed to be natural. Yet, few have asked whether a similar course, moored exclusively from a criminological framework, is warranted. This book, at last, treats the family and all the events and processes that affect them as warrantable objects of scholarly inquiry under one umbrella. Family Criminology synthesizes an array of disparate theoretical frameworks and data sources from a truly impressive number of interdisciplinary fields and integrates them into a cogent framework, from the trauma and grief at the loss of a family member through violent crime to the consequences of those who have to participate in witness protection program as part of a ‘mafia family.’ This pioneering book continues the tradition of examining the family as a source of delinquency while teasing out the implications of crime and criminal justice institutions on the family members themselves. For researchers and students who are interested in all aspects of violence that affect the family, this book is a must-read and will surely be the definitive guide to be emulated by others in the field.” —Phillip C. Shon, Ph.D., Professor, Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, Ontario Tech University, Oshawa, ON, Canada “Family Criminology: An Introduction challenges criminology to rethink the how family life is both thought of and researched within the discipline. Here Amanda Holt centres the family and family life, in all of its troubled and troublesome formations, in laying out an agenda for the discipline. This agenda recognises the family, in all its forms, as neither invisible nor marginal to people’s lives but the lens through which to make sense of them. It is a provocative, engaging read, written in an accessible style from which any student of criminology will learn a great deal.” —Professor Sandra Walklate, Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology, Liverpool, conjoint Chair of Criminology, Monash, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool, UK

Amanda Holt

Family Criminology An Introduction

Amanda Holt Department of Social Sciences University of Roehampton London, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-71168-9 ISBN 978-3-030-71169-6  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71169-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Klaus Vedfelt This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

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Acknowledgements This book has taken a while to write. It was percolating in my head for a number of years, until it started seeping out into conversations with colleagues, friends and, yes, family members, which made it become something ‘real’ that I had to do. The process of researching and writing took longer than expected, not least because the Covid-19 global pandemic took hold and reconfigured how we live our lives, including our working (and writing) practices. Throughout this time, the unwavering support of some amazing people have helped pull the book through. Firstly, John Lea and Mark McCormack have been fantastic—patiently reading chapter drafts and offering thoughtful comments and advice. Considerable thanks are also due to Liam Inscoe-Jones and Josie Taylor at Palgrave, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions which helped to refine the book. Thanks are also due to Alison Lamont, Marie Hutton, Ruth Tweedale and Liz Carter for their helpful encouragement and support. Thank you to Clementine Manning, Jaclyn Messerges, Libby Sanders and Fiona Wright for taking the time to talk to me about their important work and for believing in the book. And finally, thank you so much to my family, both immediate and extended members, in-laws and outlaws, without whom this book would not be possible.

VII

Contents 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The Criminogenic Family: Families as the Cause of Crime in Research and Policy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

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The Stigmatised Family: The Impact of Offending on Families. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

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The Mafia Family: Organised Crime Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

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The Violent Family: Domestic and Family Violence. . . . . . . . . 121

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The Homicidal Family: The Killing of Family Members. . . . . 153

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The Traumatised Family: The Families of Victims. . . . . . . . . . . 185

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The Campaigning Family: Victims’ Families Transforming Justice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

9 Discussion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

Key Terms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

List of Figures Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 1.3 Fig. 1.4 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 8.1

Image 3.1 Image 5.1 Image 6.1 Image 8.1 Image 8.2 Image 9.1 Image 9.2 Image 9.3 Image 9.4

Growth of families in abstracts of British Journal of Criminology (1970–2019) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The (family) circles of crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Example of a genogram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Example of an ecomap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 The ‘web of shame’ felt by families of those who commit serious offences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Structure of the ’Ndrangheta Mafia family . . . . . . . . . . . 102 The life-course of gender-based violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 The life-course of gender-based violence in the family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Conceptualising family violence across child and adult dyads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Causes of family violence perpetration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Family homicide across the life-course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 The Intimate Partner Femicide Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 The impact of homicide on victims’ families . . . . . . . . . . 190 Process of family justice campaigns: individualised justice, criminal justice and social justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 Depictions of prison by children who have a parent in prison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Gunby and Barnes’ (2017) representation of coercive control tactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 The Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1628–1629, by Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Doreen and Neville Lawrence making their Family Impact Statement in January 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 las Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, Argentina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 Clementine Manning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 Jaclyn Messerges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 Libby Sanders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 Fiona Wright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

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List of Tables Table 1.1 Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 5.1 Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 6.3 Table 7.1 Table 8.1

Summary of theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Risk factors and protective factors for youth offending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 Parental accountability within youth justice legislation (England and Wales) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 Summary of theories to explain the perpetration of family violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 The gendered nature of adult family homicide victimisation around the world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Resnick’s (1969) classification of filicide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 Liem’s (2018) classification of siblicide motives . . . . . . . . 173 The goals and techniques used in survivor family therapy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 The differences in media responses to the McCann (2007) case and the Matthews (2008) case . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

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Introduction Contents 1.1  What Is ‘Family Criminology’? – 2 1.1.1  Defining Family Criminology – 2 1.1.2  Locating Family Criminology – 6

1.2  Researching Family Criminology – 10 1.2.1  Collecting Data on Crime and Family Life – 10 1.2.2  Family Criminology in the Field – 14

1.3  Theorising Family Criminology – 17 1.3.1  Psychoanalytic Theories and Family Systems Theories – 17 1.3.2  Feminism and Intersectionality – 21

References – 26

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Holt, Family Criminology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71169-6_1

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Chapter 1 · Introduction

1.1  What Is ‘Family Criminology’?

I have been a student of criminology for a long time—long before I knew what ‘criminology’ was. As a child, I devoured true crime books, watched endless documentaries about prisons and youth crime and homicide, and homed in on newspaper and magazine articles about the lives of ‘offenders’ and ‘victims’. I have also long been fascinated by families and the kinds of relationships that family members have with each other. It is what propelled me to study psychology as an undergraduate, where I focused my interest on child development, family theory and cultural life. For many years, my interest in these two subjects, crime and families, continued in parallel. But, increasingly, I was interested in questions that lay at their intersection. For example, I often wondered about the family members of those involved in ‘high-profile’ crimes whose names and faces quickly seeped into public consciousness. How did it feel for the families? How were they treated by the criminal justice system? How were they treated by the media? And what impact did such treatment have on those families? I also wondered whether we should treat these families as further victims of the crime, or whether they belonged in another, as yet unarticulated, category. Early on in my own research career, I interviewed the parents and other family members of young people who had offended, and it always struck me that the way they were depicted by newspapers, politicians and the wider public felt very far removed from the families I got to know during the course of my fieldwork. My later research focused on crime that took place between family members, particularly ‘domestic’ crimes that involved violence and abuse. Often such families are depicted as ‘dysfunctional’ and as something ‘other’ to normal, happy families. Yet evidence continually shows that crime within families is incredibly commonplace. So what does this tells us about families? And what does this tell us about crime? This book aims to explore these questions, and offer some answers. 1.1.1  Defining Family Criminology

When asked to list the five most important things in our everyday lives, most people write ‘family’ at, or near, the top of that list. Families are central to our understanding of who we are. Families also perform a unique set of functions, such as supporting physical development in the early years (for example, providing clothing, shelter and food), educating and social-

1.1 · What Is ‘Family Criminology’?

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ising children, creating an environment that supports the sexual needs of couples, caring for the dependency needs of the young, old and ill, and fulfilling family members’ emotional needs (through affiliation, feeling valued and a sense of belonging). Social science disciplines such as Sociology and Psychology have long-recognised the importance of the family in understanding the social and psychological world, and they have established their own ­sub-disciplines to enable this focus (namely, ‘Sociology of the Family’ and ‘Family Psychology’). Yet this has not happened within Criminology, despite the ­importance of family life in the theory and practice of crime and justice. Indeed, in recent years, there has been a substantial increase in theoretical and ­empirical research asking critical questions about what it means to be a family in the context of crime and justice, and how criminalisation processes ­construct, and intervene in, family life. For the first time, this book explores ­Criminology’s wide-ranging familial connections and, in doing so, brings the family in from the margins to a more central place in criminological thinking. By re-positioning the family in this way, the book aims to question commonly held and simplistic assumptions about what the family is in relation to crime and justice and, in turn, ask new questions, highlight new topics and identify new debates that lie at the intersections of crime and the family. The book also aims to highlight new research which is both intellectually ambitious and empirically rigorous and which, studied collectively, we can draw on to engage in deeper questions about human rights, social justice and the role of the state in relation to families and crime. However, this new approach is not without its challenges. First and foremost, there are definitional challenges. To understand what is meant by ‘Family Criminology’, it is worth briefly examining what we mean by criminology and what we mean by family.

What Is Criminology? Perhaps at first glance, it appears reasonably straightforward to define what we mean by ‘Criminology’: it is the study of crime (der. Latin crimen, accusation; logia, account, explanation). However, as Bosworth and Hoyle (2012) highlight, it is a highly contested discipline with competing perspectives on what the purpose, focus and impact of Criminology should be. Key disciplinary debates concern whether crime should be integral to Criminology, whether Criminology should be a science, and whether Criminology should be (explicitly) politically engaged. While such debates form part of every academic discipline, Criminology’s lack of a distinctive theoretical

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object—and its corresponding theoretical and methodological eclecticism— means that it is particularly susceptible to conceptual challenge.1 Yet the theoretical and methodological eclecticism at the heart of Criminology is also what makes it fascinating and innovative: the joy (and the challenge) of Criminology is the freedom it offers in drawing on concepts, theories and ideas from a wide range of disciplines, including Sociology, Psychology, Law, Social Work Studies, History and Human Rights Studies. While of course Criminology concerns the study of crime and criminals, it necessitates the exploration of broader questions. Who decides who is (and who isn’t) a criminal? Who decides what is (and isn’t) a crime? What mechanisms are in place during processes of criminalisation? What role does power play in these processes? These questions inevitably open up even broader philosophical questions concerning the kind of society we have, and the kind of society we want. Thus, for many criminologists, their interest lies not solely in criminal justice, but in social justice, and how we can achieve social justice for all. The implication of this is that while problems of criminal justice may require change from within the criminal justice system, it may also require change outside of it.

What Is Family? While ‘Criminology’ is certainly a rather nebulous and contested concept, the concept of ‘family’ is perhaps even more so. Demographic changes over the past fifty years across the Global North, such as later marriage and parenthood, cohabitation preceding (or replacing) marriage, increased divorce rates and extended life expectancy, have all changed how our personal and family lives are configured. Legal changes pertaining to civil partnerships and same-sex marriage, as well as scientific advances in reproduction, have all contributed to the expansion and diversification of notions of the family. As we learn more about family formations outside of Westernised cultures, our preconceptions of what ‘family’ is are tested (for example, there is an important role for deceased ancestors in Native Americans’ conceptions of the family: are Westernised conceptions too spritually reductive?). Furthermore, technological developments that enable a role for surrogates and sperm donors invite ideas of what ‘family’ could be.

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As Garland (2012) points out, the focus of Criminology is a pre-given object (‘crimes’ and ‘criminals’) derived from social practices. This is in contrast to other disciplines, such as Sociology or Psychology, where the focus is a scientific object shaped by that discipline’s own theoretical and methodological practices.

1.1 · What Is ‘Family Criminology’?

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Different academic disciplines have their own distinct definitions of ‘family’ and their own terminologies. For example, a sociologist might define family as a social unit, which acts according to social roles, hierarchy and prescribed practices. In contrast, legal scholars might define family as a legally defined group of individuals, with legally defined rights and responsibilities, based on birth, marriage, adoption and death. A biologist might define family as a group of individuals related genetically, while a psychologist might define family as a group of individuals connected cognitively, emotionally and behaviourally. Other relevant disciplines, such as Gerontology, History, Social Work, Cultural Studies and Geography, each have their own ways of defining family that fits with their own priorities and terms of reference for understanding the world and how knowledge is produced within it (Crosbie-Burnett & Klein, 2009). Even within a single academic discipline, concepts change over time. For example, in Sociology, family research has shifted from an earlier objective focus on blood and/or legal connections and the functions they perform, to a more subjective focus on intimate relationships and the meanings they hold. (This latter approach is most closely aligned with the approach adopted in this book, and an important question concerns how families are defined by the criminal justice system and its social actors.) Such conceptual shifts mean that the methodological landscape has also broadened, opening up questions such as what we include and who we exclude in our research samples, and how we capture meanings, practices and performances within our research designs. So when criminologists talk about ‘the family’, what do they mean? It is fair to say that, traditionally, families have been marginal to what the criminological discipline has decided are important objects of study. As new social policy challenges make themselves known, new objects of study emerge, and the last ten years have seen important shifts in Criminology towards new fields of enquiry such as terrorism, human rights and genocide. Sometimes this has led to the establishment of new criminological subfields, such as Green Criminology and Cybercriminology, and emerging subfields such as Sensory Criminology. But while families do not represent a new social problem in the same way, they are no less deserving of their own object of study. However, Family Criminology is more than a topic, though this is an important aspect of re-calibrating the focus of criminology. Family Criminology also offers an analytic framework for thinking about crime and justice. This framework is broader than those traditionally used in Criminology, which tend to either focus on the individual (‘the offender’, ‘the vic-

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tim’) or on the broader culture of individuals (‘the police’, ‘prisons’). Family Criminology draws on many of the concepts and theories that are used in family studies, such as attachment and family systems theory. As such, Family Criminology is even more eclectic than mainstream criminology tends to be, with a particular interweaving of the emotional and the political to understand the familial. Questions for Reflection: – What issues in crime and justice involve families? Which academic disciplines could we draw on to help us to understand the relationship between families and crime? Why is it important to study the intersections of families and crime?

Box 1.1: What distinguishes families from other social groups? (from White et al., 2019) 1. Longevity—Families last for a much longer period of time than most other social groups 2. Intergenerational—Families feature large age differences (this intergenerational bond is crucial for humans who, at different times, act as care-recipient or caregiver) 3. Basis of relationships—Families contain both biological and legal relationships between members 4. Organisation—Individual families are linked to a larger kinship organisation that has shared histories and traditions 5. Institutional—Families represent an institution: that is, they constitute a social arrangement based around a social need and operate according to an agreed set of values, beliefs, norms and practices about what a family is in a particular society.

1.1.2  Locating Family Criminology

Searching for ‘family’ and ‘families’ within the British Journal of Criminology (BJC), the flagship journal of the British Society of Criminology, demonstrates how central families are to the production of criminological knowledge. An analysis of research abstracts over the past 50 years (1970– 2019) highlights the increasing interest in families in criminological research (see . Fig. 1.1). During the 1970s and 1980s, the focus of such research was almost exclusively on ‘juvenile delinquency’ and the role that families play in the development of ‘offending trajectories’. While this focus con-

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1.1 · What Is ‘Family Criminology’?

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EƵŵďĞƌŽĨ ŵĞŶƟŽŶƐŽĨ ΖĨĂŵŝůŝĞƐΖŝŶ: ĂďƐƚƌĂĐƚƐ

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. Fig. 1.1  Growth of families in abstracts of British Journal of Criminology (1970–2019)

tinued to dominate, a wider range of topics began to emerge during the 1990s—examples include Bourgois’ (1996) renowned ethnographic research on changing family structures on second and third generation Puerto Rican immigrants living in New York and their impact on street culture, and McEvoy et al.’s (1999) study of the intimate partners of those who are incarcerated through politically motivated actions in Northern Ireland during The Troubles in the 1980s. A more detailed analysis of BJC abstracts over the past two decades (January 2000–December 2019) shows that the most common research studies that feature families explore pathways into crime and the role of the family (24%). Many of these studies come from the well-known dataset produced by David Farrington and colleagues for the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (see 7 Chapter 2). Domestic and family violence (24%) also features strongly, particularly since the 2010s, though the focus is frequently on intimate partner violence rather than other forms of family violence. Other topics featured include victims’ families (13%), which include a range of foci, including the impact of wrongful convictions and family group activism. Prisons and families (8%) also feature, as well as a distinctive focus on desistance from prison and the role of families in enabling this (11%). While the growth of research in families and crime over the past fifty years is encouraging, it is nevertheless notable that there is surprisingly

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Chapter 1 · Introduction

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ΎŽŵŵƵŶŝƚLJĂĐƟǀŝƐŵ ĂŐĂŝŶƐƚĐƌŝŵŝŶĂů ũƵƐƟĐĞ ĂŐĞŶĐŝĞƐ;Ğ͘Ő͘>D ŵŽǀĞŵĞŶƚͿ

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. Fig. 1.2  The (family) circles of crime

l­ittle breadth, given the range of important topics that could be examined. Such empirical possibilities can be explored through the ‘square of crime’ (Young, 1987; Lea, 1992), which offers an analytical framework for understanding the social dynamics of criminalisation. The ‘square of crime’ ­identifies the four ‘participants’ involved in processes of ­criminalisation: offender, victim, criminal justice agencies and communities. The ‘square of crime’ was always meant as a starting point for criminological analysis, rather than an end point (Lea, 2016), and we can use this analytic framework to identify the role of families in the social dynamics of criminalisation. This can be illustrated through the ‘(family) circles of crime’ (see . Fig. 1.2). Here, we add intersecting circles around each of the four ‘­participants’ within the ‘square of crime’ to represent their families. This visual representation allows us to consider how families might impact on, and be impacted by, various criminalisation processes. It also enables us to explore how different ‘participants’ and their families overlap and consider what happens when they do. The ‘(family) circles of crime’ framework is useful in not only highlighting where previous research has focused, but in highlighting where the gaps are in our understanding of the key familial dynamics that shape criminalisation processes. Furthermore, by connecting each of these disparate strands

1.1 · What Is ‘Family Criminology’?

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of existing research together, as this book aims to, we can locate synergies and identify ways to address current criminological challenges. For example, we know that criminalised people’s families and victim’s families have similar experiences of the criminal justice system—the stigma, the marginalisation, the financial hardships, the physical and emotional impacts. So what can we learn about what is put in place for one group, to help support the other group? Similarly, although they are often researched as single forms of crime, by looking across different forms of family violence and family homicide, we can identify patterns in its perpetration and victimisation. This then might allow us to explore how intervention and prevention measures used in one form of family violence might be usefully applied to another. However, family criminology should do more than offer an audit of the research landscape. It also needs to address how we research families and how we conceptualise family lives. That is, it should offer not only a topic for research, but also a lens. For example, for all the research studies that feature families in criminological journals, there are relatively few that offer insight into families’ lives. Their criminological existence is rarely made meaningful, with families generally featuring only as ‘variables’ or ‘factors’ (this is evident when observing those studies that explore ‘pathways into crime’ that are listed in the BJC abstracts). Even when families are spoken to in the course of research fieldwork, they are often ultimately represented as statistics, used to scaffold the ‘real story’ of youth crime prevention, desistance or gender-based violence, for example. Given the important functions that families perform in our everyday lives, it is perhaps not surprising that families are important, although under-recognised, players in the study of crime and criminal justice. They feature in almost all of the sub-disciplines within Criminology, including youth justice, prisons and penality, crime prevention and desistance, domestic abuse, organised crime and victimology. However, there appears to be a paradox in that while families feature in almost all fields of enquiry within Criminology, the role of the family tends to be constructed as marginal to weightier (and perhaps more malestream) criminological issues. Families are sidelined, and are often considered as merely a tool of ‘crime control’ (such as in studies of pathways into crime and youth offending) or as a site of ‘collateral damage’ in the pursuit of justice (such as in studies of prisons and penality). Families in Criminology are rarely foregrounded as ­people with their own individual and familial needs: needs that should be recognised and responded to both inside and outside of the criminal justice ­system. It is also important to recognise that ‘crime’ and ‘family’ are not

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mutually exclusive, and that much crime takes place within a family context. Family members frequently commit crime against one another, and sometimes crime is ‘organised’ within families. It is therefore problematic to see ‘the family’ as somehow peripheral to our understanding of crime and deviance. 1.2  Researching Family Criminology

In order to understand crime and families, we need to produce knowledge about them. The production of knowledge involves undertaking research, and therefore a good understanding of the practice of research—of methodology—is essential to our understanding of knowledge about Family Criminology. In this section, we explore some of the key issues involved when undertaking such research: in the first part, we discuss methods of data collection and in the second part we explore some of the particular challenges involved when undertaking this kind of fieldwork. 1.2.1  Collecting Data on Crime and Family Life

Before investigating a particular aspect of crime and family life, it is important to identify what the ‘unit of analysis’ will be. As discussed earlier, ‘family’ is a nebulous concept, and this can make it difficult to identify who to include and who to exclude in the process of collecting data about families. Sometimes the unit of analysis is the individual—the son, the mother, the perpetrator, the victim. At other times, the unit of analysis might be the family dyad/triad—the parent(s)/child, the intimate couple, the siblings. At other times, the unit of analysis might be family households, or other broader kinship groups. Sometimes, specific tools such as genograms or ecomaps (see 7 Box 1.2) are used during data collection to understand the meanings that family members have for each other. They can also help identify who represents ‘family’ to an individual, and can open up difficult conversations about people who are, or once were, an important part of people’s lives. Many research methods can be used to investigate crime and family life, but there are some methods that are common to this kind of research. All methods involve listening to people, watching people and/or auditing people, and we briefly review the most commonly used methods here.

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Listening to People There are a number of methods that enable researchers to listen to ­people— to their ideas, attitudes and opinions, and also to their narrated experiences. One key method is interviews, where the format may range from a set of highly structured set of questions akin to a spoken questionnaire, to a ‘topic list’ of key concepts or issues that are used to guide something akin to a ‘purposeful conversation’. Life history interviews are a common method of obtaining data that explores how events are experienced over the life course: for example, Deucher (2018) conducted life history interviews with men in Hong Kong who transitioned from street gangs to becoming members of a Triad-affiliated organised crime family. Longitudinal research, where individuals are interviewed or surveyed at a series of time-points throughout their lives, is a common method for researching change over time: Farrington’s Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, which examined a group of London boys over the course of 50 years, is a well-known example of this (see 7 Chapter 2). Non-verbal methods can also enable researchers to listen to experiences. Arts-based methods include the use of film, photography, drawing, music and poetry to depict experiences that may be difficult to verbally articulate. For example, Sophie Cero2 uses sculpture to explore mothers’ experiences of living with violence from their sons. Arts-based methods can be particularly useful for hearing children’s experiences, such as the Children of Prisoners Europe project in which children with incarcerated parents drew pictures of how they imagined their parents’ life to be in prison (see 7 Chapter 3). Surveys are another common method of listening to people. They tend to be distributed to a large number of participants, with statistical tests used to extrapolate the findings to national cohorts. Survey questions can either be ‘read out’ by the researcher in the form of a structured interview, or sent to the participant, who completes it in private and returns it, either online or via post. A questionnaire commonly used to measure family violence is the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) (Straus, 1979), or the expanded and updated Conflict Tactics Scale 2 (CTS-2). This comprises a questionnaire of 39 items that include behaviours that are psychologically, sexually and/or physically abusive, with items such as ‘Pushed or shoved my partner’ and ‘Made my partner have sex without a condom’. It also measures injury such as ‘Had a sprain, bruise or small cut because of a fight with my partner’ (Straus et al., 1996). The CTS-2 measures the frequency of these behaviours and impacts over the past year, and whether the research participant perpetrated, and/or was the recipient of, the abusive behaviours and injuries (see 7 Chapter 5). 2 See 7 https://www.sophiecero.com.

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Watching People Observations are a frequently used method within the tradition of ethnographic criminology. Ethnography is a social research practice derived from anthropology which attempts to engage with, and understand, a particular culture or social setting. It primarily involves participant observation, but may also be supplemented with other methods such as unstructured interviews and documentary analysis. In order to fully understand the culture or setting, the researcher needs to remain unobtrusive, and in some cases, the researcher adopts the life of those they are investigating (hence the term ‘participant’). This is often achieved by obtaining access to the setting through a gatekeeper who is already a member of that group. Written fieldnotes, combined with other documents (such as photographs, film and interview transcripts) are combined to produce a thick description of the setting, which is analysed to produce a theoretical account of the context and its social processes. Ethnography, and the participant observation that it involves, is particularly useful for investigating hidden cultures or social networks that are difficult to observe in everyday life. One example is Cook’s (2018) participant observation of bereaved family activism in Manchester, England, which was supplemented by narrative interviews with mothers engaged in the Mothers Against Violence campaign group (see 7 Chapter 8). Autoethnography refers to the ethnography of one’s own setting and can produce original insights and reflections: for example, Williams et al. (2014) analysed the impact of capital punishment on family members in Utah, United States, following the execution of the partner of one of the authors. Non-participant observation can also produce powerful insights into a particular setting, such as de Bromhead’s visual ethnography produced by a series of films that depicted various aspects of the Cosa Nostra Mafia family in Sicily (see de Bromhead, 2020).3 Finally, netnography is a form of online ethnography and can be achieved through participant and non-participant observation: for example, Swallow’s (2017) analysis of adults’ discussions of their experiences of having a parent in prison on the online forum, PrisonTalk.com.

Auditing People Auditing people involves analysing existing official data on people’s lives. In Family Criminology, this might involve analysing police records on reported incidents, arrests or convictions to identify who does what to who and the cir3 See 7 https://www.tonidebromhead.uk/.

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cumstances of such incidents. Such methods might tell us much about crime within families, particularly different forms of family violence and domestic abuse. Analysis of national homicide records is useful to learn about different forms of family homicide, such as filicide or siblicide, and is ofen used to develop typologies of family homicide (see 7 Chapter 6). Other secondary data sources that are used in family criminology include national crime victimisation surveys and case reviews of domestic homicide or serious harm (See 7 Box 6.3). Newspaper and media reports also provide useful data about crime and families, and are sometimes used alongside other official documents to provide supplementary information. For example, Monckton Smith (2020) analysed data from Domestic Homicide Reviews and corresponding newspaper accounts to produce the Intimate Partner Femicide Timeline (see 7 Chapter 6). Furthermore, analysis of newspaper and media reports can themselves be the object of study: for example, in explorations of how homicide victims’ families are depicted in media reports (see 7 Chapter 8). Historical artefacts such as ‘murder pamphlets’, which emerged during the sixteenth century to inform the general public about particularly gruesome homicides, can provide insights into how family violence was conceptualised in the past. Other sources such as autobiographies, journalistic interviews and witness testimonies can provide personal insights which cannot be sourced elsewhere: for example, Cayli (2016) analysed 35 interviews with Italian mafia women from newspapers and magazines to explore the gendered performance of women under the influence of Mafiosi masculinity (see 7 Chapter 4). Box 1.2: Genograms and Ecomaps A genogram is a tool for creating a visual representation of an individual’s family network or ‘family tree’. It is often used in family research where there are difficulties, such as health or social difficulties and/or engagement with the criminal justice system. Common symbols are used to depict gender, relationships (e.g. divorced, deceased) and the nature of the difficulties, and each horizontal line represents a different generation. Different families or relationships can be represented by different colours, and additional information such as dates of birth or ages can be included. Genograms can also be updated over time. However, there are limitations: genograms offer a structural representation of relationships, but they tell us little about the nature and quality of those relationships, how much contact there is between the individuals depicted, and the meanings that the different relationships hold for the individual (. Fig. 1.3).

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. Fig. 1.3  Example of a genogram (Source ©Safeguarding Network, 2020)

An ecomap is a tool for creating a visual representation of the informal and formal relationships in an individuals’ physical and emotional worlds. As such, they provide a lot of contextual information about family life, other important relationships (such as friendships or community groups) and the meanings that relationships hold. As with genograms, common symbols are used, but this time they depict the quality of relationships (represented by the solidity of the connecting line), the closeness of relationships (represented by the proximity of the individuals to each other), the household constitution (represented by a circle enveloping those individuals) and the direction of effort within each relationship. As with genograms, colours can be used and the ecomap can be updated as relationships change (. Fig. 1.4).

1.2.2  Family Criminology in the Field

Data collection is not conducted in a vacuum. In order to be able to listen to people and to observe them, we need to go to where they are. While this might be their homes, their schools or their workplaces, we might also need to visit prisons, youth offending team offices, campaign offices or protest rallies. Indeed, much of the data collection discussed in this book took place in a wide range of institutional settings. Data collection may also take place at a distance, using telephones or video conferencing software. During the global Covid-19 pandemic, remote fieldwork became a necessity on the grounds of public health. This has enabled new ways of methodological thinking, with remote research no longer being seen as ‘second best’ to face-to-face research. Indeed, in research

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. Fig. 1.4  Example of an ecomap (Source ©Safeguarding Network, 2020)

that involves asking sensitive questions about families and crime, conducting fieldwork remotely can be preferable as it enables more safeguards to be built into the research design, in terms of accessing more diverse samples, obtaining more detailed data and keeping participants safe (see Holt, 2010). Furthermore, some family criminology research needs to take place in secret. For example, it may be unsafe for researchers to visit the home of those who are victimised by domestic abuse because, for example, the victim may be under surveillance and a researcher’s visit may precipitate a violent reaction from their perpetrator. Researchers who want to find out about growing up in organised crime families or about life in a witness protection programme may risk their own lives as well as their participants’ lives without taking extreme care during the fieldwork. This point highlights the need to address research ethics. Research ethics refers to a set of ethical principles that guide research practice in a way that prioritises the dignity, welfare and rights of everyone who may be impacted by the research. Of course, research ethics is an intrinsic part of any kind of social research, but it is particularly relevant here because researching crime and researching families each focus on ‘difficult issues’ that relate to one’s private life and personal experiences involving deviance and/or criminalisation.

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Shame, blame, loss and trauma can be significant themes in both one’s family life and in one’s experience of crime and justice, and talking about such experiences can be painful. Therefore, we must take special care when researching at these intersections. Families are mired in secrets and loyalties, and participant strategies of avoidance and non-disclosure in fieldwork settings are both common and understandable. Researchers are often faced with the dilemma between wanting to gain a full understanding of the topic at hand, and of wanting to avoid ‘pressing the bruise’. Protection from harm is an important ethical touchstone in any research project, and this applies not only to the research setting itself but to its emotional aftermath. It also applies to the potential risks caused by research participation, both to the participants and to their family members: for example, the harm caused by a participant’s disclosure of a family member’s personal details or experiences.4 Family members may also act as gatekeepers to other family members, particularly children. Therefore, the researcher needs to ensure that each family member is fully aware of the nature of the research and that all participants fully consent to their research participation and that they are aware of how to withdraw from the project if they wish. Family criminologists also need to take particular care of themselves. We all have personal experience of loss and trauma, and listening to others’ stories may trigger memories of one’s own personal and familial experiences in ways which can be both unpredictable and painful. Listening to stories of trauma may also produce secondary trauma (see 7 Chapter 7) in researchers, particularly if they are hearing a series of traumatic stories (or reading through police case files) during a period of intensive fieldwork, the effects of which can be cumulative over time. Secondary trauma is not uncommon when researching sensitive topics, particularly around domestic abuse and family violence, and particularly when, as is often the case, participants are disclosing experiences for the first time in a way which may feel overwhelming for the researcher. While research reflexivity is required for all research fieldwork, engaging in practices of emotional safety is particularly important when researching crime and families. Practices of emotional safety include engaging in regular and appropriate supervision, conducting

4 This is a particularly tricky issue when family relationships are the object of interest, as people may not be aware that their lives are being discussed by another family member and a researcher. Traditional processes of gaining ‘informed consent’ tend to only address the consent of the research participant, and not those whose lives they talk about during the research encounter.

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post-interview check-ins and ensuring that researchers have access to counselling (Williamson et al., 2020). A final question: who speaks for families? In some research, it may be that all family members are questioned or observed or audited, but more often a single member speaks for all. In much Westernised research, it is often the wife or mother who comes forward to participate in research that involves children and family life (Parent et al., 2017). This inevitably produces a gendered (and generational) representation of the topic in question, and it is fair to say that we know much more about mothers’ experiences of parenting a criminalised young person, about visiting an incarcerated son, about the pains of losing a child through homicide and about living with abusive offspring, than we do about fathers’ experiences of these same issues. This inevitably impacts how the research is used: when policymakers draw on research to identify ways of responding to a social problem, it is likely that the measures put in place will reflect the needs identified by those who had been given a voice, while the needs of those who hadn’t may be left unaddressed. It is therefore important, when interpreting any research, to think about whose voice we are listening to and whose voice is silent. Children’s voices are particularly silent when it comes to research on crime and families, with parents and other carers often ‘speaking for’ children in research. 1.3  Theorising Family Criminology

There are many theories that can help us to understand crime and family life, and many are drawn on throughout this book. However, there are three theoretical approaches that have particular resonance in every chapter: namely, psychoanalytic theories, family systems theories and feminism and intersectionality. In this section, we explore each of these approaches, with the first part discussing psychoanalytic and family systems theories, and the second part discussing feminism and intersectionality.

1.3.1  Psychoanalytic Theories and Family Systems Theories

Psychoanalytic Theories Psychoanalytic theories focus on understanding the individual mind and behaviour. However, social contexts are recognised as important, particularly the familial context, which is why psychoanalytic theories are com-

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monly used to make sense of an individual’s childhood, emotional development and family relationships. ‘Psychoanalysis’ has a number of distinct meanings. It can refer to (a) a body of theory about the mind and behaviour, (b) a method of investigation about the mind and c) a form of therapeutic intervention. While widely attributed to the work of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), a number of psychoanalysts were working across Europe and the United States at a similar time and were developing psychoanalytic ideas: such theorists include Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, Jacques Lacan and Donald Winnicott. Their ideas can be categorised into distinct ‘schools of thought’, such as object relations theory, ego psychology and Lacanian psychoanalysis. However, despite many theoretical differences within the field, psychoanalytic theories can be distinguished by their key assumptions or ‘starting points’, two of which are discussed here: dynamism and developmentalism. Dynamism: the mind is dynamic and in a state of continual flux, with psychic conflicts and tensions an intrinsic part of one’s inner world. This means that individuals are continually pulled in different directions, as impulses derived from innate drives (e.g. sensuality, sexuality, aggression) conflict with an individual’s moral and philosophical beliefs and values. However, much of this inner world is unconscious: one cannot observe it directly, but must infer it from an individual’s behaviour and talk (e.g. through their description of dreams and through their physical and mental symptoms). Continual psychic tensions produce discomfort, and one way of managing the anxiety that they produce is by utilising unconscious strategies known as defence mechanisms. Examples include repression (pushing unacceptable feelings and memories away from consciousness), reaction formation (deliberately acting against one’s ‘unacceptable’ beliefs, such as being overly kind towards someone who is disliked) and projection (disowning parts of the self by attributing them to others, such as accusing someone else of being angry if oneself is feeling angry). While defence mechanisms are a normal part of life, their use can become problematic if they become extreme and/or harmful to the self or others. For example, identification is a normal psychic process during early development, as children take on the characteristics of those around them (particularly their parents). However, identification can become unhealthy. For example, psychoanalytic theorists have described identification with the aggressor as a specific defence mechanism sometimes adopted by those who are abused, which they cope with by behaving abusively towards others (Ferenczi, 1933). Developmentalism: the earliest relationships are key to understanding one’s current personality. This is because one’s early interactions shape the

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development of a sense of self and the ability to operate as a distinct being, separate but relational to others. Psychological growth continues throughout life, and key ‘developmental stages’ present psychic challenges that must be resolved (whether healthily or unhealthily) to enable progression to the next developmental stage. In psychoanalytic theory, mental representations of the earliest relationships, particularly with the parents or primary caregivers, are often referred to as ‘internal objects’. These internal objects are imbued with positive and/or negative qualities and the internal objects psychically interact with each other and with the self.5 While these objects are informed by experiences of external relationships they, in turn, shape one’s subsequent relationships, such that those with positive and loving early internal objects will seek out and relate positively to others who are positive and loving. Conversely, those whose internal objects are imbued with negative qualities will seek out relationships with others that are familiar to them in this way. There are, of course, many more aspects of psychoanalytic theory than those outlined here, and one of its features is its theoretical diversity. However, some of the more relevant psychoanalytic concepts that are drawn on in this book include attachment (see 7 Chapter 2), trauma (see 7 Chapter 7) and responses to grief and loss (see 7 Chapter 7). Furthermore, many ideas derived from psychoanalysis are used in family intervention work (see Chapters 2.3, 7.3).

Family Systems Theories Family systems theories emerged during the 1950s. As an approach, it integrates a range of theoretical sources including communication studies derived from anthropological research (e.g. Bateson et al., 1956), general systems theory derived from biology, and cybernetics (the study of self-regulating systems). As with psychoanalysis, family systems theories represent a rich and diverse field, but there are a number of key assumptions which characterise the approach, two of which are discussed here: connectedness and homeostasis. Connectedness: individuals exist in a series of distinct but interacting systems. For example, an individual is part of a mother–child system, an immediate family system (including parents, siblings and offspring), an ex-

5 The term ‘object’ should be interpreted in terms of being the object of… (fear, love, anger etc.).

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tended family system (including grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles) and other systems including schools, places of employment, community groups and neighbourhoods. All parts of the system are interconnected, and a change to one component influences all of the other components. Components cannot be understood in isolation: understanding any one component requires an understanding of the whole system in its entirety. In this sense, families are more than just a collection of individuals. The implication of this assumption is that any kind of family intervention requires work with the whole family. Therapeutic intervention should focus on family interactions, which are understood to be the cause of any particular symptom, however individualised it appears (for example, aggression in a child is not the ‘problem’ but may be symptomatic of wider family problems such as marital conflict). Thus, symptoms should not be conceptualised as problems of the individual, but as problems of the family system (hence the concept of the dysfunctional family). Because changing one component will inevitably change all other components in the system, all family members need to engage in the intervention for change to happen. Homeostasis: family systems do not exist in a vacuum, but operate within a wider environment. This environment is both impacted by the family system and, in turn, impacts on the family system, forming a kind of feedback loop of outputs and inputs. Thus, understanding the family system requires alertness to its environmental context. Furthermore, all family systems are homeostatic, in that they seek to maintain their structure and functioning over time (and over generations, as family processes of past generations continue to shape current processes). Thus, while particular family behaviours or practices may be unhealthy, they tend to be resistant to attempts to change them (such as therapeutic intervention), since they are likely to disrupt the homeostasis. Communication is a central part of family systems theories, with the recognition that it is often the style of communication, rather than the content, that is the cause of family problems. Areas of research interest (and therapeutic intervention) include communication patterns, family roles, structures, boundaries and power relations. Unlike psychoanalytic theories, childhood and early development are not of particular interest to family systems theorists, with the focus instead on current functioning. One commonly used concept in family systems theory is the enmeshed mother/disengaged father syndrome which describes a family system where the mother is ‘overly close’ with her children as a response to (and substitute for) a distant and troubled marital relationship, which in turn impacts the emotional development of her children. Such concepts are clearly a product of their

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context, since what is ‘overly close’ is both culturally and generationally determined (see Rothbaum et al., 2002). Nevertheless, family systems theories are widely used to understand particular issues of concern involving crime and families. For example, Arditti (2012) researched the impact of parental imprisonment on the whole family system, which attempted to reconfigure itself around the loss (see 7 Chapter 3). Similarly, family systems theories have been influential in therapeutic intervention work with families dealing with criminalisation, incarceration and homicide (see Chapters 2, 3 and 7, respectively). 1.3.2  Feminism and Intersectionality

Feminism As with psychoanalytic and family systems perspectives, feminism represents a diverse body of work within which there are many ‘schools of thought’ including radical feminism, liberal feminism, socialist feminism, standpoint feminism and poststructural feminism. Feminism started as a social movement against women’s subjugation within a social system which privileges men over women. From its emergence during the late nineteenth century, feminism focused on a range of different issues, such as voting disenfranchisement, domestic abuse, inequality in education and employment, reproductive rights and motherhood. However, intellectual voices on women’s rights emerged earlier than this—for example, in writings such as Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792/1975). Later writings linked the subordination of women to the family and the advancement of capitalism, including Friedrich Engel’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884/1946) and Charlotte Gilman’s Women and Economics (1898). Despite some theoretical differences, feminism is characterised by a number of key assumptions, two of which are outlined here: the centrality of women’s experience and subjugation and emancipation. The centrality of women’s experience: Feminism recognises that women’s experience is real and is the foundation for knowledge. Of course, this is not to suggest that women only have ‘one voice’ or ‘one experience’: one of the enduring debates in feminism concerns the question of whose voice is represented by the movement. However, in a backdrop of mainstream science which, as in life, has continually and systematically marginalised and de-legitimised women’s voices, this premise is foundational and has important implications for the analysis of social life. For example, while mainstream

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theorists might define the family as a household of co-residents, or as a network of kinships, a feminist approach would listen to women’s experiences of the family—to their stories of domestic abuse, emotional labour and mother-blaming, and recognise the family as ideological. That is, as an arena where societal inequalities and injustices are played out through iniquitous family interactions that are primarily (though not exclusively) based on gender. Subjugation and emancipation: Feminism identifies the need to expose and address female subjugation. In this sense, feminism is emancipatory—it seeks change from the current social order that maintains gender inequalities. Patriarchy, defined as a social system where men hold power and women are excluded from power, is identified as one of the key sources of gender inequality and oppression. However, feminist theories differ in how they explain the causes of patriarchy and how women might be liberated from it. For example, some feminists suggest that its roots lie in biological and reproductive differences between the sexes, while other feminists identify patterns of early socialisation which, drawing on psychoanalytic accounts of identification, (re)produce gendered social roles that enable female subjugation and male misogyny. Other feminists suggest that its roots lie in the advancement of capitalism and its need to divide, and exploit, different forms of labour. Women’s labour is primarily organised within the ‘private sphere’ of the family home, and this is where exploitation (as well as other harms, such as domestic abuse) can remain hidden and free from accountability.

Intersectionality A point raised earlier concerns the debate about whose voice is represented by feminism. Feminism has often been accused of speaking only for women of privilege, and of only furthering the causes of White, middle-class, heterosexual and able-bodied women. For example, while feminism raised concerns about the danger of the family home, and the harms caused to women and children inside its confines, women of colour pointed out that, in a world characterised by racism, the home represents a safe haven of protection and resistance for Black women. As Hazel Carby writes:

» We would not wish to deny that the family can be a source of oppression

for us but we also wish to examine how the black family has functioned as a prime source of resistance to oppression. We need to recognize that during slavery, periods of colonialism, and under the present authoritarian state, the black family has been a site of political and cultural resistance to racism. (Carby, 1982: 112)

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It is therefore important to recognise that other systems of inequality (such as those based on ethnicity and race) intersect with gender-based systems of inequality to produce specific amplified effects. Intersectionality is a useful concept to help us understand how this operates by offering an integrated framework for analysing power that includes all of its important dimensions—including sexism, racism, ableism, ageism, homophobia and transphobia (heterosexism and cissexism), and class oppression. Intersectional thinking has a long history. It emerged out of Black feminism and is often linked back to the powerful speech by Sojourner Truth in 1851, Ain’t I a woman?, at the Women’s Rights Convention in Ohio, United States.6 Legal theorist Kimberley Crenshaw first named the approach ‘intersectionality’ in 1991, highlighting how Black women face unique challenges that are a product of the combined forces of sexism and racism that are not addressed by either feminism or by the civil rights movement. This is because each of these movements focuses only on the effects of a single dimension of power, and therefore only speak for the most privileged of those groups: that is, for White middle-class women or for Black middle-class men (while, at the same time, it is claimed that the movements speak for all women, or all Black people, etc.). This results in the silencing of important issues that particularly affect Black women. Crenshaw (1991) pointed out that the effects of power should not be analysed in an ‘additive’ sense, whereby each component of power is considered singularly (e.g. White + male + disabled). Instead, power should be analysed by examining its multiple and intersecting dimensions which compound and reinforce each other to produce unique identities and social positions through which social life is experienced. For example, Smith (2016) explored the ways in which gender and race intersect to shape the lives of Black women who are continually dealing with the impact of systemic anti-Black racism against them and members of their families (see 7 Chapter 8). Intersectionality has subsequently been used to explore the multiple and intersecting dimensions of power that produces privilege (e.g. Garry, 2011). However, its limits have been highlighted in terms of the extent to which it diminishes women’s power to make change by reducing their collective power through the formation of smaller ‘sub-feminisms’ (Zack, 2005). It

6 Sojourner Truth was an African-American woman born into slavery. She campaigned for the abolition of slavery and for equal rights of women, arguing that, as a Black woman, she should not have to demand for the two separately.

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. Table 1.1  Summary of theories Theory

Unit of analysis

Source of change

Psychoanalytic theories

Individual, or dyad (e.g. mother–child)

Individual

Family systems theories

Family group

Familial

Feminist theories and intersectionality

Institution(s)

Societal

has also been critiqued because its focus on individual lived experience has limited its analytic ability at the structural level, though attempts have been made to address this such as through Collins’ (1998) concept of ‘interlocking systems of oppression’ (. Table 1.1).

This Book This book draws on a number of theories and concepts—far more than those that have been outlined here. However, psychoanalytic theories, family systems theories, feminist theories and intersectionality are particularly useful in understanding some of the intersections between crime and family life, often through the criminal justice system. The book begins by exploring the research that has attempted to identify links between ‘family life’ and ‘youth offending’. In 7 Chapter 2, we look at the history of this research up to the present day, and examine the ways in which it has found its way into political rhetoric, legislation and policy. We then look at family group conferences, which emerged as an alternative to more traditional youth justice practices which tended to be shaming, ineffective, and often culturally insensitive to the needs of criminalised young people and their families. The chapter concludes with an exploration of different kinds of parenting programmes that have been developed with the goal of youth crime prevention. In 7 Chapter 3, we continue the theme of exploring the lives of criminalised people by exploring the emotional and practical landscapes of their families. We start with a focus on the parents of young people, before looking more generally at families of those who offend and, in particular, families whose loved ones are incarcerated. The chapter concludes with an exploration of the children whose parents are imprisoned, with a specific examination of mother and baby units in prisons.

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In 7 Chapter 4, we shift our lens towards organised crime families and, in particular, to Italian Mafia families, which operate under the same principles and values as most other families. We start by exploring how Italian Mafia families are organised and their operational goals, and examine the political and cultural landscape that enables Mafia families to thrive. We then explore how women and children manage their lives within an organised crime family, and the challenges they face. The chapter concludes with an exploration of witness protection programmes and the impact they have on families, particularly children. In 7 Chapter 5, we continue our exploration of crime within families but focus on a different aspect—interpersonal crime perpetrated by family members against each other. We begin by considering gender-based ­violence, how it manifests around the world, and how it particularly manifests within families. We then look at the different ways in which domestic and family violence has been conceptualised and consider some of the key ­theories which explain its perpetration. We conclude by exploring some of the prevention strategies used to combat it, with a specific exploration of both legislative and educational strategies. In 7 Chapter 6, we continue the theme of violence within families by exploring family homicide. We start by considering what we mean by ‘homicide’ and how it is measured, before looking at different prevalence rates around the world of adult family homicide and child family homicide. Then we look at specific types of family homicide, starting with intergenerational family homicide—the killing of offspring and the killing of parents, before exploring intragenerational homicide—the killing of siblings and the killing of intimate partners. In 7 Chapter 7, we shift our focus towards the families of victims of crime. We start by exploring the impact on families of two specific kinds of crime—homicide, and intrafamilial child sexual abuse. We then explore how different contexts—criminal, structural and familial contexts—shape family coping responses to their loved ones’ victimisation. We also look at how family members support each other, and in what ways family practices may help or hinder victim recovery. In the final section, we explore institutional responses to supporting the families of victims, with a focus on therapeutic responses and criminal justice responses. In 7 Chapter 8, we continue the focus on victim’s families by exploring their role in instigating change, both within and outside the criminal justice system. We begin by looking at the family’s role in police press conferences, and explore how particular contexts may shape experiences of ‘trial by

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Chapter 1 · Introduction

media’. We then look at how victims’ families have campaigned for change, using the examples of campaigns against miscarriages of justice and campaigns for memorialisation laws. In the final section, we explore how victims’ families have come together to form broader family campaign groups, which seek social justice, with specific examples including the Black Lives Matter movement and maternal activism. In 7 Chapter 9, we draw together the key themes of the book and explore what particular questions it raises. We discuss what the future might be for family criminology, particularly in terms of the current context. The chapter concludes with three interviews with key practitioners, who share their insights about working at the intersections of families and crime. Each chapter begins with a ‘conceptual toolbox’. This toolbox identifies a key concept to guide our thinking about how families are organised, experienced and regulated. While the concept identified at the beginning of the chapter has particular resonance for that chapter, it will also apply to many of the topics discussed throughout this book. The conceptual toolbox will help us to frame our thinking and direct our line of questioning in a more thoughtful and analytical manner. When they appear in the text, they are highlighted like this. There is also a glossary of key terms at the end of the book. These appear in bold in the text. One important point: Throughout the book, wherever possible, the term ‘criminalised people’ is used as the preferred term to ‘offender’. There is power in language, and families and their loved ones have too often been subject to terminology that is at best unhelpful and, at worst, is traumatising and harmful. It is important not to add to this problem.

References Arditti, J. A. (2012). Parental incarceration and the family: Psychological and social effects of imprisonment on children, parents, and caregivers. New York: New York University Press. Bateson, G., Jackson, D. D., Haley, J., & Weakland, J. (1956). Toward a theory of schizophrenia. Behavioral science, 1(4), 251–264. Bosworth, M., & Hoyle, C. (Eds.). (2012). What is criminology? Oxford University Press. Bourgois, P. (1996). In search of masculinity: Violence, respect and sexuality among Puerto Rican crack dealers in East Harlem. The British Journal of Criminology, 36(3), 412–427. Carby, H. (1982). White woman listen! Black feminism and the boundaries of sisterhood. In The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70’s Britain (pp. 212–235). Cayli, B. (2016). Performance matters more than masculinity: Violence, gender dynamics and mafia women. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 29, 36–42.

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Collins, P. H. (1998). Intersections of race, class, gender, and nation: Some implications for Black family studies. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 29(1), 27–36. Cook, E. (2018). Bereaved family activism in the aftermath of lethal violence (Doctoral dissertation). The University of Manchester, UK. Crenshaw, K. W. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, Identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. Crosbie-Burnett, M., & Klein, D. M. (2009). The fascinating story of family theories. In J. H. Bray & M. Stanton (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of family psychology (pp. 37– 52). Blackwell. de Bromhead, T. (2020). The social anti-mafia in Western Sicily: An experiment in visual ethnography. Visual Anthropology, 33(1), 9–31. Deuchar, R. (2018). Foot soldiers, gangsters and drug addicts in Hong Kong. In Gangs and spirituality (pp. 195–217). Palgrave Macmillan. Ferenczi, S. (1933/1980). Confusion of tongues between adults and the child. The language of tenderness and of passion. In Final contributions to the problems and methods of psycho-analysis (pp. 156–167). Karnac Books. Garland, D. (2012). Criminology’s place in the academic field. In M. Bosworth & C. Hoyle (Eds.), What is criminology? (pp. 298–317). Oxford University Press. Garry, A. (2011). Intersectionality, metaphors, and the multiplicity of gender. Hypatia, 26(4), 826–850. Holt, A. (2010). Using the telephone for narrative interviewing: a research note. Qualitative Research, 10(1), 113–121. Lea, J. (1992). The analysis of crime. In J. Young & R. Matthews (Eds.), Rethinking criminology: The realist debate (pp. 69–94). Sage. Lea, J. (2016). Left realism: A radical criminology for the current crisis. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(3), 53–65. McEvoy, K., O’Mahony, D., Horner, C., & Lyner, O. (1999). The home front. The families of politically motivated prisoners in Northern Ireland. British Journal of Criminology, 39(2), 175–197. Monckton Smith, J. (2020). Intimate partner femicide: Using Foucauldian analysis to track an eight stage progression to homicide. Violence against women, 26(11), 1267–1285. Parent, J., Forehand, R., Pomerantz, H., Peisch, V., & Seehuus, M. (2017). Father participation in child psychopathology research. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 45(7), 1259– 1270. Rothbaum, F., Rosen, K., Ujiie, T., & Uchida, N. (2002). Family systems theory, attachment theory, and culture. Family process, 41(3), 328–350. Smith, C. A. (2016). Facing the dragon: Black mothering, sequelae, and gendered necropolitics in the Americas. Transforming Anthropology, 24(1), 31–48. Straus, M. A. (1979). Measuring intrafamily conflict and violence: The conflict tactics (CT) scales. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 75–88. Straus, M. A., Hamby, S. L., Boney-McCoy, S., & Sugarman, D. B. (1996). The revised conflict tactics scales (CTS2) development and preliminary psychometric data. Journal of Family Issues, 17(3), 283–316. Swallow, A. J. (2017). A virtual ethnographic enquiry: An exploratory study of adult children with a parent in prison (Masters thesis). University of Huddersfield. White, J. M., Martin, T. F., & Adamsons, K. (2019). Family theories: An introduction. Sage.

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Williams, D. J., Bischoff, D., Casey, T., & Burnett, J. (2014). “Mom, they are going to kill my dad!” A personal narrative on capital punishment from a convict criminology perspective. Critical Criminology, 22(3), 389–401. Williamson, E., Gregory, A., Abrahams, H., Aghtaie, N., Walker, S. J., & Hester, M. (2020). Secondary trauma: Emotional safety in sensitive research. Journal of Academic Ethics, 18(1), 55–70. Young, J. (1987). The tasks facing a realist criminology. Contemporary Crises, 11(4), 337–356. Zack, N. (2005). Inclusive feminism: A third wave theory of women’s commonality. Rowman and Littlefield.

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The Criminogenic Family: Families as the Cause of Crime in Research and Policy Contents 2.1  Families as the Cause of Youth Crime – 31 2.1.1  Research on Youth Crime and Family Life: A Brief History – 32 2.1.2  Longitudinal Studies on Families and Youth Offending – 36

2.2  Youth Crime Prevention: The Role of Families – 41

2.2.1  Parents in Youth Crime Legislation and Policy – 42 2.2.2  Family Group Conferences – 46

2.3  Youth Crime Prevention: Family Intervention Work – 49 2.3.1  Youth Crime Prevention: Group Parenting Programmes – 49 2.3.2  Youth Crime Prevention: One-to-One Family Support – 53

Useful Websites – 57 References – 57 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Holt, Family Criminology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71169-6_2

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Chapter 2 · The Criminogenic Family: Families as the Cause of Crime in Research and Policy

z Overview

2

The role that families, and particularly parents, play in our understandings of the causes of crime has dominated criminological research on families over the past hundred years. In this chapter, we explore this in greater detail, looking first at the history of such research and then examining contemporary ‘risk factor’ approaches. We then explore how parents have found their way into youth justice legislation and policy, with a particular focus on the Troubled Families agenda. We also look at the development and practice of Family Group Conferences, which were proposed as an alternative, and more effective, method of responding to the ‘problem’ of youth crime. In the final section, we look closely at family intervention programmes that work with parents with the aim of youth crime prevention, with an exploration of both group parenting programmes and one-to-one family intervention work. Conceptual Toolbox: Governmentality Governmentality is a concept developed by Michel Foucault (1991) to conceptualise how power operates. According to Foucault, before the eighteenth century, power mainly operated at the site of the body: people’s conduct was controlled through external measures such as public tortures and hangings. However, as the population grew during the nineteenth century, such measures became an inefficient means of control. Consequently, power increasingly operated at the site of the soul: that is, through the ‘psyche’ via psychotherapeutic intervention work. Although familiar to us today, the psychological self is a product of the nineteenth century and the emergence of Psychology as a scientific discipline. The ‘soul’, mobilised through concepts such as ‘personality’ and ‘ego’, provided a new site for regulation which was both more subtle and more effective than corporal sites of regulation. Although the existence of the criminal justice system ensures that coercive elements remain, self-regulation is the more common means of controlling populations, particularly through mechanisms of ‘subjection’. Foucault defined subjection as ‘the way a human being turns him or herself into a subject’ (1982: 208) and it concerns how individuals make sense of their self by utilising the discourses that are available to them. For example, the discourse of ‘good motherhood’ prescribes what a good mother is (and is not) and people regulate themselves (and others) in accordance with this discourse. Such practices enable government through the family which, as Donzelot (1979) explains, started to take place from the nineteenth century as psychological discourses took hold and shaped particular ways of being (see also Rose, 1989; Ingleby, 1985).

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Subjection is also achieved through self-surveillance, and Foucault used the metaphor of Bentham’s Panopticon to illustrate this: because citizens do not know whether they are under surveillance or not, the knowledge that they could be means that they behave as though they are being observed at all times. In this way, citizens effectively turn the ‘normalising gaze’ upon their selves (Foucault, 1975/1991). The result of these processes of subjection is a form of governmentality (Foucault, 1991) whereby citizens are active in constructing and governing their selves within particular discourses. The concept of governmentality is helpful in understanding how coercion and control operates within (and outside of) the criminal justice system, and the political and practical limitations of these operations. For example, even informally, we regulate each other at the site of the soul by tutting in the supermarket when we see ‘bad parents’ (an assumption that is usually based on the behaviour of the child, rather than the parent). Furthermore, we regulate ourselves and our children in that same supermarket by trying to avoid any behaviour that might make us feel judged and shamed (and, perhaps, by over-performing the role of ‘good parent’ to avoid such scrutiny ourselves when our child runs off down the aisles, screaming…). This example illustrates how the ‘microphysics of power’ operate in everyday life as a form of regulation to effectively sustain the State. Key Reading: Foucault, M. (1991). On governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), ‘The Foucault effect’: Studies in governmentality (pp. 87–104). London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

2.1  Families as the Cause of Youth Crime

When people are asked about the causes of youth crime, a very common reply is I blame the parents. Regardless of whether the term ‘blame’ is at all helpful, the assumption that parent(s) are the cause of the problem to the exclusion of all other factors (such as other family members, schools, friends, communities, poverty…) is fascinating. Where does this assumption come from? Does research evidence support it? In this section, we explore the key research studies that have attempted to examine the role of the family as the cause of youth crime. The first part provides a brief history of this research while the second part explores the emergence of longitudinal studies on youth offending that attempted to identify its ‘risk factors’ and ‘protective factors’.

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2.1.1  Research on Youth Crime and Family Life:

A Brief History

2

In the United Kingdom, ‘youth crime’ emerged as a specific phenomenon in the early nineteenth century. Before then, children and young people who engaged in offending behaviour were treated as adults within the criminal justice system, rather than as a special group with their own set of needs and rights. The advent of industrialisation during the nineteenth century produced huge population growth1 which ushered in the development and refinement of population measurement—that is, the counting of people. Specific categories of people were identified and counted (such as ‘children’ and ‘adults’), as were specific categories of ‘crime’ and types of ‘criminals’. These new practices produced the new category of ‘juvenile delinquency’ (what is often referred to today as ‘youth offending’). As soon as ‘juvenile delinquency’ became a quantifiable category, it was seen as a problem that needed addressing, and from which its causes needed to be identified. Thus, it became a new social problem. During the nineteenth century, a number of social reformers attempted to raise concerns about, and identify the causes of, this new social problem. For example, in his influential book Juvenile Delinquency in Manchester (1840), William B. Neale made observations as he walked around the streets and districts of Manchester, England—a method he referred to as ‘moral topography’. The living circumstances for most families at this time were challenging: there was no mass education, poverty was high with many people destitute, and there was little welfare support available for struggling families. Neale suggested that ‘circumstances’ and ‘parental irresponsibility’ were the cause of ‘the existence of a class of juvenile delinquents’ (cited in May, 1973:104). Similarly, in Juvenile Delinquents—Their Condition and Treatment (1853), Mary Carpenter identified ‘parental neglect’ as the cause of ‘moral destitution’. In these and many other writings from this time, the links between youth crime and family life soon became established. The use of science to identify the mechanisms that underpin links between youth crime and families began to emerge towards the beginning of the twentieth century. Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), often labelled as ‘the godfather of criminology’, claimed that some people are born as criminals, inheriting their ‘criminal genes’ or ‘bad blood’ from their parents. An alter-

1

Between 1801 and 1901, Great Britain’s population grew from 11 million to 37 million.

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2

native perspective was offered by the psychologist Albert Bandura (1925– 2021) who, drawing from social learning theory, suggested that adult family members engage in criminal behaviours which younger family members learn through imitation which is, in turn, rewarded through positive reinforcement. Lombroso’s and Bandura’s explanations represent the extreme ends of what is commonly described as the nature-nurture debate. Despite the overwhelming evidence that each theory is too simplistic, they have both found traction in everyday discourses about youth crime.

Theories of Youth Crime and Family Life During the Twentieth Century The science of Psychology dominated social research during the twentieth century, and this shaped the way that social problems were conceptualised. This included ‘juvenile delinquency’, with particular research attention focusing on the role of parents. There is a wealth of published research in this area, but some of the key studies are briefly summarised below: 5 Cyril Burt published The Young Delinquent in 1925 in an attempt to establish a comprehensive and interactional causal model of youth crime. Burt developed 16 subcategories of ‘moral conditions’ inside the home, and ‘ill discipline, vice, and, most of all, the child’s relations with his parents’ (Burt, 1925: 607) were identified as key variables which might interact with a child’s assumed constitutional predisposition for delinquency. 5 Psychoanalysts such as Healy and Bonner (1936) and Friedlander (1947) suggested that maladjusted behaviour in young people was the result of an internal conflict between their ‘animal instinct’ and the restrictions imposed by parental authority. More specifically, in Wayward Children, Aichorn (1925/1959) suggested that there are many ways in which parent–child interaction can produce delinquency. For example, it may be caused by the parents’ failure to manage the child’s ‘animal instinct’, either through an excess of love or an excess of punishment; or it may be a result of the child incorporating their parents’ ‘criminal’ traits into their own ego-ideal during the early years of personality development. 5 John Bowlby published Forty-Four Juvenile Thieves in 1944, a study derived from fieldwork conducted at a Child Guidance Clinic in London between 1936 and 1939. The study compared 44 children who had engaged in theft with 44 children who had not, and it found that many more of the former group had experienced an extended period of separation from their mother in the first five years of their life. This led Bowlby to posit the ‘maternal deprivation hypothesis’: that the absence

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Chapter 2 · The Criminogenic Family: Families as the Cause of Crime in Research and Policy

of a maternal attachment figure in the first few years of life resulted in ‘affectionless psychopathy’ and subsequent criminality (see 7 Box 2.2). A concern with mothering continued in Bowlby’s later writings, and his work influenced much subsequent research (and political rhetoric) about the role of ‘working mothers’ and ‘single mothers’ in trajectories of youth offending.2 5 Diana Baumrind (1966, 1967) drew on interviews and observations with the parents of 100 schoolchildren and analysed child-rearing practices along four dimensions: disciplinary strategies, warmth, communication style and expectations of maturity. From this, Baumrind identified three specific ‘parenting styles’: authoritarian style, characterised by forceful discipline and non-negotiable rules, where punishment is used to control behaviour; authoritative style, characterised by consistent and rational rules, with good behaviour rewarded; and permissive style, characterised by minimal discipline, few rules and unconditional acceptance of the child’s behaviour. A fourth style, neglecting/rejecting style, was added by Maccoby and Martin (1983) and is characterised by an ‘undemanding and unresponsive’ parent.3 Subsequent research identified links between authoritative parenting and fewer behaviour problems in children and young people. It also found links between each of the other parenting styles and ‘problem behaviours’ in young people, including offending behaviour (e.g. Lamborn et al., 1991). 5 Hirschi’s social bond theory (1969) was unusual in turning the question on its head: rather than asking ‘why do young people offend?’, the question asked was ‘why don’t young people offend?’ This question rested on the assumption that human nature is essentially antisocial, and that it is the strength of social bonds that encourages conformity. Hirschi (1969) conceptualised social bonds as having four components: attachment, involvement, belief and commitment. Of these components, attachment is

2 In the second edition of Bowlby’s Child Care and the Growth of Love (1965), Mary Ainsworth added a chapter and clarified that ‘delinquency has not been found to be a common outcome of maternal deprivation or early mother-child separation’ (1965: 197). Nevertheless, Bowlby’s initial ideas about the role of motherhood in delinquency continued to be influential. 3 The addition of this fourth style allowed the typology to operate along two key dimensions: ‘demandingness’ and ‘responsiveness’. Highly demanding/highly respon­ sive = authoritative style; Highly demanding/low responsive = authoritarian style; Low ­demanding/highly responsive  = permissive style; Low demanding/low responsive = rejecting/neglecting style.

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most directly related to family, with the suggestion that young people who have close bonds with their parents resist delinquency because of concerns that they would lose their parents’ affection and approval if they did offend. Social bond theory has some empirical support, particularly in explaining why girls don’t offend (e.g. Krohn and Massey, 1980). It also contributed to theories of desistance (see 7 Chapter 3). Each of these theories has been very influential in shaping our understandings about the role of the family in youth crime, although they rarely look beyond the parent–child dyad when conceptualising ‘family’. While some of the theories have some empirical support, it is obviously problematic to focus exclusively on the role of parents, particularly as children grow older and become subject to greater fields of influence (for example, there is evidence that delinquency is correlated with having strong attachments to peers who engage in delinquency). Furthermore, such correlational research does not tell us about the direction of causality. For example, could it be that, by engaging in delinquency, the attachment bonds between child and parent are weakened? One method to help us to examine these processes is to look at the development of delinquency over time, which is what longitudinal studies aim to do. Box 2.1: Crime and genetics Much research on the relationship between families and the cause of crime has focused on the nurture aspect of family life—that is, on how the environment shapes child development and behaviour, including offending behaviour. However, research has also investigated the role of nature—that is, on how inherited characteristics play a role in criminal behaviour. The earliest work in this field was by Lombroso (1911) who, as a proponent of physiognomy, suggested that specific physical deficiencies could be linked to specific types of crime (e.g. murderers have bloodshot eyes, sex offenders have big ears). Similarly, Sheldon’s (1940) work on somato-types linked body shape to temperament and, in turn, to criminality. Since that time, a large number of family, twin and adoption studies have been conducted to compare the behavioural outcomes of different family members who share varying levels of genes and environments. Some interesting findings have been produced, such as higher concordance rates for criminal behaviour found in monozygotic twins (who share 100% of their genes) than in dizygotic twins (who share 50% of their genes). However, such studies cannot discount the role of environment and how it interacts with genes.

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Contemporary research continues to explore the extent to which inherited characteristics ‘predispose’ people to (rather than ‘cause’) criminal behaviour. Evidence suggests that genes can highly influence some behavioural traits such as alcoholism and impulsivity, both of which are linked to some forms of antisocial behaviour (Goldman & Fishbein, 2000). More recently, ‘behavioural genetics’ uses linkage analyses or DNA sequence scanning to examine the precise interaction between genes and shared and unshared environments. A comprehensive review of meta-analyses has found that ‘…up to 60% of variation in antisocial and criminal behavior is heritable, while shared environmental factors and non-shared environmental factors explain up to 10% and 50% of variance in criminal and antisocial behavior, respectively’ (Fox, 2017: 23). The idea that people are ‘born criminals’ has fed into long-standing assumptions about specific ‘criminal classes’ that are different from the general population. Such assumptions can be harmful to individuals and their families, who may be stigmatised and disadvantaged because of who they are and who they are related to. The idea also raises more profound questions about whether inherited characteristics, such as genes, might provide mitigating factors for defendants in criminal proceedings (that are traditionally premised on an assumption of individual choice).

2.1.2  Longitudinal Studies on Families and Youth

Offending

Longitudinal research is a research method that interviews or surveys people at a series of time-points throughout their lives. This allows researchers to assess change over time and avoid some of the interpretation problems that are common in correlational research. In 1940, criminologists Glueck and Glueck began the first longitudinal study on youth delinquency in Washington, United States. The study compared 500 ‘delinquent’ Caucasian boys with 500 ‘non-delinquent’ boys. Through a battery of tests that measured the boys on 402 different variables, Glueck and Glueck (1950) identified five factors that they claimed could predict delinquency, all related to family background: paternal discipline, maternal supervision, maternal affection towards the child, paternal affection towards the child and family cohesiveness. The Glueck Social Prediction Chart was developed and used to identify the ‘non-delinquents’, resulting in Glueck and Glueck (1950) making the controversial statement that 90% of the boys ‘…would have been cor-

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rectly identified at age six as potentially persistent offenders’. Subsequent replications in the United Kingdom, France, Israel and Japan led Glueck and Glueck to claim that the familial determinants of delinquency are ­universal. In 1953 the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development began a longitudinal study that continues today. The study tracked 411 boys (aged 8–9 years) as they made their journey through life. The study aimed to explore the development and maintenance of (and desistance from) delinquency and offending in a working-class area of London, England. A wide range of variables were tracked across time, drawing on data from the boys’ completion of psychological tests, reports from their teachers, interviews and questionnaires with the boys’ parents, and psychiatric social worker evaluations of each family’s history and home-life. Later on, the project examined data from the original sample’s wives and children. Like the Glueck and Glueck study, the project was ambitious, and its first publication claimed that ‘it should be possible, by examining young children who have not yet reached the age for Court appearances, to identify the potential offenders’ (West, 1969: 4).4 Over time, the identification of ‘predictors’ replaced earlier references to ‘determinants’ of juvenile delinquency. For example, an update from 1995 (when the sample was now 32 years old) highlighted that the most important childhood predictors of delinquency were ‘antisocial child behaviour, impulsivity, low intelligence and attainment, family criminality, poverty and poor parental child-rearing behaviour’ (Farrington, 1995: 929). A 2019 update focused on ‘developmental pathways’ into criminal careers and highlighted how a range of family ‘risk factors’, including ‘poor parental supervision’, ‘poor child-rearing’ and ‘parental conflict’, played an important role in both ‘adolescence-limited’ and ‘life-course-persistent’ trajectories of offending (Basto-Pereira & Farrington, 2019). Over the past fifty years, many prospective longitudinal surveys have been conducted to identify ‘risk factors’ (and, more recently, ‘protective factors’) for delinquency. There is also the Pittsburgh Youth Study (see Loeber et al., 1998) and the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Project (McCord, 1979), both from the United States, the Dunedin Study in New Zealand (Moffitt

4 Interestingly, a key marker identified in the first publication of ‘persistently anti-social juveniles’ was ‘inadequate family income’ (West, 1969)

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Chapter 2 · The Criminogenic Family: Families as the Cause of Crime in Research and Policy

. Table 2.1  Risk factors and protective factors for youth offending

2

Risk factors

Protective factors

Individual

Hyperactivity (e.g. restlessness, poor concentration) Impulsiveness (e.g. acts without thinking) Low IQ Low school achievement

School achievement (e.g. reading, reasoning)

Family

Poor parental supervision Harsh or punitive discipline Cold rejecting parents Parental education Teenage mothers Frequent changes of parental figures Child maltreatment (esp. at a younger age) IPV in parental relationship Family disruption (by parental separation)

Good parental supervision Positive parental attachment Having older mothers Having parents/peers who disapprove of antisocial behaviour

Social

Low family income Poor housing Having delinquent friends Gang membership Living in urban areas (esp. economically disadvantaged areas)

Having pro-social friends

& Caspi, 2001) and the Montreal Longitudinal and Experimental Study (Trembley et al., 1991) in Canada. . Table 2.1 summarises the key risk and protective factors that have been identified in such research (see Farrington et al., 2012).

Interpreting the Findings One of the challenges of such ambitious research projects concerns how to disentangle sets of ‘risk factors’ that are interrelated. For example, in cases of parental separation, what causes the risk? Is it the separation itself ? Is it the marital discord that often accompanies separation? Is it the post-separation disruption that may involve a change (or loss) of parental figures and/or the family home?

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In their analysis, Farrington et al. (2012) identified a number of ways in which ‘risk factors’ were mediated by ‘protective factors’. For example, the effects of child maltreatment could be mediated by having parents and peers who disapprove of antisocial behaviour. Other effects varied according to the age of the child—for example, having delinquent friends was particularly risky for children at a younger age, when ‘delinquent’ acts tend to be committed in small groups (co-offending tends to reduce as one grows up). Furthermore, some risks are ‘riskier’ than others: boys with a high number of protective factors were more likely to engage in delinquency if they lived in economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods (Wikstrom & Loeber, 2000). In interpreting these findings, we need to recognise the limitations of such studies. They mainly research boys, are predominantly from the United States, and tend to focus on a specific form of offending: evidence suggests that these risk factors do not necessarily hold for other kinds of offending, such as those that involve organised crime (see 7 Chapter 4) or domestic abuse (see 7 Chapter 5). Furthermore, while many of the authors of such longitudinal studies took care to highlight how the different risk factors interact and, in some cases, how they are mediated by protective factors, they are prone to being individualised, de-contextualised and misrepresented by others to justify particular positions. For example, by arguing that ‘poor parenting’ causes youth offending without highlighting the important role that structural factors (such as housing, poverty and domestic violence) play in one’s ability to parent effectively. In response to these concerns, Gelsthorpe and Burney (2007) ask an important question: Does the ‘political hijacking’ of criminological research, in terms of its propensity to seek out familial-based ‘risk factors’, make researchers responsible for the increasing Government emphasis on ‘parenting’ as both a cause of, and a solution to, the ‘problem’ of youth crime? By isolating ‘parenting’ as a major risk factor and allowing the parent-blaming (and particularly working-class-mother-blaming) to seep into political, legal and cultural practices, those designated as ‘bad parents’ are made the moral scapegoat for society’s ills. Not all discourses become so dominant that they become a culturally accepted truth, but the idea that ‘bad parents cause youth crime’ has certainly become one. Thus, we have come to accept the idea that some families are criminogenic: that there is something about who they are or what they do that makes family members engage in criminal acts. These discourses can be difficult to resist because they are reproduced through a wide range of social institutions, including the government, the legal system, research com-

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munities, schools and the mass media. Many of these institutions engage in practices that serve to reproduce this discourse, such as: 5 The enactment of parental responsibility laws in youth courts 5 Broadcasts of ‘transformative’ parenting reality television shows 5 The publication and promotion of research findings that correlate ‘parenting’ with ‘offending behaviour’ 5 Tabloid headlines that refer to ‘Scumbag Families’ (The Sunday People, 23 October 2011), ‘Families from Hell’ (Daily Mail, 26 November 2016) and ‘Rubbish Parents’ (The Press and Journal, 18 February 2019) 5 Political rhetoric that refers to ‘troubled families’. In such examples, extreme cases are typified to demonise all parents of children who offend, or are at risk of doing so, enabling relatively large populations to become subject to processes of stigma. The consequence of this is that they serve to organise the social world in a particular way that makes a tangible impact on particular, and often vulnerable, groups of people. The influence of these research studies, and the discourses that they reproduce, should not be under-estimated. As we explore in the next section, such scientific ‘risk factor’ research is increasingly drawn on by politicians and policymakers to justify policies and family intervention programmes in the name of youth crime prevention. Box 2.2: Attachment theory The concept of attachment was developed by psychoanalyst John Bowlby and refers to an enduring emotional bond with a significant caregiver which provides a sense of security for the child during times of distress. Bowlby was influenced by ideas from ethology, and particularly the concept of imprinting, which refers to the biological mechanism by which young ducklings ‘attach’ to their mother to ensure their survival. This attachment process must take place within a developmentally set period of time (known as the ‘critical period’). Bowlby surmised that a similar instinctive biological process operates in human infants, and suggested that there was a ‘critical period’ in which infants must attach to a primary caregiver, usually the mother (Bowlby suggested that this ‘critical period’ was two years). Without this attachment process taking place, Bowlby claimed that children would not be able to form an ‘internal working model’ of a social relationship, which is important because it provides a mental representation of how to relate to others (see 7 Chapter 1, 7 Sect. 3.1). Consequently, children would

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find it difficult to develop relationships in later life, and would be at greater risk of mental health problems, aggressive behaviour and delinquency. Bowlby tested his theory by observing 88 children who had been admitted to a Child Guidance Clinic: 44 had been referred for theft and 44 had been referred for emotional problems. Following a series of psychometric tests, interviews and social work reports, Bowlby found that over half of the ‘juvenile thieves’ had been separated from their mother for six months (or longer) in their first five years of life: only two children from the control group had experienced such a separation. A major flaw of Bowlby’s study was its failure to distinguish correlation (that is, a link between two variables) from causation (a first variable having an effect on a second variable). That is, Bowlby assumed that earlier maternal separation caused poor attachment bonds which caused later offending behaviour. While there is much evidence to support the importance of attachment generally, this specific causal relationship has never been established. Nevertheless, attachment theory remains highly influential in the theory and practice of child development and parent-child relationships. Attachment theory has continued to be refined over the years, with specific focus on the role of the environment, the intergenerational transmission of attachment patterns, the stability of attachment patterns into adult relationships, and the role of attachment in social-emotional (mal)adjustment (see Fearon and Roisman, 2017).

Questions for Reflection: – Can you think of any real-life examples where ­families are blamed for youth crime? In what kinds of settings are families blamed? What kind of family is blamed, in terms of gender, class, race and other dimensions of power?

2.2  Youth Crime Prevention: The Role of Families

One of the consequences of the ‘parent blame discourse’ is that parents have been increasingly drawn into youth crime prevention legislation, policy and intervention work. This section critically examines some of these processes. In the first part, we explore how parents have been drawn into legislation and policy in England and Wales over the past two hundred years, culminating in a specific focus on the United Kingdom’s Troubled

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Families policy initiative. In the second part, we explore how family group conferences emerged as an attempt to address concerns about the criminalisation of young people and their families from particularly disadvantaged populations. 2.2.1  Parents in Youth Crime Legislation and Policy

Since the emergence of the youth crime as a social problem in the nineteenth century, parents have been increasingly visible in the policy statements, legislative acts and political rhetoric that have attempted to address it. In the United Kingdom, the first public enquiry into juvenile delinquency took place in 1816, and assumptions about the role of parents were already evident in its findings:

» The errors of parents have done much to encourage the criminal propensi

ties of their children….and have in great measure, produced that laxity of morals, which has rendered a considerable number of parents regardless of the welfare of their child. Committee for Investigating the Causes of the Alarming Increase of Juvenile Delinquency in the Metropolis (1816: 11–12)

A Parliamentary Select Committee on ‘Criminal and Destitute Juveniles’ reported during the 1850s that no parent should bring up a child ‘in such a way as to almost secure his (sic) becoming a criminal’ (cited in May, 1973: 111). In England and Wales, the inclusion of parents into youth crime legislation began in 1854, when the Reformatory School Act required parents to contribute financially to their child’s confinement to reformatory school. Since that time, parents have been increasingly made accountable for the offences of their children, whether by requiring them to make financial restitution, making them engage in state-sponsored ‘parental support’ or by separating them from their children (see . Table 2.2). It is fair to say that not all parents are treated equally by the youth justice system: some parents—notably mothers and those from working-class backgrounds—are subject to processes of accountability more than others. The specific pathologisation of working-class families is evident from as far back as the social reformers’ observations on the streets of Manchester and London (see 7 Sect. 2.1.1). It is also evident in the justification for State intervention in the Children Act 1908 ‘to rescue the child from the vagaries of working-class socialisation’ (see . Table 2.2). It is also evident when exam-

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. Table 2.2  Parental accountability within youth justice legislation (England and Wales) Date

Legislation/Policy

1816

The first public enquiry into the problem of juvenile delinquency identifies parents as a key causal factor

1854

Reformatory School Act—confines juveniles to reformatory school to ‘protect’ them from their ‘criminal parents’, and makes parents financially contribute to their child’s confinement

1908

Children Act—establishes the first juvenile court in England. This enables the State to act for both ‘delinquent’ and ‘neglected’ children by intervening ‘to rescue the child from the vagaries of working-class socialisation’

1982

Criminal Justice Act—emphasises a ‘just deserts’ philosophy which gives the power to determine youth sentences back to the judiciary (from social services). Courts are under stricter duty to consider making parents accountable via fines or compensation (via ‘Parental Bind-Overs’)

1998

Crime and Disorder Act—creates Youth Offending Teams (YOTs), which combine support for young people and their families alongside coercive strategies to ‘reinforce responsibility’. This includes the introduction of ‘Parenting Contracts’ and ‘Parenting Orders’

2011

Introduces the Troubled Families agenda following the 2011 England Riots

ining the kinds of families who are subject to penal measures such as Parenting Orders, which are overwhelmingly issued to mothers and to families on the lowest incomes (see 7 Box 2.3). Making parents accountable through the youth justice system is not without its tensions. Youth justice systems around the world straddle the competing goals of welfare and justice: that is, the goal of addressing the specific needs of children and young people with the goal of delivering some kind of moral resolution to a criminal transgression. Parental responsibilisation laws, which were introduced across many Euro-American countries during the 1990s, are one site in which this conflict is enacted. In such cases, support is provided (welfare) by issuing the parent with a court order (justice). However, the coercive nature of the support, combined with the lack of both criminal justice (since it was not the parent who committed the crime) and social justice (since they are overwhelmingly issued to mothers on low incomes) makes it questionable whether such measures actually achieve either of these goals.

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The Troubled Families Agenda

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The Troubled Families agenda was launched in the United Kingdom following the England Riots in 2011.5 At its launch, the then UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, claimed:

» I want to talk about troubled families. Let me be clear what I mean by this

phrase. Officialdom might call them ‘families with multiple disadvantages’. Some in the press might call them ‘neighbours from hell’. Whatever you call them, we’ve known for years that a relatively small number of families are the source of a large proportion of the problems in society. Drug addiction. Alcohol abuse. Crime. A culture of disruption and irresponsibility that cascades through generations…we have got to take action to turn troubled families around. (David Cameron, December 2011)

The central tenet of the initiative was to provide ‘troubled families’ with a single case worker who would ‘turn families around’ by offering holistic support using a ‘persistent, assertive and challenging approach’ (DCLG, 2012: 6). The criteria that defined the ‘troubled family’ were: (i) families where there is crime and/or antisocial behaviour, (ii) families where there are children who are absent from school and (iii) families where a parent is out-ofwork and claiming social security. By 2015, the UK government had claimed early success, suggesting that it had indeed ‘turned around’ 99% of ‘troubled families’ (DCLG, 2015). Additional criteria were added for ‘Phase 2’, including families where there is domestic violence, families where there is a range of health problems and families where there are ‘children who need help’. Families were required to meet two of the six criteria to qualify for support. There are a number of concerns about the Troubled Families agenda, including the discourses that it draws on and perpetuates. At the outset, Cameron’s speech drew together families with a range of complex problems under the stigmatising label of ‘troubled’ and explicitly identified families as the cause of a range of social problems which are often inherently structural. Furthermore, any failure is presented as due to a family’s failure to access state resources, rather than the failure of state agencies to reach them.6

5 The England Riots took place in London and other English cities over five days during August 2011. They followed the police shooting of Mark Duggan two days earlier in London and a subsequent protest by Duggan’s family and members of his community in response to the police’s actions. 6 It is notable that such families are often labelled as ‘hard-to-reach’, both in policy discourse and in academic discourse, firmly placing the responsibility with them.

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One function of such divisive techniques—of drawing a hard line between ‘good families’ and ‘troubled families’—is that it enables the state to straddle the competing demands of liberalism and authoritarianism that frame modern political constructions of the family. Janet Finch summarises this paradox:

» …the

autonomy of the family must not be interfered with, but as an institution it needs to be protected. The family is the ‘natural’ unit of support, but the State must ensure that people fulfil their obligations in practice. (Finch, 1989: 11)

For Parton (1991), the construction of (and acceptance of) the ‘normal’ and the ‘abnormal’ family enables legitimate State intervention into some families, but not others. Of course, such processes are not new. In his historical analysis of the ‘troubled families’ discourse, Welshman (2017) traced the different ways that troubled families have been framed over the past 100 years: from the ‘residuum’ in the 1880s, the ‘unemployable’ in the 1900s, the ‘social problem group’ in the 1930s, ‘problem families’ in the post-war period of the 1950s, the ‘culture of poverty’ in the 1960s, the ‘cycle of deprivation’ in the 1970s, the ‘underclass’ in the 1980s and the ‘socially excluded’ in the 1990s. The current framing of troubled families is arguably a further iteration of how a discourse of family deficit is promoted while other critical factors such as poverty and inequality continue to be marginalised. Box 2.3: Family Criminology in Practice: Responsibilising parents in the youth courts Parenting Orders were introduced in England and Wales in 1998 as one component of a range of measures that aimed to fulfil the new Labour Government’s earlier election promise to be ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’. Parenting Orders are court orders that are issued to parents of children who are engaged in criminal behaviour, or are at risk of doing so. They can be issued across a range of courts (including youth courts, Crown Courts and family courts) and may also be issued to parents who are convicted of failing to secure their child’s school attendance. A range of community agencies can seek a Parenting Order, including schools, local authorities and registered social landlords. Parenting Orders are to be issued ‘where it would be desirable in the interests of preventing [either] any repetition of the kind of behaviour that led to [the child’s order]…[…]…or, as the case may be, the commission of any such further offence’ (Crime and Disorder Act 1998, s8(6) & (7)) and courts have a duty to issue a Parenting Order if the child is under 16 years of age. The key element to a Parenting Order is attendance of a parenting support p ­ rogramme,

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although additional ‘discretionary requirements’ can be added (such as stipulating that the child must avoid certain areas, avoid contact with disruptive peers, and/or be home during certain hours). Parenting Orders last for between three and twelve months and if parents do not comply with the conditions set out in the Parenting Order, they face a fine of up to £1000 and a return to court for a breach, which can result in the parent’s imprisonment. There is little research on the effectiveness of Parenting Orders, despite many politicians championing their use. While research has found that parenting support programmes are useful (e.g. Ghate & Ramella, 2002), such research is primarily based on support which parents voluntarily chose to engage with, rather than support that was enforced. Furthermore, there are concerns that Parenting Orders are issued to those most structurally disadvantaged: 90% of them are issued to mothers, while a disproportionate number are issued to lone parents and those who have fewest economic resources. This has added to concerns about the discriminatory operation of justice. They also punish the parent for their child’s offence (who will also receive their own court order), raising concerns about the ways in which the criminal justice system makes parents accountable for the crimes of others.

2.2.2  Family Group Conferences

Concerns about the over-representation of particularly disadvantaged young people (and their families) in crime prevention policymaking have instigated a search for alternative approaches. For a long time, Maori communities in Aotearoa New Zealand raised concerns about the over-representation of young people in the justice system, particularly at the most punitive end (i.e. in custody). This led to calls to resist Pakeha (white settler) instituted methods of doing justice and to demand a radical alternative. The alternative needed to be culturally appropriate, empowering for indigenous people and their communities, and to recognise the history of such communities, including their relationship with colonial states. From this context emerged family group conferences (FGCs) which are claimed to be rooted in traditional Maori philosophies and cultural practices. Family group conferences are preventative in nature and aim to avoid further criminalisation of children and young people. They work by bringing together the young person and their family (and/or supporters) with the victim and their family, and jointly they play a role in the decision-making process, allowing all of their voices to be heard. One of the key underlying principles of FGCs is that families

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have the capability to make decisions for their own members, if given appropriate support and resources (Barn & Das, 2016). By families and practitioners working in partnership with those who offend and their victim(s), positive and sustainable solutions can emerge that address families’ concerns and that are appropriate to the familial and cultural context. FGCs were formally introduced in New Zealand in 1989, and over the subsequent decade they were introduced across many other Euro-American jurisdictions. They are now used in a number of settings, including in schools and in children’s social care. In terms of their application to youth justice settings, FGCs can be used at various stages in the process, from the early caution stage to following release from custody. However, FGCs are generally used as a diversionary tactic following first-time or minor offences. ‘Re-integrative shaming’ is a core component of FGCs, where disapproval of the young person’s behaviour is balanced with respect to ensure that they can reintegrate back into their community (see Braithwaite, 1989). The process of FGCs in youth justice settings involves: 1. the young person is confronted with their behaviour (by the victim explaining how it affected them) 2. the young person is made accountable for their actions 3. the young person offers reparation to their victim (including an apology) 4. the young person and their family devise a plan to address the offending (which is mutually agreed with the victim and their family/supporters). Evaluation studies suggest that FGCs are experienced positively by young people who offend, as well as by the victims and the families who participate. For example, an evaluation study in Northern Ireland found that 98% of young people who attended felt they were listened to; all the victims felt that the process was helpful; and 95% of the conferences resulted in an agreed plan (Campbell et al., 2005). However, FGCs are not effective for everyone, particularly for those who persistently offend. Furthermore, there are concerns about the long-term effects of FGCs: a follow-up study did not find differences in recidivism after 12 years between those who engaged in a FGC and those in the control group (Jeong et al., 2012). There are also concerns that FGCs are not appropriate for particular kinds of offence. For example, in cases of domestic abuse and intrafamilial child abuse, there are concerns that the abusive dynamics within the relationship dyad could be reproduced within the FGC setting. Despite the radical roots of family group conferences, they have been criticised for operating too far within a ‘justice’ framework by making young people accountable for their offences while, at the same time, lack-

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ing safeguards to ensure due process and police accountability. A particular concern is that, counter to the original Aotearoa New Zealand model that emphasised the importance of having a facilitator who is ‘neutral’, many jurisdictions use a police officer to facilitate the FGC, which inevitably shapes the dynamics of the process. Furthermore, some FGCs have a greater or lesser emphasis on the centrality of preparation to the process, whereby each participant meets first with the facilitator to discuss their needs and their perspective on the issue. Further, some FGCs are better resourced and more expertly facilitated than others, and some are more ‘voluntary’ than others. All of these factors have an impact on the outcome. Concerns have also been raised that there is a high expectation on disadvantaged young people to benefit from ‘…being shamed while confronting angry and emotional victims, acknowledging their wrongdoing and making appropriate reparation’ (Cuneen, 2017: 295). Like many youth crime prevention strategies that utilise the family members of criminalised people, FGCs have been criticised for failing to address the inequalities and power imbalances that are inevitably present between conference participants (Stubbs, 2002). FGCs and other associated restorative justice practices have long been justified by politicians and policymakers as an effective means of ensuring that parents ‘take responsibility’ for their child’s behaviour (see Richards, 2017)—with parents reporting that they feel ‘on trial’ during FGCs (Hoyle & Noguera, 2008). Indeed, Braithwaite himself suggested that the process of shaming that is central to FGCs ‘is ­often enhanced by shame being directed not only at the individual offender but also at her family’ (Braithwaite, 1989: 83). These concerns reflect a more fundamental debate about the purpose of family group conferences: should they be considered as an intervention to reduce re-offending, or should they be offered as a right to enable individual, family and community participation in decision-making? To what extent are these purposes compatible? While the display of parental emotions is often seen as strategic to the restorative process, it should be recognised that such emotional labour (see 7 Box 3.1) is often gendered (as is parental responsibilisation within youth justice processes more generally). The challenges that are made to a mother or father’s ‘parenting ability’ within the FGC context are often based on a White, middle-class Euro-American ideal. As Moyle and Tauri (2016) explain, a huge amount of mythologizing has been used to justify the usefulness of FGCs in addressing the needs of culturally diverse populations. Yet, as Moyle and Tauri (2016: 87) point out, ultimately FGCs serve to enclose indigenous culture and indigenous people ‘within a Eurocentric, formulaic, and standardized process’ (see also Cuneen, 2017).

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2.3  Youth Crime Prevention: Family Intervention Work

As the previous section highlighted, parents can be drawn into the youth justice system in a number of ways—sometimes coercively (through a court order) and sometimes voluntarily (though this may be underpinned by the threat of a court order if they do not engage ‘voluntarily’). Usually, it takes the form of family intervention work which has the primary aim of preventing youth crime. Family intervention work can vary in its form and structure, depending on local policy, resources and expertise, as well as on the needs of the family. It may be provided in the form of groupwork or in a one-to-one format, and, in this section, we critically discuss each of these formats in turn, starting with a discussion of group parenting programmes. 2.3.1  Youth Crime Prevention: Group Parenting

Programmes

Group parenting programmes vary considerably between different localities. Even the same programme can vary over time as it evolves and as personnel change. Furthermore, the content format can vary: some programmes are individually designed to respond to specific group needs, while other ‘off the shelf’ programmes are devised by voluntary or commercial specialists7 and contain structured week-by-week instructions and resources. Programme aims and objectives also vary in terms of being more or less ‘preventive’ or ‘therapeutic’, although they all tend to share common goals such as improving parental supervision, dealing with family conflict, boundary-setting and maintenance. Lindfield (2002) categorises the content of group parenting programmes into four key elements: 1. Knowledge (e.g. brain development, parenting styles, attachment theory) 2. Skills (e.g. active listening skills, boundary-setting strategies, using ‘I’ statements during conflict, praising good behaviour) 3. Attitudes (e.g. testing beliefs that change is possible) 4. Experience (e.g. discussing how the past impacts on the present, discussing the success of applying new techniques over the previous week). 7 Examples of established ‘off the shelf’ parenting courses include ‘Triple P’, ‘Take 3 Parenting Programme’, ‘Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities’ and ‘Time out for Parents’. Such programmes often require a high level of fidelity (that is, working closely to the programme instructions) to ensure ‘programme integrity’ as such programmes are often subject to large-scale evaluation research (see 7 Box 2.4).

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Group parenting programmes tend to comprise weekly sessions of two hours, usually as part of a 6–10 week course. They tend to draw on an eclectic mix of theoretical approaches, including social learning theory, humanistic therapy, psychoanalytic-influenced approaches (such as transactional analysis) and family systems theory. Increasingly, programmes use trauma-informed approaches in recognition that many of the children involved (and many of their parents) are dealing with trauma (see Chapter Seven) which practitioners need to be alert to. Specific exercises that are common to group parenting programmes include: 5 Check-in: At the beginning of the session, each parent is given time to talk about how their week has been, in terms of their relationship with their child(ren). The practitioner(s) and other parents can then reflect on how they responded (or could have responded) to a difficult situation 5 Skills training: Parents are taught skills (often through role play) on how to praise and reward good behaviour, and how to apply ‘consequences’ to a child’s poor behaviour 5 Theoretical reflection: Parents are given a ‘conceptual toolkit’, which may include concepts such as: – The drama triangle (see Karpman, 1968): parents are taught about the triangle and then asked to consider their own role in the triangle (e.g. as ‘tyrant’, ‘rescuer’ or ‘victim’) during times of family conflict. – Typology of parenting styles (see Baumrind, 1966, 1967): parents are asked to consider their parenting style (often via a self-report questionnaire) and whether they are ‘mirroring or responding to’ their own parents’ style in their parenting practices. – Neurobiological theory: parents are taught how different parts of the brain (e.g. hippocampus, amygdala) operate to produce emotion and how this shapes rational thought when under high emotion. Parents are then encouraged to identify effective strategies to respond to their own, and to their child’s, periods of high emotion. ‘Homework’ is frequently given to parents to promote the generalisation of skills learnt beyond the programme setting. Feedback is given, often using the same tools (e.g. praise) that are encouraged in the parents’ interactions with their children. Parenting programmes which are court-ordered are often also offered to parents on a voluntary basis. Therefore, groups may contain a mix of parents who attend voluntarily and parents who have been compelled to attend. This may present particular challenges for both the practitioners who are facilitating the programme and for the parents who are attending, given

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that they have differing motivations for attendance, with some parents feeling resentful about being ordered to attend (see Holt, 2010).

Culturally-Adapted Parenting Programmes It is increasingly recognised that parenting programmes need to be culturally sensitive. Parenting programmes are often based on theory and research of child development, but much of this research comes from the Global North using samples of Euro-American families (who are usually White and middle-class). This can feel disempowering for populations who do not conform to these norms and who may feel discouraged from engaging in such programmes due to a lack of cultural fit. It is a challenge to adapt programmes which have demonstrated efficacy because of the risk of diluting the components that have had the most positive effect. However, a number of adaptations to ‘mainstream’ parenting programmes have been developed in recent years for particular marginalised populations. Examples include the Te Whānau Pou Toru programme for Maori parents in New Zealand, adapted from Triple P Positive Parenting programme (see Keown et al., 2018), the Culturally-Enhanced Parent Management Training—Oregon (CE-PMTO) programme for Latino-American families in the United States, adapted from the PMTO programme (see Parra-Cordona et al., 2017) and the Parenting in 2 Worlds programme for Native American families in Arizona, United States, adapted from the Healthy Families programme (see Kulis et al., 2019). These adapted programmes usually develop culturally appropriate resources and methods of delivery in partnership with representatives from those marginalised communities. Adaptations can be made at different levels of depth. ‘Surface’ adaptations include making changes to language, personnel and materials: examples include using culturally meaningful scenarios for session exercises and ensuring the linguistic appropriateness of the programme.8 ‘Deep’ adaptations involve revising the content to reflect the norms, values and lived experiences of the participants. This may include introducing themes such as racial discrimination, economic difficul-

8 For example, Rodriguez et al. (2011) highlight how the idea of ‘time out’ felt alien to the Latino parents who were collaborating on the adaptation of a parenting course—it was not a practice that the parents were familiar with. As there was no direct Spanish translation for ‘time out’, then a sporting metaphor was used instead. Similarly, the idea of ‘homework’ was re-framed as ‘practice assignment’ to avoid alienating those parents who had negative experiences of the education system.

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ties, fears of deportation and managing cultural conflicts between parent and child (for example, conflicts that may arise when parents remain attached to the values of their culture of origin while their children are attached to their home culture). A meta-analysis of culturally adapted parenting programmes by van Mourik et al. (2017) found that such programmes made significant improvements on parental behaviour compared with non-adapted programmes. This effect was particularly pronounced for programmes that made ‘deep’ cultural adaptations. Culturally adapted programmes also had a positive effect, albeit slighter, on improved child behaviour and parenting perspectives (such as parental stress), when compared with non-adapted programmes. However, the reviewers lamented on how few of the studies reported on how the programmes made the cultural adaptations, and the decision-making process behind them. Transparency is important here, not only in providing guidance for the development of further programmes, but as a check on accountability to ensure that adaptations are evidence-led, rather than politically led (that is, based on assumptions of what particular marginalised populations might want). Box 2.4 Methodological challenges: Evaluating family intervention programmes Evaluation research measures the implementation (i.e. the process) and effectiveness (i.e. the outcome) of programmes and policies that are designed to instigate change. Evaluation research is usually commissioned by either those who designed the programme, or those who are using it, in order to prove that it is worthwhile (this is particularly important since such programmes are often publically funded). Providing evidence of programme ‘success’ has increasingly required the application of scientific methods, usually in the form of experiments (or quasi-experiments) that involve random-controlled trials (RCTs) to demonstrate cause and effect. RCTs involve the random allocation of participants to either an ‘intervention’ condition or a ‘control’ condition on the assumption that, all else being equal, any differences in participant outcome is due to their participation in the programme. Outcomes are usually measured through a battery of self-report and interview surveys, taken prior to the programme start and then again after completion (and sometimes again as a long-term follow-up). In cases of youth crime prevention parenting programmes, outcomes may include changes in ‘delinquent behaviours’ as well as a range of secondary outcomes such as changes in mental health, family environment and other child behaviours.

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While hailed as the ‘gold standard’, RCTs have come under increasing criticism. For example, in the case of families engaging in an intervention programme to reduce youth offending, it is impossible to control for contextual factors that may determine whether a programme is successful for a particular family. These factors may include the circumstances of the young person’s offending, their family’s motivation and level of engagement in the programme, and the expertise of the practitioner delivering it. There are also ethical problems involved in randomly allocating families to a ‘control’ condition, particularly if this involves allocation to a waiting list where families do not receive support, yet remain most in need of it.

2.3.2  Youth Crime Prevention: One-to-One Family Support

There are a number of ways in which families can be supported in a one-toone setting, and three specific approaches are briefly discussed here: Functional Family Therapy, Multi-Systemic Therapy and Treatment Foster Care Oregon for Adolescents.

Functional Family Therapy Functional Family Therapy (FFT) is a therapeutic approach that combines family systems theory with cognitive-behavioural techniques. It aims to explore the ‘function’ of particular familial behaviours and develop new healthier ways to achieve those functions. It has been primarily developed for work with children (aged 11–18 years) and families who are seen as disruptive and ‘hard to treat’ (Robbins et al., 2016). FFT adopts a holistic approach, in that it operates from a systemic position in recognising that antisocial behaviour and youth offending are rooted in dysfunctional patterns of family interaction. Therefore, the improvement of whole family communication and support is vital for change. Functional family therapy offers a ‘brief intervention’, usually comprising 12–14 weekly one-hour therapy sessions. The process has five phases: 1. Engagement—engaging families in initial outreach work, acquiring consent and encouraging family members to believe that change is possible 2. Motivation—creating a motivational context for change by reducing family conflict and blame and (re)balancing alliances 3. Assessment—assessing the functionality of particular interactional behaviours to ensure that the programme is tailored to the family’s relational needs

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4. Behaviour change—helping family members gain insight about problematic relations and implement new ways of relating. This may include listening skills, anger management, implementing parent-directed behavioural consequences and improving parental supervision practices 5. Generalisation—supporting family members to apply their newly learned skills to different situations and aspects of life. In terms of effectiveness, studies have particularly focused on the use of Functional Family Therapy in cases of youth substance misuse and youth offending. Compared with control groups (where families may be allocated to a waiting list, or given ‘treatment as usual’), Functional Family Therapy has been found to significantly reduce recidivism in youth offending—particularly in the United States (e.g. Hartnett et al., 2017), although less so in the UK (e.g. Humayun et al., 2017).

Multi-Systemic Therapy Multi-Systemic Therapy (MST) is an intensive therapeutic approach that applies family systems theory to work with the young person, their family and their community. It is premised on the idea that youth offending is associated with a range of individual, familial and social ‘risk factors’, all of which need addressing. However, the family is seen as the primary instigator of change because it mediates the child’s relationship with their school, their community and with their peers. Furthermore, the improvement of parenting skills (such as monitoring and supervision, and nurturing affectionate relations) is seen as key to promoting pro-social behaviour in adolescents. MST is intensive and, ideally, it offers family support around the clock, with therapeutic sessions being provided as often as needed. A strength of the MST model is its alignment with the Risk-Needs-Responsivity (RNR) approach, which recognises that any criminal justice intervention should be tailored to reflect the individual’s recidivism risk, criminogenic needs and personal capabilities (Andrews et al., 2006). Another strength of MST is its substantial evidence base. To enable this, there are very specific standards of training and delivery that are closely monitored to ensure model fidelity. A meta-analysis of relevant evaluation studies found that MST was effective in reducing youth offending, substance misuse, psychopathological behaviour (both internalising and externalising symptoms) and out-of-home placements (including custody). It also produced secondary outcomes such as improvements in family functioning, parenting skills, parental mental health and peer relationships. MST

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was most effective when used with young people under the age of 15 years and who had severe starting conditions (such as prior arrests) (van der Stouwe et al., 2014). More recently, an adaptation of MST has been developed to specifically work with young people who have returned to their families following incarceration. Known as MST for Family Integrated Transitions (MST-FIT), it has two phases. During phase 1, the young person engages in a 12-week therapy programme at a special residential home while their parent(s) engages in an MST programme in the family home. In phase 2, once the child has returned home, the MST practitioner continues work with the whole family in the home. A UK evaluation study of MST-FIT found that both parents and practitioners felt that they had learned some useful transferable and sustainable skills. Parents, in particular, welcomed the therapeutic support, particularly its ‘on-call’ nature. Furthermore, the practitioners identified positive changes in young people’s behaviour, such as more effective communication skills with their parents and improved emotional regulation. They also observed that parents were calmer under stress. However, in cases where the child’s return to home had not lasted, many practitioners observed that the programme was not able to deal with the complexity of those cases, which often involved complications such as adoption breakdown, transgender issues and histories of sexual abuse (Butler et al., 2017).

Treatment Foster Care Oregon for Adolescents (TFCO-A) The TFCO-A model (formerly known as Multidimensional Treatment for Foster Care or MTFC) was developed in Oregon, United States for young people as an alternative to incarceration for severe offending behaviour. It was subsequently developed to work with young people who may be in out-of-home care for a number of reasons, including severe emotional and mental health problems.9 TFCO-A involves placing the young person with a specially trained foster parent and it has two key goals: to support the young person to have a positive community living experience, and to prepare family members (or follow-on carers) to support the young person to continue those positive living experiences once they return home (or to their next placement) (Chamberlain, 2003).

9 One adaptation of this programme is Keeping Foster and Kin Parents Supported and Trained (KEEP), a trauma-informed group programme for foster parents and kinship carers to help them support children with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

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During the young person’s placement, which usually lasts 6–9 months, there are four key elements to the TFCO-A intervention: 1. A consistent and supportive environment, which provides mentoring 2. Application of clear and consistent boundaries 3. Close supervision of the young person’s whereabouts 4. Supporting positive peer relationships. Daily data is taken to track progress, including daily telephone interviews with foster parents to monitor their stress levels. At the same time, the young person’s birth family (if appropriate) or follow-on carers engage in family therapy with their child and are involved in the development of their treatment plan. Drawing on ideas from social learning theory, the TFCO-A programme assumes that behavioural problems (including offending behaviour) are learned through inadvertent reinforcement that deepens over time. These behaviours are ‘reciprocal and transactional’ and, in turn, shape parent–child interactions. Therefore, a key part of the TFCO-A programme is ‘Parent Management Training’ that teaches parenting skills such as supervision, listening, and applying consequences (Chamberlain, 2003). For young people, their foster placement is rooted in the idea that new behaviours are most effectively learned and generalised within natural settings. Thus, ‘token economies’ are applied in the foster placement to encourage the young person to earn privileges via a ‘points and levels’ system (Buchanan et al., 2017). 24-hour emergency support is available to foster parents and regular home visits begin early on to support eventual reunification between the young person and their family (or follow-on carer). Evidence to support the programme has been primarily conducted in the US, where random-­ controlled trials (RCTs) have found TFCO-A to be effective in reducing offending in both boys and girls, as well as in reducing substance misuse and improving psychopathological outcomes (see Buchanan et al., 2017 for a review). As the TFCO-A programme highlights, family intervention work can take place in a number of community settings, including schools, residential homes, hospitals, as well as in custodial settings. Research is increasingly looking at how family intervention work can be adapted to fit with the diverse range of families who may need it, as well as to a wider range of settings. At the same time, we need to be mindful about how we support families in ways that are not stigmatising and shaming. We also need to be careful that they do not perpetuate existing discourses of parent blame which serve to locate the problem of youth crime with those families who are least

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advantaged, and where existing inequalities accumulate through responsibilisation practices of the most marginalised families. Questions for Reflection: – Are there any circumstances in which parents (or other family members) should be ordered by the court to attend family intervention programmes? What concerns might this raise? What safeguards could be put in place to address these concerns?

Useful Websites National Implementation Service (NIS) 7 https://www.evidencebasedinterventions.org.uk. Website hosted by the NIS and the National Health Service (NHS) which provides evidence on a range of interventions that work with ‘looked after children, children on the edge of care or custody and their families’. Features information and resources on interventions including Functional Family Therapy (7 https://www.functionalfamilytherapy.org.uk), Multi-Systemic Therapy (7 http://www.mstuk.org) and Keep (7 https://www.keep.org.uk). Troubled Families 7 https://troubledfamilies.blog.gov.uk. Blog hosted by the UK government which highlights the range of family intervention work across the UK that falls within the remit of the Troubled Families policy initiative. Treatment Foster Care Oregon 7 https://www.tfcoregon.com Website hosted by the TFCO team in Oregon, United States that features information, resources, research and training for professionals interested in the TFCO programme for pre-schoolers (TFCO-P), primary-aged children (TFCO-C) and adolescents (TFCO-A).

References Aichorn, A. (1925/1959). Wayward youth. Imago (first published as Verwahrloster Jugend. Wien: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag). Andrews, D. A., Bonta, J., & Wormith, J. S. (2006). The recent past and near future of risk and/or need assessment. Crime & Delinquency, 52(1), 7–27. Barn, R., & Das, C. (2016). Family group conferences and cultural competence in social work. The British Journal of Social Work, 46(4), 942–959.

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Basto-Pereira, M., & Farrington, D. P. (2019). Advancing knowledge about lifelong crime sequences. British Journal of Criminology, 59(2), 354–377. Baumrind, D. (1966). Effects of authoritative parental control on child behavior. Child Development, 37(4), 887–907. Baumrind, D. (1967). Child care practices anteceding three patterns of preschool behavior. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 75(1), 43–88. Bowlby, J. (1944). Forty-four juvenile thieves: Their characters and home life. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 25(19–52), 107–127. Bowlby, J. (1965). Child care and the growth of love (2nd ed.). Penguin. Braithwaite, J. (1989). Crime, shame and reintegration. Cambridge University Press. Buchanan, R. Chamberlain, P., & Smith, D. K. (2017). Treatment Foster Care Oregon for adolescents: Research and Implementation. In John R. Weisz & Alan E. Kazdin (Eds.), Evidence-based psychotherapies for children and adolescents (3rd ed.). Guildford Press. Burt, C. (1925). The young delinquent. University of London Press Ltd. Butler, S., Anokhina, A., Kaminska, K., Watmuff, C., & Fonagy, P. (2017). Multisystemic therapy-family integrated transitions (MST-FIT): A feasibility study. University College ­London/Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families. Campbell, C., Devlin, R., O’Mahony, D., Doak, J., Jackson, J., Corrigan, T., & McEvoy, K. (2005). Evaluation of the Northern Ireland Youth Conference Service. Northern Ireland Office. Chamberlain, P. (2003). The Oregon multidimensional treatment foster care model: Features, outcomes, and progress in dissemination. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 10, 303–312. Cunneen, C. (2017). Community conferencing and the fiction of indigenous control. In Restorative justice (pp. 335–354). Routledge. DCLG, Department for Communities and Local Government. (2012, December). Working with troubled families: A guide to the evidence and good practice. Available from 7 www. gov.uk/dclg. DCLG, Department for Communities and Local Government. (2015, June 22). PM praises troubled families programme success, Press Release. London: DCLG. Available online at 7 www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-praises-troubled-families-programme-success. Donzelot, J. (1979). The policing of families. London: Hutchinson. Farrington, D. P. (1995). The development of offending and antisocial behaviour from childhood: Key findings from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 6(36), 929–964. Farrington, D. P., Loeber, R., & Ttofi, M. M. (2012). Risk and protective factors for offending. In B. C. Welsh & D. P. Farrington (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of crime prevention (pp. 46–69). Oxford University Press. Fearon, R. P., & Roisman, G. I. (2017). Attachment theory: Progress and future directions. Current Opinion in Psychology, 15, 131–136. Finch, J. (1989). Family obligations and social change. Polity Press. Foucault, M. (1975/1991). Discipline and punish: the Birth of the prison. Penguin. Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. In H. R. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics (pp. 208–226). Harvester Wheatsheaf. Foucault, M. (1991). On governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), ‘The Foucault effect’: Studies in governmentality (pp. 87–104.). Harvester Wheatsheaf. Fox, B. (2017). It’s nature and nurture: Integrating biology and genetics into the social learning theory of criminal behavior. Journal of Criminal Justice, 49, 22–31.

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Friedlander, K. (1947). The psycho-analytical approach to juvenile delinquency: Theory, case-studies, treatment. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Gelsthorpe, E., & Burney, E. (2007, July 6). Parenting as crime control: A critique of government policy. Paper presented at Parenting: An Interdisciplinary Workshop. Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Cambridge. Ghate, D., & Ramella, M. (2002). Positive parenting: The national evaluation of the Youth Justice Board’s parenting programme. Policy Research Bureau. Glueck, E., & Glueck, S. (1950). Unraveling juvenile delinquency. The Commonwealth Fund. Goldman, D., & Fishbein, D. H. (2000). Genetic bases for impulsive and antisocial behaviors—Can their course be altered? In The science, treatment, and prevention of antisocial behaviors: Application to the criminal justice system (p. 1). Hartnett, D., Carr, A., Hamilton, E., & O’Reilly, G. (2017). The effectiveness of functional family therapy for adolescent behavioral and substance misuse problems: A meta-analysis. Family Process, 56(3), 607–619. Healy, W., & Bronner, A. F. (1936). New light on delinquency and its treatment. Greenwood Press. Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of delinquency. University of California Press. Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California. Holt, A. (2010). Managing ‘spoiled identities’: Parents’ experiences of compulsory parenting support programmes. Children and Society, 24(5), 413–423. Hoyle, C., & Noguera, S. (2008). Supporting young offenders through restorative justice: Parents as (in)appropriate adults. British Journal of Community Justice, 6(3), 67–85. Humayun, S., Herlitz, L., Chesnokov, M., Doolan, M., Landau, S., & Scott, S. (2017). Randomized controlled trial of Functional Family Therapy for offending and antisocial behavior in UK youth. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 58, 1023–1032. Ingleby, D. (1985). Professionals as socializers: The “psy complex”. Research in Law, Deviance and Social Control, 7, 79–109. Jeong, S., McGarrell, E. F., & Hipple, N. K. (2012). Long-term impact of family group conferences on re-offending: The Indianapolis restorative justice experiment. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 8(4), 369–385. Karpman, S. (1968). Fairy tales and script drama analysis. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 7(26), 39–43. Keown, L. J., Sanders, M. R., Franke, N., & Shepherd, M. (2018). Te Whānau POU Toru: A randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a culturally adapted low-intensity variant of the triple P-Positive parenting program for Indigenous Māori families in New Zealand. Prevention Science, 19(7), 954–965. Krohn, M. D., & Massey, J. L. (1980). Social control and delinquent behavior: An examination of the elements of the social bond. The Sociological Quarterly, 21(4), 529–544. Kulis, S. S., Tsethlikai, M., Harthun, M. L., Hibbeler, P. K., Ayers, S. L., & Deschine Parkhurst, N. (2019). Parenting in 2 worlds: Effects of a culturally grounded parenting intervention for urban American Indians on participant cultural engagement. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. Lamborn, S. D., Mounts, N. S., Steinberg, L., & Dornbusch, S. M. (1991). Patterns of competence and adjustment among adolescents from authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and neglectful families. Child Development, 62(5), 1049–1065.

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Lindfield, S. (2002, March). Parenting orders. Magistrate, pp. 74–75. Loeber, R., Farrington, D. P., Stouthamer-Loeber, M., Moffitt, T. E., & Caspi, A. (1998). The development of male offending: Key findings from the first decade of the Pittsburgh Youth Study. Studies on Crime & Crime Prevention, 7(2), 141–171. Maccoby, E. E., & Martin, J. A. (1983). Socialization in the context of the family: Parent– child interaction. In P. Mussen & E. M. Hetherington (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology, volume IV: Socialization, personality, and social development. Wiley. May, M. (1973/2002). Innocence and experience: The evolution of the concept of juvenile delinquency in the mid-nineteenth century. In J. Muncie, G. Hughes, & E. McLaughlin (Eds.), Youth justice: Critical readings (pp. 98–115). Sage. McCord, J. (1979). Some child-rearing antecedents of criminal behavior in adult men. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1477–1486. Moffitt, T. E., & Caspi, A. (2001). Childhood predictors differentiate life-course persistent and adolescence-limited antisocial pathways among males and females. Development and Psychopathology, 13(2), 355–375. Moyle, P., & Tauri, J. M. (2016). Māori, family group conferencing and the mystifications of restorative justice. Victims & Offenders, 11(1), 87–106. Parra-Cardona, J. R., Bybee, D., Sullivan, C. M., Rodríguez, M. M. D., Dates, B., Tams, L., et al. (2017). Examining the impact of differential cultural adaptation with Latina/o immigrants exposed to adapted parent training interventions. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 85(1), 58. Parton, N. (1991). Governing the family: Child care, child protection and the state. Macmillan. Richards, K. (2017). Responsibilising the parents of young offenders through restorative justice: A genealogical account. Restorative Justice, 5(1), 93–115. Robbins, M. S., Alexander, J. F., Turner, C. W., & Hollimon, A. (2016). Evolution of functional family therapy as an evidence-based practice for adolescents with disruptive behavior problems. Family Process, 55(3), 543–557. Rodriguez, M. M. D., Baumann, A. A., & Schwartz, A. L. (2011). Cultural adaptation of an evidence based intervention: From theory to practice in a Latino/a community context. American Journal of Community Psychology, 47(1–2), 170–186. Rose, N. (1989). Governing the soul. Routledge. Stubbs, J. (2002). Domestic violence and women’s safety: Feminist challenges to restorative justice. In H. Strang & J. Braithwaite (Eds.), Restorative justice and family violence (pp. 42– 61). Cambridge University Press. Tremblay, R. E., Loeber, R., Gagnon, C., Charlebois, P., Larivée, S., & LeBlanc, M. (1991). Disruptive boys with stable and unstable high fighting behavior patterns during junior elementary school. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 19(3), 285–300. Van der Stouwe, T., Asscher, J. J., Stams, G. J. J., Deković, M., & van der Laan, P. H. (2014). The effectiveness of multisystemic therapy (MST): A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 34(6), 468–481. Van Mourik, K., Crone, M. R., De Wolff, M. S., & Reis, R. (2017). Parent training programs for ethnic minorities: A meta-analysis of adaptations and effect. Prevention Science, 18(1), 95–105. Welshman, J. (2017). Troubles and the family: Changes and continuities since 1943. Social Policy and Society, 16(1), 109–117.

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West, D. J. (1969). Present conduct and future delinquency; first report of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. New York: International Universities Press. Wikström, P. O. H., & Loeber, R. (2000). Do disadvantaged neighborhoods cause well‐adjusted children to become adolescent delinquents? A study of male juvenile serious offending, individual risk and protective factors, and neighborhood context. Criminology, 38(4), 1109–1142.

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The Stigmatised Family: The Impact of Offending on Families Contents 3.1  Offending and Families: Impacts and Challenges – 65 3.1.1  The Challenges of Parenting Criminalised Children – 66 3.1.2  Families as ‘Secondary Victims’ – 69

3.2  The Families of Incarcerated Persons – 73 3.2.1  The Impact of Incarceration on Families – 74 3.2.2  Release, Resettlement and Desistance – 77

3.3  The Children of Incarcerated Parents – 81 3.3.1  The Impact on Parental Imprisonment on Children – 81 3.3.2  Mother and Baby Units – 85

Useful Websites – 89 References – 90

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Holt, Family Criminology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71169-6_3

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z Overview

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In the previous chapter, we explored how families, and particularly parents, are often blamed and responsibilised for the crimes of their kin. This chapter develops those ideas by exploring the experiences of family members whose relatives are involved in offending (and who, in some cases, may be incarcerated). There is much reasearch in this field, frequently pointing to the gendered, racialised and classed nature of such family experiences. We start by looking at the challenges of parenting criminalised children, including processes of mother-blaming, before exploring the range of harms faced by the families of those who are criminalised. We then examine the experiences of families whose loved ones are incarcerated, including entry into prison, prison visits, resettlement and desistance. In the final section, we discuss the impact of imprisonment on children, and explore the role of mother and baby units in supporting families. Conceptual Toolbox: Stigma In his sociological analysis, Stigma: Notes on the Management of a Spoiled Identity, Erving Goffman describes stigma as an ‘attribute that is deeply discrediting’ (1963: 3) and describes three different types of stigma: character blemishes, physical deformities and tribal stigma. Goffman goes on to ­explain how stigma shapes the everyday micro-interactions of both the stigmatised (who may, for example, avoid particular places where they are likely to experience stigma-based discrimination) and those who enact the stigma (who may engage in discriminatory practices of exclusion). Stigma produces a range of negative impacts for those who are stigmatised, including anxiety, low ­self-esteem, and poor academic achievement. Stigma also operates as a form of social control: for example, those who possess a stigma may attempt to dis-identify from the stigmatised group by attempting to ‘pass’ as normal. Goffman refers to ‘courtesy stigma’ as a form of stigma that is transmitted through lineage and which contaminates all members of the family. While courtesy stigma operates across a range of arenas, Goffman offers a particular example of a 12 year-old daughter whose father has been incarcerated as someone who may experience courtesy stigma (page 43). One consequence of stigma is that it produces spoiled identities which possess an ‘undesired differentness’ and which need to be carefully managed through social interaction. For example, in my own study of parents’ experiences of b ­ eing court-ordered to attend compulsory parenting courses as result of receiving a Parenting Order, parents managed their spoiled identities (and their formal positioning as a ‘bad parent’) by challenging the parenting expertise

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that underpins those parenting courses. They did this by challenging ideas of ­‘normal’ child development (“he’s not a normal type of lad”) and by overtly agreeing with the parenting prescriptions while privately ignoring them (“It’s a matter of making all the right noises”) (Holt, 2010: 417). Over the years, Goffman’s work has undergone refinement and development. For example, Scambler (2009) differentiates between stigma, which refers to an acquired characteristic beyond one’s control and which deserves pity, and deviance, which refers to a characteristic acquired through one’s own moral failing, and which therefore deserves blame. Subsequent post-structuralist analyses of the spoiled identity have suggested that it is a product of an exercise of power which reinforces socially-constructed divisions of normality and abnormality (Gilmore & Somerville, 1994). This is managed – and resisted – by drawing on culturally-available knowledge and biographical particulars during social interaction (Schneider, 2003). Key Reading: Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. London: Prentice Hall.

3.1  Offending and Families: Impacts and Challenges

It is difficult to estimate how many families are affected by the offending of family members. In June 2019–June 2020, 1.34 million people in England and Wales were dealt with by the criminal justice system, of which 1.13 million were prosecuted, with a conviction rate of 87%1 (Ministry of Justice, 2020a). The prosecution ratio between men and women is 74:26, and men are significantly more likely to be involved in serious crimes, including violence and homicide.2 Each individual who appears in the statistics will likely have family in some meaningful sense, and in this section, we explore what we know about the experiences of these families. In the first part, we explore the parents of criminalised children, and in the second part, we explore the families of other criminalised people such as partners, husbands and parents.

1 This data includes a 58% fall in prosecutions that took place in the final quarter (April– June 2020) as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions that were in place. 2 There are no records for those who identify as non-binary

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3.1.1  The Challenges of Parenting Criminalised Children

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In 2019–2020, 24,578 children and young people were proceeded against at court in England and Wales (YJB, 2021).3 The demands made on a parent whose child is involved in the youth justice system are significant: aside from the particular legal demands made on parents who are issued with a Parenting Order (see 7 Box 2.3), parents must also navigate a whole host of other challenges. For example, being the ‘named contact’ means that parents spend much of their time ‘waiting for the phone to ring’ for requests to attend the police station if an incident is reported, or to attend court with their child if the case progresses. Parents may be asked to act as an Appropriate Adult4—a role that parents have reported as feeling both ill-equipped for or too emotional to perform (Talbot et al., 2015). If the parent is in paid employment, such continual demands may result in parents having to leave their job. If children are sentenced, then it is usually the parents who are required to ensure that their child complies with the sentence requirements. For example, parents might need to drive their child to their appointments with their youth worker, or they might need to make sure that their child complies with a curfew. As one mother remarked when describing taking her 17-year-old son to his appointments at an Attendance Centre,5 ‘It’s me that’s doing the time, not him’ (Holt, 2009: 347). Parents may also face the difficult decision of whether to report to the police any suspicions they have of their child’s offending. In doing so they must assess the likely consequences for their child (versus not doing it). It is also important to recognise that a number of activities constitute ‘delinquency’ beyond those which are criminalised—these may include verbal abuse, dishonesty, breaking of curfews, truancy, alcohol misuse and general boisterousness. All of this needs to be managed, and parents often report that they have implemented many strategies over many years in an attempt to prevent their child from coming to the attention of youth justice agencies—

3 Children and young people (10–17 years) make up approximately two per cent of all prosecutions. 4 In England and Wales, an Appropriate Adult is required whenever a young person (or a vulnerable adult) is interviewed voluntarily or is detained by police. Their role is to protect the interests of the young person by advising and supporting them and by observing that all police practices and protocols are being followed. 5 An Attendance Centre is sometimes used as an alternative to custody and is a place where young people are required to regularly attend (e.g. once a week) for a set number of hours.

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these include seeking counselling for their child, bargaining with their child, implementing positive and negative reinforcement strategies and adopting ‘tough love’ approaches (Sturges & Hanrahan, 2011). In some cases, parents and other family members may themselves be the victims of their children’s offending, through verbal, emotional, physical and/or economic abuse (known as ‘child/adolescent-to-parent violence’—see 7 Chapter 5). Research has found that parents of children involved in offending experience high levels of stress, tiredness, shame and social problems. These effects are pronounced in mothers—particularly lone mothers, who receive and experience ‘parent blame’ more acutely than fathers (Ambert 1999). In part, this is because the responsibility for meeting these challenges usually falls to mothers, for reasons related to the gendering of parenting practices in many households. One of these challenges involves the emotional labour (see 7 Box 3.1) of managing other family members’ emotional lives and which might include, for example, hiding their knowledge of their child’s offending from other family members, or negotiating with magistrates to ensure that parental sanctions, such as Parenting Orders, are not also given to their child’s father (Holt, 2009). Sometimes youth justice practices exacerbate these gendered divisions of labour: for example, police protocol is that only one parent can be in the custody suite with the child. We also know that some criminal justice practices are explicitly discriminatory—for example, Parenting Orders are unequally distributed to mothers, particularly lone mothers and those of fewest economic resources (see 7 Chapter 2). Box 3.1: Emotional Labour Emotional labour is a sociological concept derived from Hochschild’s (1983) analysis of the work involved in the then-emerging service economy. Such work required the management of one’s own and others’ emotions and was relational work rather than more traditionally task-based work, and it was skilled and intensive work in terms of the emotional expression (and suppression) that it demanded. Hochschild referred to such work as emotional labour, and used the example of women employed as air stewards (‘wearing their smile’) to illustrate. Hochschild recognised emotional labour as having both a positive and a negative impact on both those who engage in it and those who are recipients of it: while often functionally necessary and sometimes enjoyable, engaging in emotional labour could be physically tiring, emotionally disturbing and sometimes stigmatising.

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Like any other organisation, emotional labour is also necessary to ensure the functioning of families, and many studies have since explored its gendered contours within family dynamics. In particular, research suggests that mothers take primary responsibility for the emotional labour associated with everyday caring (e.g. soothing an upset child). Emotional labour applies to all aspects of family life, but it particularly applies in contexts when families are dealing with crime and the criminal justice system. Such experiences involve the management of a wide range of complex, and sometimes contradictory, emotions including guilt, shame, loss, anger, fear, hope and hopelessness. Much of this management falls to the wives and mothers in the family and, as this book highlights, it can take its toll.

Criminalised Children and Mother-Blaming The gendered nature of these parenting challenges also relates to a broader culture of mother-blame (Ladd-Taylor & Umansky, 1997). Mother-blaming found particular legitimacy in the dominant ideas emerging from psychological theories of child development in the early twentieth century (see 7 Chapter 2). In particular, it is underpinned by assumptions about the importance of the maternal attachment figure in the early years of life and the unique capability of mothers to fulfil all of their child’s psychosocial needs. The production of parentcraft from the middle of the twentieth century has defined ‘good motherhood’ in narrow ways that reflect White, middle-class, Westernised values, and mothers must carefully manage the presentation of their childcare practices to avoid accusations of being either ‘overly protective’ or ‘overly permissive’. Historically, psychiatric discourses have blamed mothers for a range of so-called ‘pathologies’, including anorexia, homosexuality, autism and schizophrenia. For example, in their review of 125 scholarly articles written by mental health professionals, Caplan and McQuordale (1985) found that mothers were blamed for 72 different kinds of problems in their offspring. A culture of mother-blame also operates as an effective form of regulation because it seeps into all aspects of social life: it can be found in the print, broadcast and e-media; in film and fiction; in scientific discourses and in policy documents, legislation and political rhetoric. It could even be argued that a culture of mother blame acts as a form of governmentality (see 7 Chapter 2). That is, alongside the formal and coercive regulation of particular citizens (e.g. through criminal justice sanctions), we also govern our-

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selves informally through non-coercive methods as we turn the normalising gaze upon ourselves and each other. Thus, we point the finger at mothers of ‘naughty children’ in supermarkets, and we reproduce ideas about how ‘dysfunctional mother-son relationships’ explain serial killing (amongst other crimes) through our consumption of crime thrillers. One consequence of a culture of mother-blame is that social problems such as poverty, mental illness and violence are deemed to be the result of a moral failing of mothers. In relation to youth offending, mothers have been widely documented in attempts to identify its causes, with particular attention focused on working-class mothers (see Griffin, 1993) and single mothers (see Mann & Roseneil, 1994). 3.1.2  Families as  ‘Secondary Victims’

As well as parents, other family members are also impacted by their loved one’s involvement in offending and its aftermath. Howarth and Rock (2000) suggest that such families should be considered as secondary victims, because of the extent of the harms caused to families by both the initial offending and the criminal justice processes that may follow. According to Howarth and Rock (2000), the impact of crime on families can include: 5 Physical and mental distress e.g. sleeplessness, anxiety, anger, confusion, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and isolation 5 Guilt e.g. that they should have known about the offence, or should have stopped it, or that they are being punished for their own past misdemeanours 5 Transformation of identity e.g. ‘Murderer’s Mother’ 5 Fear of ‘bad blood’ e.g. fear that other family members are also capable of committing such crimes, including themselves 5 Discrimination e.g. in employment, education and access to services (such as health and housing) 5 Personal attacks e.g. through arson, graffiti and vandalism of their home, as well as physical attacks and threats 5 Sense of loss and bereavement e.g. loss of their ‘pre-offence life’ and their pre-offence ‘family story’; loss of their previous identity; grief for past ignorance (‘loss of innocence’) and for their relative’s physical presence (who may be lost to imprisonment or death). It is important to understand that these impacts do not happen all at once, and the experience is rarely felt as a single ‘event’. Instead, such families

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experience a continual process of adjustment, which may involve a number of key phases, such as: 1. The discovery of the crime—which may be piecemeal over time 2. The day(s) in court—which is often where family members are first identified as ‘X’s mother’, and where they first see the impact the crime has had on the victims 3. Sentencing—which, in some cases, involves custody. Some high-profile crimes may also result in families experiencing intrusive press reports and vigilantism. Yet despite these impacts, there is very little support available for such families. In some cases, help is requested by families long before their loved one commits an offence, but such help is rarely forthcoming. Some support is available for the families of those imprisoned, but even this is often focused on the practical challenges of negotiating prison life, rather than on the emotional challenges of managing the harms caused. As discussed in 7 Chapter 2, some support is available for parents of children and young people involved in the youth justice system, though this is often focused on the goals of crime prevention rather than on helping family members deal with the emotional and practical demands that such experiences present. Condry’s work with the families of those who have committed serious offences explored the emotional landscape of such experiences. Drawing on Goffman’s concept of ‘courtesy stigma’, Condry (2007) highlighted how a family member’s master status is defined in terms of their relationship to the criminalised person, and that this kind of stigma has particular qualities based on notions of familial shame and blame. According to Condry, there are five kinds of rationale on which the families of those who offend are shamed, and these operate around ideas of familial contamination and culpability to form a ‘web of shame’ (. Fig. 3.1). According to Condry (2007), the basis of familial stigma operates on assumptions about contamination, whether that contamination is through genetics (e.g. ‘bad blood’) or through close proximity to those who offended (e.g. through living together). It also operates on assumptions about causality, because the family member: i. did something, perhaps in the long-term past (e.g. were a ‘bad parent’), or in the recent past (e.g. colluded in the crime or its cover-up) ii. didn’t do something, perhaps because it is felt that they should have known about the offending (or its likelihood) or should have stopped it iii. are continuing to support the offender (e.g. visiting them in prison).

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3

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. Fig. 3.1  The ‘web of shame’ felt by families of those who commit serious offences (adapted from Condry, 2007)

Together the different rationales form a tight network that is difficult for families to escape. Even if they are able to resist accusations of causality, it is almost impossible for family members to escape accusations of contamination. The consequences of stigma are profound: aside from experiences of discrimination from others (which can impact work, finances, leisure and social relationships), the emotional strain of living with shame and the continual engagement in impression management can be very damaging to health and wellbeing. Other research has found that the extent and depth of stigma experienced by the families of those who offend varies according to the nature of the crime. Families of those who engage in sex offences (Farkas & Miller, 2007) and the families of those with drug dependencies (Corrigan et al., 2006) experience greater familial stigma, while families of those whose offending involves engagement in political conflicts experience less stigma (McEvoy et al., 1999). Other research has looked at specific impacts on specific family members. For example, there is evidence that being a younger sibling of a known gang member can produce stigmatising and negative attitudes from teachers towards those siblings (Medina et al., 2012), while similar stigmatising effects have been reported by the children of those who have engaged in sexual offences (Levenson & Tewkesbury, 2009).

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Box 3.2: Family Forensic DNA

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DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is found in almost every human cell and each individual’s particular DNA sequencing (or genotype) enables the identification of their own unique DNA profile. If DNA is left at a crime scene (perhaps through blood, semen or skin cells), then a sample can be taken and DNA markers can be identified and compared with a suspect’s DNA profile (usually taken via a mouth swab). The odds that another unrelated person shares the same set of DNA markers with those of the suspect are infinitesimally small (approximately one in several hundred billion). This allows confident predictions to be made about whether the suspect is likely to be the offender. Since the mid-1990s, many countries have routinely compared DNA evidence found at a crime scene with DNA profiles stored in their national DNA database to identify ‘absolute matches’ to help implicate (or eliminate) a suspect. DNA databases provide an ‘Offender Index’ by storing the DNA profiles of anyone who has been convicted of a crime (in some jurisdictions, this also includes those who have been arrested and/or charged). DNA databases also provide a ‘Forensic Index’, which stores the DNA profiles of missing persons, profiles from unsolved crime scenes, and profiles of unidentified human remains. As of March 2019, the UK DNA database held DNA profiles of around nine percent of the population, mostly adult males. Throughout the 2000s, family forensic DNA has been increasingly used to identify suspects by comparing the DNA found at crime scenes with the DNA database against a set number of ‘DNA markers’ (say, 11 out of 20) to identify ‘partial matches’ (that is, those persons who share some of the genotype with the offender). Those who share a genotype are likely to be relatives of the offender. For example, the genetic parents, siblings and children (known as ‘first degree relatives’) of an offender will share at least half of their genotype with them. While this cannot be used as evidence of a suspect’s guilt, it can provide useful investigative leads in serious crimes. The extent of its reliability is determined by the rarity of the genotype within the population, so its usefulness will vary as it may produce an overwhelming number of family members to find and interview. Furthermore, family forensic DNA is controversial for a number of inter-related reasons. First, the process of interviewing family members about potential suspects may be distressing for them, particularly if asked for intimate information. Second, familial searches are likely to exacerbate the pre-existing racial and geographic biases already within the DNA database. Third, it enables additional police scrutiny of individuals whose family members have had previous involvement of the criminal justice system, raising concerns about

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fairness and the differential impact on particular populations (see Greely et al., 2006). However, more recent advances in family forensic DNA that use public-access genealogy databases to identify suspects may eliminate at least some of these concerns. The most well-known case to date involves the apprehension of Joseph James DeAngelo, who committed a large number of rapes and murders across California between 1974 and 1986. In 2015, a DNA sample from the crime scene was uploaded to GedMatch, a genealogical website that helps people find relatives by voluntarily uploading their DNA samples. Partial matches were found with a number of the suspect’s distant relatives, from which a family tree was constructed and two main suspects were identified. DNA samples were taken from each suspect: one suspect was eliminated through a DNA sample, the other suspect was DeAngelo, whose subsequent DNA sample was found to be an absolute match to the crime scene sample. DeAngelo was arrested in April 2018 and in June 2020 he pleaded guilty to 13 counts of first-degree murder. He is currently serving a life sentence.

Questions for reflection: – Should family members report their suspicions of a loved one to the police? What might be the reasons for doing so, and for not doing so? What factors might influence their decision e.g. type of crime, nature of relationship (parent, sibling, etc.)?

3.2  The Families of Incarcerated Persons

There are currently over 78,000 adults incarcerated in England and Wales (Ministry of Justice, 2021), and approximately 500 children in custody (Youth Custody Service, 2021). As the previous section highlighted, having a family member who is involved in the criminal justice system is a process and, in cases where a loved one is imprisoned, the process can last a lifetime. Research has found distinct phases to this experience, from the initial shock of the sentence, to the disorientation of the prison system, to the readjustment to everyday life and then, if applicable, to the family member’s release and resettlement. In this section, we discuss these experiences: in the first part, we examine experiences of a loved one’s entry into prison and in the second part we examine resettlement and the role of families in desistance.

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3.2.1  The Impact of Incarceration on Families

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Over 11 million people are imprisoned worldwide and, because of social and criminal justice policy choices, incarceration rates continue to increase. Questions about the purpose and usefulness of imprisonment have always been dominant within Criminology, with concerns continually raised about human rights abuses in prison, questionable rehabilitation strategies, high recidivism rates, the disproportionate imprisonment of Black and minority ethnic populations and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and the high prevalence of mental health problems, self-harm and suicide within prison populations. But beyond the individual and social harms caused by imprisonment, there is a burgeoning research on its familial impact. Of course, the impact may not always be negative and some families may feel relief about a relative’s imprisonment, and it may have a positive impact on their lives. However, for the majority of families, the impact is experienced as negative. There has been some debate as to how we should conceptualise such harms, with criminologists deploying various terms such as ‘collateral consequences’, ‘secondary punishment’, ‘hidden sentences’ and ‘referred pains of imprisonment’ (see Condry and Minson [2020] for a discussion). Nevertheless, the research is consistent in highlighting a number of challenges faced by the families of those imprisoned. These include: 5 Emotional Challenges: Continual worry about the health, safety and welfare of their relative in prison, particularly if they are deemed ‘vulnerable’ (e.g. if they have a disability and/or a mental health problem) 5 Administrative Challenges: Learning how to navigate the criminal justice system and the prison system (e.g. preparing for an appeal, making a complaint or raising a concern about prison practices) 5 Financial Challenges: Income loss and financial demands, often through a number of routes (e.g. loss of their relative’s salary and/or contribution to household income, costs of prison visits and reverse charge calls, debt repayment, legal costs, childcare costs) 5 Social Challenges: An all-consuming focus on ‘supporting X’ (e.g. writing letters to them and others, waiting for phone calls, planning visits, shopping for them). This is often to the detriment of other aspects of their own lives, including other family and social relationships. Such challenges can produce physical and mental health problems, housing concerns, financial hardship and feelings of worry, stigma, shame, guilt, isolation and loneliness for family members (Talbot et al., 2015). The loss of a

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family member to imprisonment is sometimes experienced as bereavement (Arditti, 2012) and families need to re-configure themselves around the absence. In some cases, this reconfiguration may involve new family members joining the household, as family members—particularly grandparents, who are the most common sources of kinship care—take on new childcare responsibilities which they may not have anticipated and which may produce its own set of own practical, financial and emotional hardships (see Raikes, 2016). Given that it is mostly men in prison, these impacts are felt most acutely by women, particularly Black and economically disadvantaged women. In her research with women who visited family members in California’s San Quentin State Prison, Comfort (2003: 79) refers to secondary prisonization in terms of the ‘restricted rights, diminished resources, social marginalization, and other consequences of penal confinement’ experienced by these women. The pains of family incarceration have also been documented by McCarthy and Adams (2019), who found that parents’ resolve to support their child strengthened once their child was incarcerated, and the anger, disappointment and hurt they felt about their child’s offence(s) was sidelined as they attempted to help their child survive life on the inside. The challenges that families face should be considered within a context of pre-existing disadvantage, and this can be understood in two ways. First, in terms of socio-economic disadvantage: across all Westernised jurisdictions,6 Black and minority ethnic groups, indigenous populations and those from economically deprived backgrounds are over-represented in the prison population. Thus, experiences of racism and other forms of discrimination are particularly likely to be encountered by the families of those imprisoned. Second, in terms of cumulative disadvantage: imprisonment compounds already-existing problems of economic, health, social and educational disadvantage, which are more common in prison populations and also amongst their families. More broadly, research by Lee, Porter and Comfort (2014) suggests that experiences of family imprisonment are damaging to citizenship, as family members’ experiences of the criminal justice system shape a perception that the state is neither legitimate nor fair, and has little concern for poor and minoritised populations. This has broader implications for political equality, with evidence of reduced engagement in civic and democratic processes (such as voting) for children of incarcerated parents. 6 For example, in England and Wales, 25% of those incarcerated are from Black and minority ethnic groups, compared with 14% of the general population (Ministry of Justice, 2017). In New Zealand, 51% of those incarcerated are from Maori populations, compared with 16% of the general population (New Zealand Department of Corrections, 2019).

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Prison Visits

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Much research has found that ongoing ‘positive family relationships’ help to reduce recidivism, improve the mental health of prisoners, encourage prison discipline and contribute to successful resettlement (see De Claire & Dixon, 2015 for a review). These ‘positive family relationships’ are primarily maintained by prison visits, which offer emotional and practical support for those imprisoned, and provide an important link to the outside world. However, prison visits often produce their own challenges which families must navigate. First, there are practical demands, in terms of the costs of travel, the time it takes to get there, and planning the journey (prisons are rarely located near train or bus stations). Quite often, people are imprisoned a long way away from home, and are frequently moved between prisons, and this can be difficult for families who want to maintain regular visits. This is particularly the case for families of women in prison, since fewer women’s prisons overall mean that, on average, women are incarcerated much further from their home and family. There are also additional financial costs, such as buying food from the canteen for their relative during the visit, and some families may ‘go without’ themselves to make sure they can afford it. Some travel costs may be made available for families on low incomes, but the application process can be difficult and costs are often required to be paid upfront and then claimed back. Second, there are bureaucratic demands, in terms of navigating the prison system itself. Quite often, different prisons have different visiting policies, and families need to ensure that they are compliant during their visit in terms of what to wear, what they are allowed to bring, where and how to check-in, what kind of identification documents are needed, how searches are performed and how to provide money for their relative. Third, there are communication demands, in terms of how to talk to their relative within such a setting. Families often report that it is difficult to know what to talk about during prison visits because they feel they have to avoid focusing on home problems (so that they do not worry their relative), while also avoiding talking positively about home-life (so that their relative does not feel like they are missing out). There is also pressure to avoid any topics which might cause conflict. Of course, it is important to recognise that people in prison are also managing similar communication demands, and this may result in everybody restricting conversations to ‘safe topics’ for similar reasons. However, while understandable, this inevitably creates difficulty in maintaining intimacy (see 7 Chapter 6), and both families and those in prison often report a process of ‘distancing’ from each

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other as time goes by. In some cases, this may eventually result in the dissolution of family relationships (DeHart et al., 2018). However, some family relationships may be more resilient than others: in their research, La Vigne et al. (2005) found that maternal relationships (i.e. mothers, grandmothers) tend to be more resilient through the incarceration process than relationships with romantic partners and with offspring. 3.2.2  Release, Resettlement and Desistance

While of course many family members look forward to their relative’s release from prison, the emotional landscape of this is not straightforward. Everyone may have high expectations about what ‘returning home’ will be like, and research suggests that after the initial ‘honeymoon period’ following reunification, families need to learn how to live together again within this new context. This readjustment is often difficult and can be disappointing. Depression can be common in those who have been released from prison, and this can be difficult for families to deal with. Families may also live with the constant fear that their relative will be returned to prison for breaking the conditions of their parole. Family members may be involved in providing additional support in terms of financial assistance, help with employment and housing, help with childcare and supporting their loved one through drug and/or alcohol recovery—all of which can produce its own stresses and strains. Close family members may also feel isolated from extended family members who may no longer invite them to family celebrations, or who may be asked to attend without their loved one. There are also other practical issues: 5 Housing: People released from prison may not be able to return to their family home, and accommodation will need to be approved. Furthermore, for some offences, re-housing may require notifying neighbours, schools and residential centres, and there may be local opposition to this. 5 Employment: There may be barriers to employment, due to both restrictions on particular trades and professions (depending on the nature of the offence) and because of prejudice (and fears that there will be prejudice towards the business that employs them). This may place extra financial burdens on the family. 5 Disruption of home-life: There may be invasion of privacy and disruption of family routines. For example, probation requirements may involve the restriction of home computers, and probation officers may

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make unannounced visits. Family members maybe questioned about substance use or about visitors to the family home, which can increase feelings of scrutiny and surveillance.

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Some families are better able to cope with these challenges, and experience better outcomes post-settlement, than other families. In their longitudinal study of families’ experiences of resettlement following a father’s release from prison, which interviewed mothers, fathers and their children (where appropriate) both before and after release, Lösel et al. (2012) identified a number of predictors that were most consistently linked to positive resettlement experiences. These included: 5 High-quality family relationships 5 Good communication between the father and family during imprisonment 5 High frequency of contact during imprisonment 5 Intensive involvement of fathers with children before prison 5 Social support from family and friends 5 Participation in family support programmes 5 Greater material resources prior to imprisonment (e.g. income, employment, housing) 5 Less previous involvement with crime and the criminal justice system. However, for some families, the nature of the crime will also shape resettlement experiences. In particular, evidence suggests that the families of those convicted for sex offences experience particularly acute shame, something which has increased since the introduction of sex offender registration in the 1990s. There are a number of ways that family members cope with these challenges. In a US study of the families of those who were convicted for sex offences, families described a process of ‘cocooning’ following release. This involved isolating themselves from others, including wider family members and their community and focusing on their own needs, to enable them to cope with the scrutiny, shame and fear (Farkas & Miller, 2007).

Desistance and the Family Desistance refers to the process of ceasing to offend (‘going straight’) and families are often considered to be an important part of this process. Early theoretical models of desistance explained desistance in terms of ageing and maturational processes (since, as the age-crime curve highlights, most people ‘grow out of crime’). Desistance has also been explained in terms of

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how life-course milestones (such as parenthood) produce new forms of social control through the development of social bonds (see Sampson & Laub, 2005). Less deterministic models of desistance explain it in terms of the individual meanings and values people ascribe to their life-course-related experiences and the corresponding changes this makes to personal and social identities (Maruna, 2001). This may involve the loss of old identities (e.g. ‘offender’) and the emergence of new ones (e.g. ‘father’) that are worked through within people’s own life narratives. From this perspective, it is clear that imprisonment is likely to hamper the desistance process, since it limits opportunities for identity-making (including the development of intimate relationships) that new life experiences may bring. Research has identified key familial factors that encourage desistance. These include marriage and/or being in a positive intimate relationship, having children, and having positive relationships with wider family members such as parents, grandparents and siblings. In the latter case, this seems to be due to the family providing emotional support and access to resources through social capital (see 7 Chapter 8). When family members are unsupportive or are themselves involved in offending, then recidivism is more likely (Cobbina, 2010). While those familial factors involved in desistance appear to hold for men and women, the meaning and value that family relationships hold are deeply structured by gender, race and class. For example, research has highlighted the role that masculinity (Gadd & Farrall, 2004) and ethnicity (Calverley, 2013) play in the mediation of family relationships and desistance processes. More recently, intersectional approaches have been used to explore desistance and families. For example, Pannucio and Christian (2019) conducted life history interviews with 17 young African-American men who had recently been released from prison, as well as interviews with members of their families. They found that family processes, notably their own adultification within the family hierarchy, intersected with poverty, race and masculinity to provide the context for their initial involvement in crime. Following release from prison, their families offered financial and emotional support to the young men to ‘go straight’, despite their own precarious economic positions. However, their families also made it clear that such support had an expiration date, and that the young men needed to take responsibility for other family members, as this was what ‘being a man’ was in a context of racial discrimination and economic disadvantage. However, when combined with the stigma attached to having a criminal record, many of these young men struggled to ‘be a man’ through legitimate employment,

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and often returned to crime as a way of ensuring that they met their families’ (and their own) expectations of fulfilling their family obligations. The importance of family relationships to desistance is illuminated by the role that probation officers often play in helping to repair difficult or estranged family relationships between their client and their client’s family following release from prison (Farrall, 2013). However, desistance is not without costs. For many leaving prison, attempts at desistance are a painful process involving self-imposed isolation (to avoid temptation) and consequent loneliness. For those who do not already have strong family relationships, this makes the goal of creating new intimate relationships—that may eventually lead to parenthood and the establishment of a new family unit— much more difficult and little support is available to help develop these attachments (Nugent and Schinkel, 2016). Box 3.3: Methodological Challenges: Using arts-based methods in family criminology When research aims to listen to people’s experiences, then interviews are considered to be the standard method of data collection. However, interviews are not necessarily the most appropriate method for research with particular people, or for investigating particular topics. When researching sensitive topics, particularly with children and young people, then direct questioning through interviews may feel too intrusive to the participant and, in psychoanalytic terms, it may result in them engaging in defence mechanisms to avoid the discomfort that such questioning might provoke. Furthermore, responding to the question may be just too difficult to do through verbal means. In such circumstances, arts-based methods may be more useful in enabling experiences to be articulated. In her research about young men who had experienced violence and abuse growing up, and who were now seen as ‘risky’ through their involvement in gangs and street culture, Levell (2019) used music elicitation to direct the life story interviews. Levell asked each participant to bring three music videos to their research meeting, which were then watched together and the participants talked about the music, lyrics and images and what they mean to them in relation to their past experiences. Levell did not ask any prepared questions, and found that the music elicitation technique not only acted as an aide-memoire in the participants’ recall of childhood experiences, but it enabled participants to express thoughts and feelings that they may otherwise find difficult through the use of metaphor and image. It also helped the participants to structure and pace the interviews on their own terms.

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A different approach was adopted by Dallaire et al. (2012), who explored how contact with a parent in prison impacted on children’s representations of attachment in their family drawings. Children (aged 6–10 years) were asked to draw a picture of their family using coloured pencils on white paper and were then asked to describe the drawing (e.g. who was in it and what they were doing). The drawings were assessed on a range of dimensions, which measured quality of attachment (see 7 Box 2.1). These dimensions included vitality, tension/anger, family pride and happiness, vulnerability, emotional distance and role reversal (see Fury et al., 1997). The researchers found higher ratings of role reversal in the drawings by children who had more frequent contact with their incarcerated parent (e.g. through visits, mail, and phone contact). Role reversal was depicted in drawings by, for example, the mother being more vulnerable, or having less authority than the child. The researchers speculated that this may be the result of adultification processes which can be common in children with a parent in prison and who, in this project, may have received messages from their incarcerated parent that they needed to ‘take care’ of their caregiver or, in the case of male children, ‘be the man of the house’ (Dallaire et al., 2012: 176).

3.3  The Children of Incarcerated Parents

While there is very little official data collected on the families of those in prison, there is at least some official monitoring of the children who have parents in prison, in terms of their age and number (although it is not routinely collected). In England and Wales, it is estimated that 310,000 children every year have a parent in prison (NICCO, 2021). In this section, we discuss what we know about those children, with the first part exploring the impact that parental imprisonment has on children, and the second part exploring the role of Mother and Baby Units (MBUs) and their impact on family relationships. 3.3.1  The Impact on Parental Imprisonment on Children

As this chapter has emphasised, experiencing the criminalisation of a family member is a process rather than an event, and this is as much true for children as it is for adults. Prior to a parent’s imprisonment, children may witness criminal activity and processes of arrest, and may be aware of a parent’s court attendances. Whether their parent is remanded in custody or sentenced into cus-

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tody, children will experience separation from their parent and, in some cases, changes to their home, everyday routines and carer arrangements. If children continue contact with their parent, they will also experience changes to the parental relationship as it adjusts to a new penal setting where interaction takes place through highly monitored prison visits, phone calls and letters. As Robertson (2007) notes, a number of emotional reactions may accompany these experiences at different times, including guilt, sadness, anger and grief. Other family members may engage in emotional labour (see 7 Box 3.1) to ‘gatekeep’ children’s emotions while they also manage their own emotional journey and practical challenges (see 7 Sect. 3.2). Furthermore, children may not be told the truth about what is happening, and may instead be told that their parent is in hospital, in the army, or ‘working away’. While carers often lie to children on the assumption that they are protecting them, such untruths may increase feelings of confusion and distrust: research suggests that children have better outcomes if they are told the truth about a parent’s imprisonment (Miller, 2006). Insufficient explanations may also produce ambiguous loss (see 7 Box 7.2) in children, resulting in anxiety amid concerns that other significant adults will also disappear from their lives. However, care should be taken to clearly explain what ‘prison’ is: children’s perceptions of prison can be more horrifying than the reality, and this may increase their feelings of anxiety. This has been powerfully illustrated in the Children of Prisoners Europe project where children with parents who are imprisoned were asked to draw pictures of what they imagined their parent’s prison life to be like (see Image 3.1). As we learned in 7 Chapter 2, ‘family criminality’ has been identified as a ‘risk factor’ for children offending themselves. In the influential Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, Murray and Farrington (2005) found that boys with an incarcerated parent were five times as likely to end up in prison themselves compared with boys who had experienced separation from their parent for other reasons. The apparent link between parental incarceration and youth offending has been replicated many times in research studies, and its scientific legitimacy has certainly contributed to the stigma experienced by children whose parents are in prison. It also contributes to the political rhetoric that is used to justify particularly intrusive and criminalising youth justice policies7. Of course, parental incar7 For example, Hazel Blears, then UK Minister of State for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety, claimed in 2004: ‘About 125,000 kids have a dad in prison. That’s a huge risk factor. Something like 65 percent of those kids will end up in prison themselves. We need to track the children who are most at risk’ (Woolf, 2004).

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. Image 3.1  Depictions of prison by children who have a parent in prison (Source © Children of Prisoners Europe)

ceration is linked to a whole host of poor outcomes in children, including mental health problems, poor academic achievement, substance misuse and unemployment (see Murray & Farrington, 2008 for a review). These poor outcomes appear to be worse for boys, for children aged 6–12 years, and

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in cases where their parent is imprisoned for a long period of time. All of these outcomes are related and cumulative, and it is difficult to untangle the specific impact of parental imprisonment from the impact of the whole set of traumatic and disruptive experiences that take place before, during and after a parent is imprisoned. Furthermore, it is difficult to untangle its impact from the wide range of pre-existing economic, health, social, health and educational disadvantages that are experienced by imprisoned individuals and their families, including their children. There has been some useful qualitative research that has looked at the impact of parental imprisonment on children. There is evidence of trauma following parental imprisonment, which may not be due to the separation itself but to the traumatic context, which includes experiences of stigma and strain. Strain encompasses a number of elements, including emotional strain (for example, the continuing concern for a parent’s welfare). Prison visits may also cause strain because of the likely long-distance travel, the boredom of waiting rooms, prison search procedures, restrictions on physical contact during visits, and the emotional difficulty of saying goodbye to parents at the end of a visit. As discussed earlier, while family prison visits are often considered by state agencies as a positive process that helps to both maintain order and reduce re-offending, they may not be experienced positively by family members, including children. There is also evidence of children experiencing adultification following parental imprisonment, where they prioritise the management of other family members’ practical and emotional needs, to the detriment of their own wellbeing (Codd, 2008).8 In their longitudinal study looking at the familial impact of imprisonment and resettlement of fathers (see 7 Sect. 3.2.1), Lösel et al. (2012) found that, for children, their father’s absence often provoked ‘sadness, anxiety, confusion and anger’ and many children did not speak to others about their father’s imprisonment because of concerns about negative reactions. They also found that, while some children coped alone, most of them found support and comfort from their mothers, friends or other family members. Finally, while most children were positive about their fathers return, some found it difficult if it involved (as it sometimes did) the breakdown of their parents’ relationship and/or the re-emergence of their father’s alcohol and/ or substance misuse problems (Lösel et al., 2012).

8 Of course, none of these impacts are specific to child-aged offspring, and recent research has found that adult-aged offspring have similar experiences when they have a parent in prison (Swallow, 2017).

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Poor outcomes for children following parental incarceration appear to be worse when it is a mother who is incarcerated. International criminological research tells us that prisons contain far fewer women than men, with women and girls constituting between two and ten percent of the global prison population.9 Therefore, children are significantly more likely to experience a father in prison than a mother. In 95% of cases where a mother is imprisoned, children have to leave the family home and are likely to face multiple care changes. Research suggests that very few children whose mothers are imprisoned take up residence with their father, and such children are more likely to live in foster care or with extended family in kinship care. One research study found that, for 85% of mothers, their time in custody was the first time they had been separated from their children for a significant period of time, making parental imprisonment particularly traumatic for both mothers and their children (Home Office, 1997). Concern about the impact of such mother–child separations led to the emergence of mother and baby units in prisons, an issue to which we now turn. 3.3.2  Mother and Baby Units

Criminological research has continually found that, on entry to prison, women have a high incidence of poverty, diagnosed mental health illness, substance misuse and drug dependency, and histories of sexual violence and domestic abuse victimisation (see Corston, 2007). Of those women, approximately 100 each year are pregnant while in prison.10 An examination of both health research on pregnancy and criminological research on female imprisonment tells us that both experiences can precipitate (or exacerbate) anxiety and depression, physical health problems and relationship difficulties. This suggests that women who are pregnant in prison, and/or who have recently given birth, are a particularly vulnerable group. Since 1957, international standards have prescribed that imprisoned women should give birth in an ordinary hospital and should have access to the same healthcare as non-imprisoned women before, during and post birth (Council of Europe, 2006). Furthermore, the United Nations (UN) Bangkok Rules (2013) stipulate that women in prison should receive gender-specific care. Quantifiable physical health outcomes, such as birth weight and stillbirth risk, are

9 In the United Kingdom, women and girls make up five per cent of the prison population. 10 This equates to approximately 6–7% of the female prison population

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more positive for the babies born in prison than for those similarly disadvantaged born outside of prison (Knight & Plugge, 2005). This has been explained in terms of prison providing access to health care, nutrition and shelter, together with the absence of violent partners and harmful substances. However, qualitative studies that focus on women’s narratives highlight the emotional toll that pregnancy in prison can cause, and women’s apprehension, grief and loss are evident (Shaw et al., 2015). Furthermore, recent research highlights that these international safeguards are not always adhered to, with women in prison deprived of adequate access to healthcare, medication, antenatal classes and resources, trained midwives and basic pregnancy provisions (such as maternity clothes, breast pads and appropriate bedding). There were also reports of women having to give birth in prison cells (Abbott, 2018). For over a century, mothers have been allowed to keep their babies with them in custody. The first Mother and Baby Unit (MBU) opened in 1971 with a clear aim to support the mother–baby relationship in the best interests of the child. MBUs offer designated living accommodation within prisons to mothers whose babies are aged 0–18 months and they are offered to pregnant women and to women sent into custody who already have babies. In England and Wales, MBUs are run by multidisciplinary teams and include representatives from social services, the Prison Service and local health authorities, all working across a wide range of legislative frameworks (e.g. Prison Rules, Children Act 1989; UNCRC; Early Years Foundation). In England and Wales, six women’s prisons and one Secure Training Centre (STC)11 offer MBUs, providing spaces for up to 65 women. The implications of so few places being available is that it is likely that an available MBU is hundreds of miles away from a mother’s home, so she may need to choose between being with her baby and being close to her home, with the regular contact with family members (including her other children) that this facilitates. Access to an MBU is not a right, and mothers must apply to the admissions board, where her application is assessed by a multidisciplinary team on a case-by-case basis in terms of its individual merits. Research has found that women with a history of ‘poor parenting’ are less likely to be given a place on an MBU, as are women who are deemed as ‘poorly disciplined’ and/or are unable to get along with others. There is no lockdown 11 Secure Training Centres are secure accommodation for the detention of children aged 12–17 years. Children and young people may also be accommodated in Secure Children’s Homes (aged 10–14 years) and Youth Offending Institutions (aged 15–21 years).

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policy in MBUs, and consequently, they make greater self-regulatory demands on mothers, with prison officers needing different disciplinary strategies to ensure that order is maintained. Birmingham et al. (2006) compared women housed in MBUs with incarcerated women who had babies and were not housed in MBUs, and found that women in MBUs had less psychiatric morbidity (though still a significant amount), fewer convictions for violent crimes and were in stable relationships. However, many of the issues that are frequently identified in the female prison population (such as experiences of past trauma and/ or histories of childhood in care) also apply to women in MBUs, who often require additional support to them to develop attachment bonds with their infants. Mothers maintain parental responsibility for their child in an MBU and are required to engage in work, or attend education-based or offence-related courses, at least part-time while their babies are cared for in the nursery. Nursery staff routinely take babies out of the prison to prevent institutionalisation. Post-release follow-up studies of MBUs have found positive results, in that mothers who were resident in MBUs have been found to have lower levels of recidivism, substance misuse and mental health problems compared with mothers with infants who were imprisoned outside of MBUs (e.g. Dolan et al., 2013). Most women serve very short sentences: the average sentence length for women in the United Kingdom is 42 days, and most women can therefore leave prison with their babies. However, for women serving long sentences, the issue of how they should be eventually separated from their baby needs to be addressed. Separations take place when it is in the best interests of the child to do so, and current UK policy is to effect separation when the baby is around eighteen months (Ministry of Justice, 2020b). The baby is likely to be moved to live with another family member, and there can be difficulties in moving the mother to a prison close to the child and organising additional visits to ensure maintenance of the mother–child attachment bond. The impact of separation between a mother and infant can be traumatic: the process may repeat the losses and separations from the woman’s own childhood, and she may experience re-traumatisation. It is also very damaging to a mother’s own sense of self-identity to have her child taken away from her. The impact of separation also reaches beyond the mother–infant dyad as it can be profoundly upsetting for other mothers and babies on the unit, as well as for the nursery staff working there. Overnight contact between mothers in prison and their older children is also possible. For example, Acorn House is a family facility on the grounds of Askham Grange women’s prison in England which provides over-

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night contact for mothers and their children. It enables them to have family time together and engage in a range of activities such as playing board games and sharing a meal. It was developed by the Head of HMP Askham Grange in response to concerns about the impact that the loss of intimacy with her children was having on the mothers’ parenting confidence and self-esteem (as well as the impact it was having on children). There are no criteria regarding eligibility for the use of Acorn House, and it operates on the principle of what is in the best interests of the child. In their evaluation of this initiative, Raikes and Lockwood (2011) found that the children were positive about their private time with their mothers, which was not possible during normal prison visits where they felt inhibited from talking openly with their mothers. For some children, Acorn House was preferable to seeing their mother on home visits, which were monitored by their carer and other family members. The children also highly prized the positive impact that Acorn House had on their mothers’ wellbeing, which in turn positively impacted their own wellbeing. Mothers were also positive about the facility: they valued the privacy that Acorn House offered them and the ways in which it helped them to perform motherhood by attending to their child’s needs (such as preparing a meal for them and putting them to bed). This increased their parenting confidence and restored their attachment bond with their child(ren). However, for some mothers, there were downsides, most notably the profound sense of loss and grief they felt every time they had to say goodbye (Raikes & Lockwood, 2011, 2019). Questions for Reflection: – Should MBUs be a right for all women? What might be the arguments for and against? To what extent could babies in MBUs be considered as ‘secondary victims’? More broadly, to what extent should parenthood be considered in sentencing practices?

Box 3.4: Family Criminology in Practice: Trauma-informed policing during ‘home raids’ Concerns have been raised that children who witness a ‘home raid’ (i.e. police servicing an arrest or a search warrant) can find the process highly traumatising. Such practices often take place late at night or early in the morning, and are designed to be unexpected to ensure that the suspect, and any potential evidence, is present. However, it can be incredibly frightening for children to witness—seeing police break down doors, barge into their home, throw their belongings about, shout orders at family members, while watching their parent or loved one being taken away. One US study found that, of

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children whose parents were arrested, those who directly witnessed the arrest were 57% more likely to experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress compared with children who did not witness it (Phillips & Zhao, 2010). To address this problem, police in San Francisco have adopted a ‘trauma-informed policing’ approach that includes arrest protocols that supports and protects children. This protocol includes: avoiding the use of sirens and lights, ensuring that a carer is available to look after the child, and explaining what is happening in age-appropriate language. Other strategies include getting down to the children’s level, handing over teddy bears, giving teenagers time to rouse, letting the suspect say goodbye to family members and distributing information about local support agencies. Police also engage in child development training which ensures that they understand the needs of children and young people in such situations.

Useful Websites Children of Prisoners Europe 7 www.childrenofprisoners.eu. A pan-European network working on behalf of children with imprisoned parents with a focus on the protection of children’s rights. Website features research and information, news, resources for supporting children and a professional network to share resources, expertise and events to help support children. National Information Centre for Children of Offenders (UK) 7 www.nicco.org.uk. Provides a national directory of services, resources and research for professionals who may come into contact with children and families who have a family member who has been involved in offending. Partners of Prisoners Support Service (POPS) 7 www.partnersofprisoners.co.uk. Began as a peer support group in 1988 for the families of those who have offended, and is now a national charity that supports families by supporting families at HMP visitor centres, establishing a Black Prisoner Support Group, providing training to criminal justice practitioners and campaigning for better support for families across all aspects of the criminal justice system.

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Prison Advice and Care Trust (PACT) 7 www.prisonadvice.org.uk. National charity to support those in prison or who have offended, and their families. Offers prison visitor guides, court support service, peer support groups, family befriending service and operates the Prisoner’s Families Helpline (7 www.prisonersfamilies.org). World Prison Brief 7 www.prisonstudies.org. Online database providing statistics and information about prisons around the world (on 233 jurisdictions). Hosted by the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London.

References Abbott, L. J. (2018) The incarcerated pregnancy: An ethnographic study of perinatal women in English prisons (Unpublished doctoral thesis). Univesity of Hertfordshire, UK. Ambert, A. (1999). The effect of male delinquency on mothers and fathers: A heuristic study. Sociological Inquiry, 69(4), 621–640. Arditti, J. A. (2012). Parental incarceration and the family: Psychological and social effects of imprisonment on children, parents, and caregivers. New York University Press. Baldwin, L., & Raikes, B. (2019). Seen and heard: 100 poems by parents and children affected by imprisonment. Waterside Press. Birmingham, L., Coulson, D., Mullee, M., Kamal, M., & Gregoire, A. (2006). The mental health of women in prison mother and baby units. Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology, 17, 393–404. Calverley, A. (2013). Cultures of desistance: Rehabilitation, reintegration and ethnic minorities. Routledge. Caplan, P. J., & Hall-McCorquodale, I. (1985). Mother-blaming in major clinical journals. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 55(3), 345–353. Cobbina, J. E. (2010). Reintegration success and failure: Factors impacting reintegration among incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 49(3), 210–232. Codd, H. (2008). In the shadow of prison: Families, imprisonment and criminal justice. Willan. Comfort, M. L. (2003). In the tube at San Quentin: The “secondary prisonization” of women visiting inmates. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 32(1), 77–107. Condry, R. (2007). Families shamed: The consequences of crime for relatives of serious offenders. Willan. Condry, R., & Minson, S. (2020). Conceptualizing the effects of imprisonment on families: Collateral consequences, secondary punishment, or symbiotic harms? Theoretical Criminology. Corrigan, P. W., Watson, A. C., & Miller, F. E. (2006). Blame, shame, and contamination: the impact of mental illness and drug dependence stigma on family members. Journal of Family Psychology, 20(2), 239. Corston, J. (2007) The Corston report: A review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system. Home Office.

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Levell, J. (2019). “Those songs were the ones that made me, nobody asked me this question before”: Music Elicitation with ex-gang involved men about their experiences of childhood domestic violence and abuse. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 18, 1609406919852010. Levenson, J., & Tewksbury, R. (2009). Collateral damage: Family members of registered sex offenders. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 34(1–2), 54–68. Lösel, F., Pugh, G., Markson, L., Souza, K., &Lanskey, C. (2012). Risk and protective factors in the resettlement of imprisoned fathers with their families. Ormiston Children and Families Trust. Mann, K., & Roseneil, S. (1994). Some mothers do ‘Ave ‘Em: Backlash and the gender politics of the underclass debate. Journal of Gender Studies, 3(3), 317–331. Maruna, S. (2001). Making good: How ex-convicts reform and rebuild their lives. American Psychological Association. Medina, J., Ralphs, R., & Aldridge, J. (2012). Mentoring siblings of gang members: A template for reaching families of gang members? Children & Society, 26(1), 14–24. McCarthy, D., & Adams, M. (2019). “Yes, I can still parent. Until I die, he will always be my son”: Parental responsibility in the wake of child incarceration. Punishment & Society, 21(1), 89–106. McEvoy, K., O’Mahony, D., Horner, C., & Lyner, O. (1999). The home front. The families of politically motivated prisoners in Northern Ireland. British Journal of Criminology, 39(2), 175–197. Miller, K. (2006). The impact of parental incarceration on children: An emerging need for effective interventions. Child Adolescent Social Work Journal, 23, 472–486. Ministry of Justice. (2017). Exploratory analysis examining disproportionality of young black people (10–17 years old) in custody. London. Ministry of Justice. (2020a). Criminal Justice Statistics quarterly, England and Wales, July 2019 to June 2020. Ministry of Justice. 7 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/934391/criminal-justice-statistics-quarterly-june-2020.pdf. Ministry of Justice. (2020b). Review of operational policy on pregnancy, Mother and Baby Units and maternal separation. Ministry of Justice, UK. Ministry of Justice. (2021). Population bulletin: Weekly: 2 July 2021. Available from 7 https:// www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-population-figures-2021. Murray, J., & Farrington, D. P. (2005). Parental imprisonment: effects on boys’ antisocial behaviour and delinquency through the life-course. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 46(12), 1269–1278. Murray, J., & Farrington, D. P. (2008). The effects of parental imprisonment on children. Crime and justice, 37(1), 133–206. New Zealand Department of Corrections. (2019). Prison facts and statistics: March 2019 [online]. Available from 7 https://www.corrections.govt.nz/resources/research_and_statistics/ quarterly_prison_statistics/prison_stats_march_2019.html. Accessed 12 June 2019. NICCO, National Information Centre for Children of Offenders. (2021). 7 https://www.nicco. org.uk [online]. Nugent, B., & Schinkel, M. (2016). The pains of desistance. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 16(5), 568–584. Panuccio, E., & Christian, J. (2019). Work, family, and masculine identity: An intersectional approach to understanding young, black men’s experiences of reentry. Race and Justice, 9(4), 407–433.

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Phillips, S. D., & Zhao, J. (2010). The relationship between witnessing arrests and elevated symptoms of posttraumatic stress: Findings from a national study of children involved in the child welfare system. Child Youth Services Review, 32(10), 1246–1254. Raikes, B. (2016). ‘Unsung heroines’ celebrating the care provided by grandmothers for children with parents in prison. Probation Journal, 63(3), 320–330. Raikes, B., & Lockwood, K. (2011). ‘Mothering from the inside’—A small scale evaluation of Acorn House, an overnight child contact facility at HMP Askham Grange. Prison Service Journal, 194, 19–26. Raikes, B., & Lockwood, K. (2019). Acorn House revisited: ‘Think family, up and down and side to side’. In M. Hutton & M. Dominique (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of prison and the family (1st ed., pp. 295–315 [21 p.]). Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan. Robertson, O. (2007). The impact of parental imprisonment on children. Quaker United Nations Office. Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (2005). A life-course view of the development of crime. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 602(1), 12–45. Scambler, G. (2009). Health‐related stigma. Sociology of Health & Illness, 31(3), 441–455. Schneider, A. (2003). Privacy and sexual shame in cross-cultural discussion. Free Inquiry In Creative Sociology, 31(2), 195–202. Shaw, J., Downe, S., & Kingdon, C. (2015). Systematic mixed-methods review of interventions, outcomes and experiences for imprisoned pregnant women. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 71(7), 1451–1463. Sturges, J. E., & Hanrahan, K. J. (2011). The effects of children’s criminality on mothers of offenders. Journal of Family Issues, 32(8), 985–1006. Swallow, A. J. (2017). A virtual ethnographic enquiry: An exploratory study of adult children with a parent in prison (Doctoral dissertation). University of Huddersfield. Talbot, J., Cheung, R., & O’Sullivan, S. (2015). Relative justice: The experiences and views of family members of people with particular needs in contact with criminal justice and liaison and diversion services. Prison Reform Trust. Walmsley, R. (2018). World prison population list (12th ed.). World Prison Brief/Institute for Criminal Policy Research. Available from: 7 http://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/ files/resources/downloads/wppl_12.pdf. Woolf, M. (2004, August 16). Children of criminals to be ‘targeted’ and ‘tracked’. The Independent. Available from 7 www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/children-of-criminalsto-be-targeted-and-tracked-556775.html. Accessed 29 May 2019. Youth Custody Service. (2021). Youth custody report: April 2021. Available from 7 https:// www.gov.uk/government/statistics/youth-custody-data. Youth Justice Board. (2021, January 28). Youth justice statistics: 2019–2020. Youth Justice Board, UK.

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The Mafia Family: Organised Crime Families Contents 4.1  Organised Crime and Mafia Families – 98 4.1.1  Organised Crime Families – 98 4.1.2  The Italian Mafia – 101

4.2  Mafia Families: Women and Children – 105 4.2.1  Mafia Families: Wives and Mothers – 105 4.2.2  Mafia Families: Children – 108

4.3  Witness Protection Programmes and Families – 111 4.3.1  Witness Protection Programmes and Family Life – 111 4.3.2  Children on Witness Protection Programmes – 115

References – 118

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Holt, Family Criminology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71169-6_4

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z Overview

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In the previous chapter we explored how the families of those who have been criminalised face a number of practical and emotional challenges. This chapter develops those ideas further by placing them within a distinct context: the organised crime family and, in particular, Mafia families. Perhaps emblematic of the association between families and crime, Mafia families represent a specific form of organised crime group whose structures and operations are based on kinship systems and values. In the first part of this chapter we explore what makes organised crime families distinct before taking a more detailed look at one of the most enduring examples of organised crime families: the Italian Mafia. Next, we explore how being a member of a Mafia family is experienced by its more marginalised members: the women and children. In the final section, we consider the impact of witness protection programmes (WPPs) on family members whose loved ones become protected witnesses, with the final part offering a more detailed exploration of the impact of WPPs on children. Conceptual Toolbox: Intergenerational Transmission The concept of intergenerational transmission has a long pedigree in psychology. The basic premise is that parents’ behaviours and values are passed on to their children, which in turn are passed on to their children, and this cycle continues through the generations. Evidence to support the notion of intergenerational transmission is primarily through correlational studies that identify links between parental behaviour and similar behaviours (or attitudes, beliefs, etc.) in their offspring. In criminological research, the concept of intergenerational transmission is usually used to explain common patterns of offending between parents (particularly fathers) and their children, whereby the children of parents who engage in criminal activity have a significantly higher chance of themselves engaging in crime compared with children whose parents do not (Besemer et al., 2017). The impact of intergenerational transmission is particularly strong for sons and also for violent crimes. Intergenerational transmission is an idea that has long shaped practice. For example, it underpins decisions to remove children from their parents (and, in some cases, from their neighbourhoods) that are often seen to culturally transmit criminogenic norms and values. However, such removals are often experienced by children as punishment and can be counterproductive, resulting in a failure to achieve the twin goals of child protection and crime prevention that such removals aim to meet.

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In his influential work, Farrington (2002) identified six theories that attempt to explain the intergenerational transmission of criminal behaviour: 5 Cycle of deprivation theory—Risk factors for criminal behaviour (e.g. poverty, substance use) are transmitted through the generations 5 Ecological systems theory—Different contexts mediate each other and shape the likelihood of criminal behaviour. These include individual contexts (self-control, temperament), interpersonal contexts (e.g. parental separation, trauma) and interactional contexts (e.g. school, friendships) (see . Fig. 5.5) 5 Assortative mating—Men with criminal records tend to form relationships with women with criminal records who, in turn, demonstrate neglectful and authoritarian parenting styles. Such parenting produces children who engage in crime. 5 Social learning theory—Criminal behaviour is learned through observing older family members, including parents and grandparents, engage in criminal behaviours. These are imitated by their offspring and, along with crime-supporting values, become normalised. 5 Genetic transmission—Genetic predispositions for particular criminal ‘traits’ (e.g. aggression) are biologically inherited from parents (see 7 Box 2.1). 5 Labelling theory—The children of parents who engage in crime are ‘expected’ to behave similarly, and so are subject to greater monitoring by criminal justice agents. This amplifies their behaviour and may produce a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, it is important to recognise that that intergenerational transmission does not apply to all families and a number of theories have more recently been suggested to explain intergenerational discontinuity, including: 5 Pro-social attachments—Children who have close social bonds with pro-social family members and friends, or who have stable jobs, can counteract the influence of anti-social parents 5 Ecological systems theory—The mediation of particular ecological contexts may prevent the intergenerational transmission of crime. These include individual contexts (e.g. intelligence), interpersonal contexts (e.g. parental supervision) and interactional contexts (e.g. having law-abiding friends) 5 Institutional buffers—Positive support from a teacher, counsellor or social worker may serve to buffer the processes of intergenerational transmission and the production of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Many theories about intergenerational transmission developed from criminological data of specific kinds of crime, particularly forms of ‘juvenile delinquency’. In their analysis of case histories of organised crime families in Amsterdam, van Dijk et al. (2019) found that many theories developed to explain intergenerational transmission did not apply to those specific cases. For example, organised crime families rarely experience material deprivation and poverty—indeed, many are wealthy and privileged. In contrast, many more children in organised crime families experience specific and unique forms of trauma (such as bereavement through contract killing) that are unusual in the lives of those who offend outside of organised crime. On the other hand, offspring appeared to have developed pro-social attachments, such as relationships and stable jobs, but these did not seem particularly effective in preventing their engagement in organised crime. Thus, it is notable that while the concept of intergenerational transmission tends to be applied less frequently to cases of organised crime families, it arguably has greater relevance to such contexts because it is so much more common in such families (Spapens & Moors, 2019; van Dijk et al., 2019).

4.1  Organised Crime and Mafia Families

Organised crime families represent a specific form of organised crime group that are distinct in their motivation as well as in their reliance on kinship networks and loyalties to shape the rules of engagement. In this section we explore organised crime families in greater detail—first by exploring the nature of organised crime families and their cultural and political context, and then by discussing the specific example of the Sicilian Mafia. 4.1.1  Organised Crime Families

Schelling suggests that ‘organised crime’ has a specific meaning in Criminology to refer to ‘a society that seeks to operate outside of the control of the (…) people and their governments’ (Schelling, 1984: 181). Thus, ‘organised crime’ is more than simply crime that is organised (which may, of course, apply to many kinds of criminal activity). While many criminals who operate within the criminal underworld may be working within organised groups, most of them do not seek to govern (and monopolise) an un-

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derworld society. It is this distinction that identifies organised crime families within the larger organised crime group. Organised crime families represent one of the oldest types of criminal organisation, and they are distinctly organised around family and/or ethnic ties. They tend to have greater longevity than other kinds of organised crime group, since membership of the group (and therefore loyalty to the group) is based on who they are (and their relationship towards each other) rather than on what task they perform. Organised crime families often engage in a number of different illegal activities that include petty crime, racketeering and ‘conflict mediation’. As such, organised crime families are rarely motivated purely by profit-making and broader goals of power and dominance are just as important (or more important) than economic goals. Examples of well-known organised crime families include the Italian Mafia, the Japanese Yakuza, the Hong Kong Triads and the Russian Mafia. While some organised crime families are based purely on blood ties, most are not and the centrality of ‘the family’ is more symbolic. Organised crime families share many features with traditional families, including: their own shared collective identity and history, clear roles and responsibilities, patriarchal and generational authority, and cultural codes and rituals which have been passed down the generations. In this sense, organised crime families are very different to other organised crime groups (Paoli, 2004). One interesting aspect of organised crime families is that they do not thrive everywhere. They are a product of their time and place and they tend to prosper in specific locales and at specific time periods. In his influential work The Moral Basis of a Backward Society,1 Banfield (1957) highlighted the importance of the political and social context that allowed organised crime families (such as the Sicilian Mafia) to develop and prosper in Southern Italy following the dissolution of feudalism. In particular, he highlighted the role that amoral familism played in their emergence. Amoral familism refers to an ethos whereby families ‘maximize the material, shortrun advantage of the nuclear family’ over wider public interest (Banfield, 1957: 85). Such an orientation is shaped within a broader landscape of so-

1 The ‘backwardness’ to which Banfield refers is a general orientation towards the present (rather than towards future planning) which prevents collective action and, consequently, inhibits social progress.

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cial and political isolation2 and amoral familism is particularly enabled by a weak constitutional state. This results in people—both the landed gentry and peasants—instead turning to powerful families for protection. According to Gambetta (2011), the single unifying feature of Sicilian Mafia families is their reputation as ‘suppliers of protection’ that serves as their trademark (Gambetta, 2011: 4). This protection may take the form of enforcing contracts, deterring competition, organising rents and resolving disputes. Indeed, state authorities often relied on organised crime families to help them to manage social disorder, and alliances with politicians were common. Banfield’s work is useful in highlighting the importance of culture in understanding how organised crime intersects with family life, although it has been criticised for its neglect of the economic and agricultural context of those communities’ lives (see Ferragina, 2009 for a review). Banfield’s work was also influential in the development of the concept of social capital (see 7 Chapter 8) in its identification of key indicators that were subsequently drawn upon by sociologists such as Robert Putnam (e.g. Putnam et al., 1993). However, one of the implications of Banfield’s thesis is that, from a Westernised perspective, organised crime families (such as the Italian Mafia) are a ‘foreign problem’ linked to ‘weak states and fragmented, chaotic regions of contested power’ (Hobbs, 2001: 549). This assumption underpins the once-popular alien conspiracy theory that suggested that organised crime families are ‘imported’ into Euro-American cultures from other parts of the world (see Cressey, 1969). Law enforcement agencies continued to operate under this assumption in their crime prevention strategies well into the 1980s (Hobbs & Antonopoulos, 2013). Particular social conditions enable organised crime families to prosper: when those social conditions change, organised crime adapts. For example, in his ethnographic work, Hobbs (2001) highlighted how the once-dominant ‘Family Firms’ of 1950s and 1960s London3 had been forced to adapt in the face of deindustrialisation and the fragmentation of working-class communities, which removed any meaningful notion of territory and shared cultural history. Instead, there emerged ‘coalitions of loosely structured informal collectivities of ad hoc groupings’ (Hobbs, 2001: 552), which 2 Indeed, central to both amoral familism and Mafia family doctrine is the notion that only one’s own family can be trusted, and everyone else should not be trusted (Gambetta, 2011). 3 Examples of well-known ‘Family Firms’ include The Kray Twins and the Richardson Brothers, both of which gained notoriety in London’s East End during the 1960s through their engagement in racketeering, armed robbery and violence.

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comprised intersecting ‘entrepreneurial networks of firms and individuals’ (p. 557). Some of these relationships are kin-based, but many others are much more instrumentally based, with the family becoming a ‘brand’ that provides a mark of dependability and consistency in an increasingly fragmented and uncertain post-industrial world. 4.1.2  The Italian Mafia

The Italian Mafia is one of the most enduring constructs of organised crime. Derived from the term mafioso, meaning ‘swagger’ or boldness, the Italian Mafia is thought to have emerged in the early nineteenth century in Southern Italy following its transition from feudalism to the Nation State. The most established traditional Italian Mafia families are the Cosa Nostra (‘Our Thing’), in Palermo, Sicily, and the ’Ndrangheta (‘Manliness’) in Calabria, each of which comprises up to 100 families or ‘clans’ (known as coschi or ‘ndrini). Their organisational structure is based on extended family allegiance and patriarchy and, in the case of the ’Ndrangheta, the ‘families’ are specifically organised around blood and marriage bonds. The Italian Mafia usually has a three-tiered structure: i. The senior leadership at the highest tier and that controls the region ii. Mandamento in the middle tier that comprises a group of families iii. Individual families at the bottom that control their own local territory For example, in the ’Ndrangheta, the lowest level within each specific family nucleus has a boss (capondrina) below which operates a number of ranks. The lowest-ranked of these is ‘young men of honour’, a position assigned to male offspring as a sign of their future status and career. In the middle tier, there is a consortium of local families who collectively manage a specific territory (locale) and which has an overall boss: the capolocale. As well as directing criminal activity, the capolocale is also responsible for administration, recruitment and membership, and for mediating disputes between the families. The capolocale is assisted by the bookkeeper (contabile), the crimine (who deals with the criminal activity), and the day master (maestro di giornata), who circulates orders and reports problems. Above the capolocale is the top management of the Provincia, to which part of the criminal proceeds are sent. The Provincia has oversight for dispute resolution, the adjudication of wrongdoing and the nomination of capolocales. The Provincia is led by the crime boss (capocrimine) who, as the speaker of a wider assembly, has responsibility for resolving disputes and enforcing rules (Catino, 2019) (see . Fig. 4.1).

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. Fig. 4.1  Structure of the ’Ndrangheta Mafia family

As mentioned, the goals of traditional Italian Mafia families extend beyond profit-making, and political and social dominance is a feature of both the Cosa Nostra and the ’Ndrangheta. Traditionally, they would take a role in policing the population through the mediation of conflict and the restoration of wrongdoing, often more effectively than the State.4 The Mafia’s pseudo-performance of state functions is particularly exemplified by their involvement in extortion through protection rackets. This involves ‘taxing’ local businesses in order to offer them ‘protection’ from the threat of violence and property damage. Furthermore, as Paoli (2004) outlines, in some regions of Sicily and Calabria, the State was complicit in this, with state officials accepting, and sometimes legalising, the power of Mafia groups. However, the relationship between the state and the Mafia has always been an uneasy one, and certainly since the 1990s the state has been actively investigating Mafia-related offences which, in turn, led to prominent assassinations of police, court officials and politicians.5

4 Such practices can be seen today: for example, it was widely reported that the Italian Mafia played a key role in distributing food and offering interest-free loans to those in Southern Italy who were struggling during the Covid-19 global pandemic that emerged in early 2020. While appearing altruistic, it has raised concerns about how such practices may increase the influence of the Mafia, with those being helped soon becoming indebted to the Mafia (OCCRP, 2020) 5 The most famous of these involved the killings of Italian state judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino by the Italian Cosa Nostra in 1992.

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Traditional Italian Mafia families operate according to a strict code of conduct that includes the ‘code of silence’ (omertà) and ‘generalised reciprocity’ towards other members of the Mafia family. They also have strict rituals, which include: 5 Investitures for new ‘men of honour’ that formalise their new fraternal identity 5 Status contracts of family allegiance to new members (which includes taking a formal oath) 5 Ceremonies for the up-ranking of members 5 Tribunal proceedings for members who violate the rules, with tough penalties (including violence) applied to breaches of loyalty such as defections. Mafia culture is imbued with extreme heteronormativity, evidenced by its exclusion of women from official positions of power and its emphasis on violence, ‘honour’ and virility as ideals of masculinity. For example, membership requires that boys and men must not show emotion (particularly fear or cowardice), must never engage in homosexuality, must never make mistakes or fail, and must engage in a series of increasingly aggressive tasks to demonstrate that he is up to the job of Mafioso.6 Many of these heteronormative norms and behaviours that are a feature of Mafia families are recognised by, and are sometimes also part of, the wider non-affiliated community. For example, Sergi (2018) gives the example of the verb ‘ndranghitijàri which, in Calabrian dialect, means ‘to publicly adopt a “cocky” behaviour, the superior attitude typical of a (male) Mafia affiliate, who is respected and feared’ (Sergi, 2018: 151). Thus, the Italian Mafia not only shapes the political and economic landscape of Southern Italy, but it also shapes personal and social identities in its transmission of wider norms and values. Strict codes of conduct also dictate what kinds of illegal activity are off-limits. For example, the prohibition of any involvement in prostitution has prevented the Italian Mafia from engaging in some of the more lucrative organised crime activities of the twenty-first century (such as human smuggling and sexual exploitation). Codes of conduct also dictate who can be a member: traditionally, only men descended from the ’Ndrangheta

6 In the Cosa Nostra, the series of tasks would typically include being present at the scene of a crime, violently assaulting someone, killing an animal, and then assisting in a murder (Fiandaca, 2007).

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could become members, while the Cosa Nostra only recruits men born in Sicily. While such strict codes are useful to ensure loyalty, they can also prevent families from recruiting members with important experience or expertise. However, it is a myth that members are never recruited from outside ‘the family’: the need to adapt to the demands of globalisation means that organised crime families are now based far less on extended kin and far more on extended global networks of people.

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Box 4.1 Cultural Representations of Mafia Families Cultural representations of Mafia families offer a compelling (albeit mediated) insight into a form of organised crime that is both ‘elusive by definition and exclusive by design’ (Rawlinson, 1998). Prior to the 1950s, Mafia families had little presence in the public consciousness, and early gangster films tended to focus on individual outlaws (e.g. Angels with Dirty Faces, Brighton Rock) rather than on organised crime families. Criminologists often suggest that public interest in the Mafia emerged after the US televised Senate hearings of an international Mafia-related organised crime investigation led by Senator Kefauver (1950–1951). In particular, Joe Valachi’s televised testimony during the US McClellan Committee in 1963 provided evidence of the existence of the Cosa Nostra in his detailed accounts of shady business deals and contract killings. Valachi’s account was subsequently portrayed in a biography (Maas, 1968) and a film, The Valachi Papers (1972), with elements of it also finding its way into Mario Puzo’s bestselling novel The Godfather (1969). Since then, glamorised depictions of US-based Mafia families have been continually popularised in film, with examples including The Godfather trilogy (1972, 1974, 1990); Goodfellas (1990); The Departed (2006), as well as the long-running HBO series The Sopranos (1999–2007). As Larke (2012) argues, these cultural artefacts have acted as vehicles for the (re)production of a number of ‘Mafia myths’. These include: the importance of Sicilian/Italian heritage, the code of silence, the role of family loyalties, respect for family hierarchies, and crime as merely business. Larke highlights how such films promote the idea that the Italian-American identity is distinct from White American identity. Furthermore, through notions of ‘exclusivity, secrecy and ethnic heritage’ (p. 129), members of organised crime families undergo a process of othering: constructed as ‘other’ to mainstream American culture, while nevertheless operating within its norms and traditions. As such, Mafia cultural artefacts perform an important function in resolving public anxieties about the blurring of boundaries between criminality and the law.

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4.2  Mafia Families: Women and Children

In one sense, Mafia families are of interest to family criminologists because of the way in which ‘family’ is used to organise criminal activity. However, another important area of research concerns the impact of belonging to a Mafia family, particularly for women and children who tend to play minor roles in the conduct of organised crime. In this section, we explore this issue in greater detail—first with a focus on women and wives in Mafia families, and then with a focus on children. 4.2.1  Mafia Families: Wives and Mothers

Like many traditional families, Mafia families are extremely gendered. They have strict rules to ensure that only fathers and sons directly engage in criminal activity while mothers and daughters take on supporting roles. It is clear that heteronormative assumptions underpin this division of labour: women are considered to be ‘too untrustworthy’ to be given any information about the family’s criminal activities and are ‘too emotional’ to be able to cope with (or engage in) its violent realities. Therefore, a woman’s role tends to be subsumed by her maternal role, which is essential to ensure the longevity of the Mafia family.7 This maternal role primarily involves nurturing the next generation of the crime family by transmitting Mafia values such as familial loyalty, paternal authority and philotimia: a respect for ‘family honour’. Mothers are also responsible for teaching children how to avoid conflict with other family members and how to abide by the rules of engagement (including the code of silence). In this way, women operate at the boundaries of the domestic world and the criminal (under)world. As Graziozi (2001) explained, women in Mafia families have traditionally had few public roles, and those they did have involved the public performance of acts to ensure the reproduction of Mafia family codes. For example, a woman’s public marriage to a Mafioso fugitive signals to the state that the Mafia is untouchable; a woman’s denunciation of her husband or

7 The importance of motherhood in Mafia culture is recognised symbolically through the term Mammasantissima (‘the most sainted mother’), which is used to represent the (male) boss whose work involves the management of his ‘offspring’ (that is, the Mafia families below him).

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son who breaks the code of silence signals to Mafia members the strength of that code. There are documented cases of Mafia women nurturing their sons to avenge the murder of their husbands (the ‘pedagogy of vendetta’—see Ingrascì, 2007: 65) and of mothers denunciating their daughters who have chosen to collaborate with the State (Cayli, 2016). Mafia wives are to be respected by other family members (though not necessarily by their own husbands), but this respect is fragile. In cases where their husbands turn informer, there are documented cases of women being raped or killed by other Mafia members in rituals of degradation (see Pickering-Iazzi, 2019). Thus, in Mafia families, women can be both the messenger and the message. Despite their lack of visibility in the public realm, there is evidence that some women in Mafia families have always played a key role in its criminal activities, with prosecutions of women for Mafia-related offences documented as far back as 1904 (Pizzinni-Gambetta, 2008). Sometimes their involvement in crime was necessary during a period of crisis, such as when their husband was incarcerated or became a fugitive. In such cases, women delivered messages to/from their husbands to other Mafia members, or temporarily acted as head of the family. More generally, activities such as gathering intelligence, hiding contraband and engaging in surveillance are traditional roles for women in Mafia families. There is some debate as to whether there has been a more recent increase in women’s involvement in Mafia-related organised crime. Certainly, there has been a gradual though unremarkable rise in the numbers of women prosecuted and imprisoned for Mafia-related offences, although these numbers remain relatively low. For example, only 2.5% of all sentences passed for Mafia-related offences in Italy are issued to women (Savona & Riccardi, 2018), despite women owning a third of all Mafia assets such as property and bank accounts.8 Some scholars claim that the impact of feminism means that women are increasingly engaging in Mafia-related criminal activity as a result of both increased opportunities and changing expectations of gender roles. However, as Ingrasci (2007) notes, this is more a ‘pseudo-emancipation’ since this shift remains within the confines of a strict patriarchal order. Other scholars have argued that the in-

8

There was a large shift in women holding assets following the Rognoni–La Torre law which came into effect in Italy in 1982 and which allowed the confiscation of assets from Mafia bosses.

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crease in women’s visibility in the criminal justice system is the result of improved investigative techniques (such as use of wiretaps) and changing attitudes in the judiciary about women’s culpability in such offences (Pizzinni-Gambetta, 2014). There are also important differences for women within different Mafia groups. For example, there are few opportunities for women in the more rural and rigid structures of the Cosa Nostra. In comparison, the ’Ndrangheta and the Camorra clans are more urban, flexible and mobile, and have expanded into new markets (such as drug markets) over the past thirty years. Such shifts have required particular entrepreneurial and financial skills which women are well-placed to provide (Allum & Marchi, 2018). The criminal justice system is faced with particular challenges when responding to women engaged in Mafia-related activities. There is a need to recognise women’s subordinated role within the strict patriarchal set up of the Mafia, which includes their lack of formal affiliation with the Mafia. Furthermore, proving women’s criminal responsibility in generic Mafia offences (such as sharing the economic benefits of racketeering) can be difficult. Managing these challenges has often resulted in women receiving acquittals, or relatively light sentences, for Mafia-related offences (di Maria & Lo Verso, 2017). However, media reporting of high-profile arrests of female heads of Mafia clans, such as Maria Scuderi, Concetta Scalisi and Paola Torrisi (the Three Queens of Caltagirone) in 2016 and Mariangela Di Trapani in 2017, may give the impression of the opposite. However, there are also many cases of wives and mothers resisting their expected role and fighting against what they see as the Mafia takeover of their family. Some women have reported the murder of their loved ones to the authorities. Others have broken the code of silence entirely to collaborate with the authorities and perform the role of state witness in court proceedings (a role known as pentito). In some cases this may be a strategic response to their own (or their husbands’) arrest, since it may offer the opportunity for a reduced sentence. It may also be an act of upholding the core Mafia value of vengeance—for example, in cases where a loved one is killed by a rival clan. However, in other cases it may represent a more transformative decision. As Cayli (2016) points out, such acts of personal defiance may represent a more political defiance against the hegemony of Mafia culture and its extreme heteronormativity. Nevertheless, it is an act that comes at a cost and is likely to involve the loss of their family and threats to life through revenge killings. Because of this, many pentiti will enter into witness protection programmes (see 7 Sect. 4.3).

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4.2.2  Mafia Families: Children

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The organisational structure of crime families such as the Italian Mafia has huge implications for children. The importance of sons lies in their capacity to continue the family business by learning about, and eventually leading, its criminal activities. The importance of daughters lies in their capacity to forge alliances through marriage. Both roles are essential in ensuring the longevity of the Mafia family through generational reproduction. However, this comes at a cost. In her analysis of 18 case files of Youth Tribunal proceedings (see 7 Box 4.2), Sergi (2018) found that both boys and girls were subjected to indirect victimisation by their parents’ attempts to instil Mafia values through their parenting practices. For example, parents would encourage their children to commit criminal offences and would discourage them from attending school. The effects of these practices were gendered: boys were found to exhibit violent and aggressive behaviours while many of the girls were keen to escape the limitations imposed on them, particularly the practice of endogamy (the custom of marrying within one’s clan). Indeed, cases have been reported of daughters being killed by their families for choosing to marry someone outside of the clan (Siebert, 1996), a crime not dissimilar from ‘honour-based killings’ that take place around the world (see 7 Chapter 6). Research suggests that children growing up in Mafia families experience more trauma than young people growing up in other families. For example, research by van Dijk et al. (2019) found that 35% of the 44 children growing up in a sample of organised crime families had experienced the death of their father at a relatively early age. In cases where this was a contract killing, there was no referral made to child protection services. Other traumatic experiences identified in this sample included suicidal mothers, domestic violence, parental substance use, gun violence and witnessing a home raid (see 7 Box 3.4). A further difficulty experienced by many of the children was the intrusive and negative media reports about their fathers, many of who were notorious enough to have their own Wikipedia page. Sometimes, the reputation of their fathers meant that potential sources of help (e.g. schools, police, child protection services) were fearful of getting involved. In other cases, their father’s reputation meant that the children attracted ‘criminal friends’ (van Dijk et al., 2019). This is not to suggest that children in Mafia families do not feel loved or have close bonds with their parents. Giunta et al. (2018) interviewed 11 sons of Mafia men about their childhoods and found that the younger participants (aged 17–28 years) reported positive relationships with both par-

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ents. While their fathers were mainly physically absent (through death, incarceration or abscondment), the sons described having strong emotional bonds with their fathers, depicting them as caring and attentive and as not responsible for their membership of the Cosa Nostra. Interestingly, this contrasted somewhat with the older participants (aged 39–62 years), who reported conflict in their relationships with their fathers, showed an awareness of their father’s active role within the criminal organisation, and displayed an emotional distancing from them. Perhaps understandings and attitudes shift over time, or perhaps there are generational differences in how Mafia offspring experience their family relationships. However, common to both groups were accounts of the pain of growing up in a Mafia family, which often featured experiences of death and suffering. As outlined earlier, children who grow up in organised crime families are more likely themselves to engage in criminal offending. In their analysis of 11,138 people who had been convicted of a Mafia-related offence, Campedelli et al. (2019) found some similarities with the more general offending trajectories identified in the age-crime curve, with an overall peak in criminal careers around the teenage years and into young adulthood, followed by desistance (although these peaks and troughs appeared at different timepoints compared with more general offending trajectories). However, Campedelli et al. (2019) also identified a number of specific types of Mafia-related offending trajectories which are not common in the general research literature on criminal careers. These included i. a persistent and prolific offending group that continued to offend beyond age 50 (or until they were caught) ii. an early onset, high-frequency offending group who were very prolific and very violent iii. an adult-onset, low-frequency offending group which peaked in their mid-30s. This latter group represents those who joined the Mafia in adulthood, perhaps because of a particular skill-set or through a social relationship. Notwithstanding some of the methodological critiques of such research (such as its reliance on conviction data), it does highlight how the distinct developmental and psychological characteristics of Mafia culture can have a profound impact on individuals and their life course, particularly those who are nurtured into a Mafia criminal career from an early age. As Giunta et al. (2018) suggest, the Mafia should be considered ‘not only as a criminal system but also as a psycho-anthropo-cultural organization with a fundamental role in the construction of individual and family identity’ (p. 192).

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Growing up in territories that are dominated by the Mafia also makes its impact. DiBlasi et al. (2015) interviewed 93 adolescents who were growing up in Italian cities (namely Palma di Montechiaro, Scampia and ­Reggio Calabria) where the presence and activity of the Camorra and ’Ndrangheta clans was significant. For these teenagers, and for those living in Scampia particularly, death had become normalised—it was part of everyday life and was not an exceptional event. Everyday engagement in safety strategies (to avoid attention and prevent mistaken identity) was a part of teenage life, as were some of the Mafia codes such as omerta, which inhibited the development of intimacy and close relationships with others. In some cases, the cultural landscape pervaded the teenagers’ family relationships, where discussion of the Mafia was literally unspeakable (parents told their children ‘the less you know, the better it is’.) However, while in some territories (such as Scampia), the silence was driven by fear, in the other territories it was driven by a resignation and acceptance that the criminal context is unchangeable (di Blasi et al., 2015). Furthermore, the teenagers spoke of the shame of growing up in an area where they shared social space with the Mafia, and the prejudice they experienced from others when they told them where they came from. Indeed, the ancestral and collective identities that were part of their cultural landscape shaped how they saw themselves: as one adolescent commented, ‘we are all a bit Mafioso’ (p. 182). Box 4.2: Family Criminology in Practice: Preventing the Intergenerational Transmission of ‘Mafia Values’ In 2015, the District Antimafia Prosecutor Office in Reggio Calabria, Italy set up a judicial protocol in response to concerns about the promotion of ‘Mafia-based values and behaviours’ in the upbringing of children in M ­ afia families. Reggio Calabria is the region where ’Ndrangheta families dominate and which, because of their blood and kinship ties, are very difficult for the police to penetrate (pentiti are very uncommon in ’Ndrangheta families). The Youth Tribunal deals with cases involving minors (i.e. children u ­ nder 18 years) within civil law (e.g. child protection proceedings), administrative law (e.g. anti-social behaviour complaints) and criminal law (e.g. criminal prosecutions). The antimafia protocol is used in such cases to assess whether children have been put at risk because of their parents’ behaviour (for example, at risk of delinquency, at risk of engaging in Mafia activities, or at risk of victimisation through Mafia violence). This process allows the court to intervene and revoke a father’s parental responsibility to prevent the reproduction of organised crime families through the ­ intergenerational transmission

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of Mafia values. The focus on fathers reflects how the influence and prestige of fathers as Mafia members is seen as central to the ‘successful’ transmission of Mafia culture. In contrast, the role of mothers tends to be safeguarded in such tribunals in recognition of the different role they play and the strong bond they have with their children. (Indeed, it is often the mothers themselves who seek support from the Youth Tribunal to ‘save’ their children from their Mafia future). As well as legal separation from fathers, the protocol also seeks to enrol children in educational programmes to teach them their legal and civic duties. In some cases, children are removed entirely from the Calabria region and are relocated to Northern or Central Italy, in recognition that Mafia-values are not only transmitted through families, but also transmitted through local cultural codes (see Marzullo, 2016; Sergi, 2018).

Questions for Reflection: – How should wives and mothers be dealt with in relation to their role in Mafia-related offences? Is it right to remove children from their parents because of their parents’ engagement in ‘criminal lifestyles’? How can the transmission of criminal values through local subcultures be prevented?

4.3  Witness Protection Programmes and Families

Most people on witness protection programmes are not witnesses themselves, but are family members of witnesses, including children. Witness protection programmes are made available to those whose lives are at risk because of a witnesses’ collaboration with the justice system. However, entering into such a programme comes at a cost, and in this section we explore this in detail, first by looking at the impact that such programmes have on family members, and then by taking a close look at children’s involvement in witness protection programmes. 4.3.1  Witness Protection Programmes and Family Life

The impenetrability of organised crime families means that witnesses usually offer the best means of securing a conviction by assisting police in their investigation and by giving evidence in court. However, as discussed earlier in this chapter, pentiti and their families are at a high risk of intimidation

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and retaliation for their collaboration with the justice system. To respond to these concerns, witness protection programmes (WPPs) were developed. Of course, witnesses are at risk of intimidation and harassment in cases outside of organised crime, and witness protection programmes can be used in any type of case. However, they are used primarily for cases involving serious and/or organised crime since it is these cases that tend to involve a life-threatening risk to witnesses and their families. Fyfe and McKay (2000a) identify three distinct types of witness intimidation: i. Community-wide perceived intimidation that prevents witnesses from reporting crimes or giving evidence ii. Case-specific actual intimidation that involves assaults and/or property damage to deter an individual from reporting a crime or giving evidence iii. Very serious and/or life-threatening risk to witnesses and their families, usually involving cases of serious organised crime In all three types, the code of silence (‘no grassing’) underpins the intimidation. As with domestic abuse (see 7 Chapter 5), the power of a threat to life lies in the witnesses’ knowledge of the intimidator’s violent history. That is, they know that the threat can be carried out as there is usually some pre-existing interpersonal relationship between witness and intimidator. ‘Witness protection’ is a broad term that involves a range of strategies. These include home-based target protections (such as the installation of house alarms, surveillance cameras and panic buttons) and procedural protections (such as use of anonymous testimony, testimony via videoconference, or removal of the defendant and the public from the courtroom during witness testimony). At the most extreme end, intimidated witnesses may be offered a place on a witness protection programme. This involves the permanent relocation of witnesses and their families, giving them the status of ‘protected witness’. In some cases, it may also involve the provision of financial support and new identity documents.9 While police have always had a role in protecting targeted witnesses, the first formalised national witness protection programme was set up in the United States in 1970. Known as the Federal Witness Security Program (WITSEC), it was particularly prominent during its early years in work-

9 Recent advances in data technology make the process of providing a new identity more complicated, not least the development of biometric data (see Paunović et al., 2013 for discussion).

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ing with former members of the Italian-American Mafia.10 Since that time, most other countries around the world have developed their own witness protection programmes, though they vary in the extent to which they operate under nationally-based frameworks, enshrine accountability in law, and offer witnesses immunity from prosecution and/or plea bargaining. In addition, the International Criminal Court (ICC) provides WPPs for cases that involve violations of humanitarian law (such as war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity). In terms of protecting witnesses and their families, WPPs appear to work: the US Department of Justice (2018) reports that no WITSEC participant or family member has ever been harmed while following programme guidelines. In the United Kingdom, where the first witness protection unit was developed in 1978 by London’s Metropolitan Police, the key criteria for inclusion onto its witness protection programme are that: a. The case must involve a serious crime b. The witness must have provided a full evidential statement c. The witnesses evidence must be critical to the criminal proceedings d. There is documented evidence that the life of the witness (and/or a family member) is in danger (MPS, 2010) Before relocation, all family members must agree to stay away from their previous neighbourhood and to not disclose to any friends or family members any information that could reveal their new location. They must also agree to continue co-operation with the police, provide evidence in court when required and to not engage in any criminal activity: surveillance often continues to ensure that they keep to these requirements. While witnesses may have some choice in where they relocate to, they have little choice in the kind of property they are given, and WPPs tend to operate a strict ‘likefor-like’ policy to avoid accusations that the witnesses have materially benefited from their involvement in the WPP. In some cases, witnesses may have also engaged in criminal offences, and so may be required to serve a period of time in custody. This is usually at a reduced sentence and in favourable conditions, often in isolation from others in custody. The decision of which family members should join the witness on the WPP is determined by a range of factors, including family tradition and

10 The first person to be offered witness protection in the US was Joseph Valachi in 1963, who was protected by 200 US Marshalls while giving testimony to the McClellan Committee (see 7 Box 4.1).

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social culture, and the average number of family members who join a witness on a WPP varies significantly between countries (UN, 2008). The decision about whether to join a WPP is not easy, and risks to safety need to be balanced against the costs of becoming a protected witness. For this reason, many witnesses choose not to participate in a WPP. In their research exploring intimidated witnesses’ decision to join the programme, Fyfe and McKay (2000a, 2000b) found that concerns about the risks to their children were the most common motivating factor. For witnesses and their immediate family members, participating in a witness protection programme is a challenge, described as a process of ‘social death and social rebirth’ (Montanino, 1984). Often through no fault of their own, they must uproot from their local community, leave their family and friends behind and start a new life. This may involve new jobs, new schools and, in some cases, new names. In terms of practical challenges, there can be difficulties in finding employment (particularly if their expertise is in a niche area) and in providing references from past employers (these problems are, of course, exacerbated if their previous working life involved criminal activity). Beyond these practical challenges are the more profound challenges posed by the loss of identity and, with it, any sense of biographical continuity. The development of new social relationships is difficult because of both the need to conceal their past identity and because of a pervasive distrust of others and a heightened sense of risk that accompanies many who enter a WPP (Fyfe & McKay, 2000a). ‘Legends’ are created for protected witnesses to enable them to explain their arrival to a community, but having to lie about oneself and be constantly ‘on one’s guard’ can hamper the development of intimacy in relationships, of which authenticity and trust are essential ingredients (see Giddens, 1992). At the same time, participants must cope with the loss of social and familial support that they previously enjoyed from their extended family and friends (or criminal subgroup). Research has found emotional distress to be a common theme for families involved in WPPs, and studies have found a higher than average rate of suicide in families involved in WPPs.11 There are also impacts for those family members who have been left behind: the mothers, fathers, siblings, cousins and friends. The families left behind are unlikely to know the full facts of the situation: the context is similar to those who experience ambiguous loss (see 7 Box 7.2). Families may

11 This suggests that that the biggest threat to intimidated witnesses’ physical safety is, ironically, the experience of being in a WPP.

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be left with unpaid debts, and may themselves be at risk from harm and retaliation. There is very little provision within WPPs for the families left behind, and very little research available that has explored this issue. Box 4.3 Methodological Challenges: Researching Secret Lives Collecting research data about Mafia organisations is particularly challenging. The secrecy that surrounds the families makes finding and recruiting participants difficult, and the process is fraught with danger. Gambetta (2011) describes the experience of a fellow researcher quickly leaving Palermo following a ‘message’ he received: someone had stolen his dirty laundry from the boot of his car. It was returned to the same place a few days later with a note that read ‘buon viaggio!’. One by-product of witness protection programmes has been its production of testimonies from pentiti, who have provided detailed accounts of how Mafia families are organised and how they operate. Many rich narratives of Mafia life have emerged in the wake of Sicilian Mafia Boss Tommaso Buscetta’s co-operation with the Investigating Judge Falcone in Palermo in 1984, whose confessions produced 366 arrest warrants to alleged members of the Cosa Nostra. Yet we need to remain critical of such accounts as research data. Even if judicial trustworthiness is proven, the accounts need to be understood in the context of the witnesses’ need to rationalise their decisions for both engaging in their former ‘Mafia life’ and for engaging in their current act of Mafia betrayal.

4.3.2  Children on Witness Protection Programmes

As with much in the criminal justice system, witness protection programmes are designed for adults, and children’s involvement in them presents a number of challenges. For example, risk assessments need to include the risks of including young children, who may inadvertently compromise the WPP by disclosing details about the family to outsiders (as may older children in their use of social media). Adapting to a new life may also pose particular challenges for children and adolescents, who are less likely to have the coping skills to make the adjustment or to deal with the stress that it entails, and who may feel particularly connected to the friends they must leave behind, often without warning. Some WPPs may involve separations between children and parents. In some cases, the child’s protected parent may be incarcerated, and physi-

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cal visits may be impossible. In other cases, a protected child may be separated from a biological parent who is not involved in the WPP (through divorce, for example). In such cases, protected electronic communications can be arranged. However, while physical reunions can be organised away from where the child has resettled, these can be complicated and costly to set up (in extreme cases, where resettlement involves a move to a different country, the reunion must take place in a third country). Aside from the physical distance, an emotional distance may develop through the loss of important details—for example, the parent may not be told their child’s new name. The collection of child support can also be difficult, both from the protected parent (if the child is not part of the WPP) and from the remaining parent (if the child is part of the WPP). Due to the rise in both gang-related crime and in the trafficking of minors, adolescents are increasingly used as police informants during investigations and as witnesses during criminal trials. However, as Gilad (2012) notes, children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to intimidation because they have the least means of safeguarding themselves. The United Nations (2008: 62) identifies ‘teenage members of street gangs’ as the most challenging group to protect and there are a whole range of developmental, social and institutional factors that make this so. Leaving their gang, which can feel like a family for many young people, to enter a WPP alone is a very challenging prospect and it can be particularly difficult for them to live under the constraints of a WPP. For unaccompanied minors, who are likely to be particularly missing familial support or adult supervision, these challenges are intensified. While there is little research about this particular group, Gilad (2012) cites anecdotal evidence that such children rarely have positive outcomes when entering traditional WPPs, which tend not to address their more basic needs. For example, their experiences of early independence and their development of survival instincts—part of the process of adultification—may mean that such children miscalculate the risks of the danger they face. This is illustrated in the case of Brenda Paz (see 7 Box 4.4). Box 4.4 Case Study: Brenda Paz Brenda Paz was born in 1986 in Honduras and moved to Los Angeles, U.S when she was very young. Due to her mother’s health issues, her mother and family moved back to Honduras while Brenda stayed in the US to continue her education. When Brenda was 12, she was recruited by the Mara Salvatrucha (known as the MS-13 gang), a large international organised

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crime group that emerged in the 1970s. At 15, Brenda was arrested for stealing a car. In exchange for leniency, Brenda provided police with information about the gang’s history, structure and operations which resulted in her being a key witness in a murder trial for a gang-related killing. As a consequence, Brenda entered the WITSEC and was relocated to another state and given a new identity. However, despite periodic monitoring by protection officers, Brenda was left isolated and emotionally unsupported in her safe house. She was provided with little adult supervision or social interaction, and WITSEC officers made a poor assessment of her needs. In particular, Brenda’s entry into the WITSEC required the court to legally ‘emancipate’ her from her parents, and one consequence of this was that she was effectively treated as an adult, with her protection officer subsequently stating that his responsibility towards her was limited to ensuring that she had accommodation and sustenance. Within a few months, Brenda re-connected with the gang members (who she viewed has ‘her family’) and who convinced her to return home to LA. Soon after, Brenda’s body was found by a river with stab wounds. (See Gilad, 2012; UN, 2008).

Drawing on principles established in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), in 2009 the United Nations published international guidelines on supporting child witnesses. The guidelines advocate for a ‘child sensitive approach’ that ‘gives primary consideration to a child’s right to protection and that takes into account a child’s individual needs and views’ (UN, 2009: 5). They highlight the need to consider the potential impact of secondary victimisation on children from institutional criminal justice processes. They also recognise the need to consider children who have been intimidated and/or who have been forced to act illegally (e.g. through organised crime groups) as primarily victims, rather than as offenders. The guidelines offer specific solutions for child witnesses in need of protection, such as appointing a guardian to protect their interests, providing training for professionals working with children, and ensuring that such work takes place within specialist units. In particular, the extreme social isolation faced by unaccompanied minors on WPPs means that protection officers can inadvertently become their ‘surrogate families’ and support and training is essential for those officers to ensure that they are able to maintain the boundaries required by their role (UN, 2008). While not legally binding, the development of international guidance is a positive step, particularly given the increasing need to work across borders to tackle transna-

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tional crime. In doing so, it is vital that children and adolescents, who perform such a vital role in achieving positive criminal justice outcomes, are properly supported. Questions for Reflection: – Should children ever participate in a witness protection programme? If yes, what kind of safeguards should be put in place for them? Should additional safeguards be in place if the child themselves are the witness, compared with if a member of their family is a witness?

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References Allum, F., & Marchi, I. (2018). Analyzing the role of women in Italian Mafias: The case of the Neapolitan camorra. Qualitative Sociology, 41, 361–380. Banfield, E. C. (1957). The moral basis of a backward society. The Free Press. Besemer, S., Ahmad, S. I., Hinshaw, S. P., & Farrington, D. P. (2017). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the intergenerational transmission of criminal behavior. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 37, 161–178. Campedelli, G. M., Calderoni, F., Comunale, T., & Meneghini, C. (2019). Life-course criminal trajectories of mafia members. Crime & Delinquency, 0011128719860834. Catino, M. (2019). Mafia organizations. Cambridge University Press. Cayli, B. (2016). Performance matters more than masculinity: Violence, gender dynamics and mafia women. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 29, 36–42. Cressey, D. R. (1969). Theft of the nation: The structure and operations of organized crime in America (Vol. 174). Transaction Publishers. Di Blasi, M., Cavani, P., La Grutta, S., Baido, R. L., & Pavia, L. (2015). Growing in mafia territories. World Futures, 71(5–8), 173–184. Di Maria, F., & Lo Verso, G. (2017). Women and Mafia organizations. In G. Fiandaca (Ed.), Women and the mafia: Female roles in organized crime structures (Vol. 5). Springer Science & Business Media (pp. 87–102). Farrington, D. P. (2002). Developmental criminology and risk-focused prevention. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan, & R. Reiner (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of criminology (pp. 657– 701). Oxford University Press. Ferragina, E. (2009). The never-ending debate about the moral basis of a backward society: Banfield and “amoral familism”. Journal of Anthropological Society of Oxford, 1(2), 141– 160. Fiandaca, G. (2007). Introduction. In Fiandaca, G. (Ed.), Women and the mafia: Female roles in organized crime structures (Vol. 5). Springer Science & Business Media (pp. 1–8). Fyfe, N. R., & McKay, H. (2000a). Desperately seeking safety. British Journal of Criminology, 40(4), 675–691. Fyfe, N. R., & McKay, H. (2000b). Police protection of intimidated witnesses: A study of the Strathclyde police witness protection programme, Policing and Society: An International Journal, 10(3), 277–299. Gambetta, D. (2011). “The sicilian mafia”: Twenty years after publication, Sociologica, Fascicolo 2, maggio-agosto. In M. Santoro (Ed.), Symposium: “Telling about the mafia”: Research, reflexivity, and representation.

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Giddens, A. (1992). The transformation of intimacy: Sexuality. Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies, 11. Gilad, M. (2012). Who will protect the children: The untold story of unaccompanied minors in witness protection programs. Whittier Journal of Child & Family Advocacy, 12, 43. Giunta, S., Mannino, G., Bizzarri, C., & La Fiura, G. (2018). Being mafia children: An empirical transgenerational research. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 9(1), 191–202. Graziosi, M. (2001). Women, the Mafia and legal safeguards. Forum on Crime and Society, 1(2), 129–134. Hobbs, D. (2001). The firm. Organizational logic and criminal culture on a shifting terrain. British Journal of Criminology, 41(4), 549–560. Hobbs, D., & Antonopoulos, G. A. (2013). ‘Endemic to the species’: ordering the ‘other’via organised crime. Global Crime, 14(1), 27–51. Ingrascì, O. (2007). Women in the ‘Ndrangheta: The Serraino-Di Giovine Case. In G. Fiandaca (Ed.), Women and the mafia. Female roles in organized crime structures. New York: Springer. Larke, G. (2012). Organised crime: Mafia Myths on film and television. In Criminal visions. Marzullo, R. (2016). Mafia children: From future to past. Knowing other realities to learn freedom. Review of Social Studies, 3(2), 45–57. Maas, P. (1968). The Valachi Papers. New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. MPS. (2010). ‘Acceptance Criteria’ for individuals referred for witness protection measures standard operating procedure (SOP). London Metropolitan Police Service. Montanino, F. (1984). Protecting the federal witness: Burying past life and biography. American Behavioral Scientist, 27(4), 501–528. OCCRP, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. (2020, April 14). Mafia aid may come at a steep price in Southern Italy (online). Available from 7 https://www.occrp.org/en/ daily/12096-mafia-aid-may-come-at-a-steep-price-in-southern-italy. Paoli, L. (2004). Italian organised crime: Mafia associations and criminal enterprises. Global Crime, 6(1), 19–31. Paunović, S., Starčević, D., & Nešić, L. (2013). Identity management and witness protection system. Management, 66, 27–37. Pickering-Iazzi, R. (2019). Dead silent: Life stories of girls and women killed by the italian mafias, 1878–2018. French, Italian and Comparative Literature Faculty Books. 2. 7 https:// dc.uwm.edu/freita_facbooks/2. Pizzini-Gambetta, V. (2008). Women and the mafia: A methodology minefield. Global Crime, 9(4), 348–353. Pizzinni-Gambetta, V. (2014). Organised crime: The gender constraints in illegal markets. Oxford University Press. Putnam, R. D., Leonardi, R., & Nanetti, R. Y. (1993). Making democracy work. Princeton University Press. Rawlinson, P. (1998). Mafia, media and myth: Representations of Russian organised crime. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 37(4), 346–358. Savona, E. U., & Riccardi, M. (Eds.). (2018). Mapping the risk of serious and organised crime infiltration in European businesses—Final report of the MORE Project. Milano: Transcrime—Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Schelling, T. C. (1984). Choice and consequence. Harvard University Press. Sergi, A. (2018). Widening the antimafia net: Child protection and the socio-cultural transmission of mafia behaviours in calabria. Youth Justice, 18(2), 149–168.

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Siebert, R. (1996). Secrets of life and death: Women and the Mafia. Verso. Spapens, T., & Moors, H. (2019). Intergenerational transmission and organised crime. A study of seven families in the south of the Netherlands. Trends in organized crime, 1–15. United Nations. (2008). Good practices for the protection of witnesses in criminal proceedings involving organized crime. United Nations office on drugs and crime [online]. United Nations. (2009). Justice in matters involving child victims and witnesses of crime: Model law and related commentary. United Nations office on drugs and crime [online]. U.S. Department of Justice. (2018). Witness security: Factsheet [online]. U.S. Marshals Service. Available from: 7 https://www.usmarshals.gov/duties/factsheets/witsec.pdf. van Dijk, M., Kleemans, E., & Eichelsheim, V. (2019). Children of organized crime offenders: Like father, like child? An explorative and qualitative study into mechanisms of intergenerational (dis) continuity in organized crime families. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 25(4), 345–363.

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The Violent Family: Domestic and Family Violence Contents 5.1  Gender-Based Violence and the Family – 123 5.1.1  What Is Gender-Based Violence? – 123 5.1.2  Gender-Based Violence in the Family – 127

5.2  The Nature and Causes of Family Violence – 132 5.2.1  Conceptualising Family Violence – 132 5.2.2  Explaining Family Violence – 137

5.3  Responding to Domestic and Family Violence – 140 5.3.1  Preventing Family Violence Through Legislation – 140 5.3.2  Preventing Family Violence Through Education – 144

Useful Websites – 149 References – 150

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Holt, Family Criminology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71169-6_5

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z Overview

5

In the previous chapter we explored how crime—namely, organised crime— plays a key role in some families’ lives. In this chapter we explore crime within families in a different way—as interpersonal crime that is perpetrated by family members against family members. We begin this chapter by exploring what we mean by gender-based violence, and by locating its perpetration within families. Then we examine different conceptualisations of family violence, and look at how different theories have sought to explain its perpetration and, in some cases, its victimisation. In the final section, we discuss different approaches to family violence prevention, starting with legislative measures, including its criminalisation, and concluding with educational approaches and specific strategies used in schools and the media. Conceptual Toolbox: Heteronormativity The concept of heteronormativity was first used by Michael Warner in Fear of a Queer Planet (1993). In developing his ideas, Warner drew on Adrienne Rich’s concept of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (1980) as well as Michel Foucault’s (1978) earlier ideas about the construction of sexuality. Heteronormativity refers to the codes of conduct that reward and normalise behaviours (or performances) of acceptable heterosexuality. This includes hegemonic ideals of femininity and masculinity, particularly in terms of marital, familial and reproductive norms. It is a divisive construct because it operates by demonising and sanctioning those who do not conform to its ideals—that is, anyone who, according to Rubin (1992), does not reside within ‘the charmed circle’ of heterosexual, monogamous, procreative and married. Terms such as unnatural, deviant and pseudo are often applied to individuals and families who do not conform to heteronormative ideals. Heteronormativity operates on the assumption of at least two key binaries: the gender binary (male v. female) and the sexuality binary (heterosexual v. homosexual). They intersect with each other within a broader system of patriarchy and reinforce norms about family life. For example, being ‘acceptably male’ involves being actively attracted to a (yielding, but not too yielding) ‘acceptable female’, who together organise an ‘acceptable family life’ within normative legal and biological kinship ties (e.g. a wife and biological children). These binaries also intersect with other dimensions of power, such as race, class, and dis/ability, since definitions of ‘real’ men/women, ‘real’ sexuality, and ‘real’ family are based on White, middle-class and ableist values. Heteronormative violence refers to those acts of violence that serve to regulate bodies by punishing those who transgress ‘acceptable’ performances of gender and sexuality. While heteronormative violence takes place outside of

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family life (e.g. through street harassment and workplace harassment), it is commonly perpetrated by family members against other family members. It may take the form of: 5 Hate crime against lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, trans and non-binary family members 5 ‘Honour’-based violence against those who do not conform to ‘acceptable’ rules of femininity and masculinity 5 Coercive control tactics used in intimate relationships (for example, accusing women of promiscuity) Heteronormativity also underpins victim-blaming and perpetrator-excusing accounts of violence in families. For example, male perpetrators may be excused of perpetrating sexual violence in terms of their unfulfilled ‘natural urges’ while female victims may be blamed because they were ‘asking for it’ because of their ‘seductive’ clothes. As this chapter highlights, it is women and girls who are overwhelmingly the targets of different forms of heteronormative violence. However, men and boys can be its victims, and women can be involved in its perpetration. While it is clear that there are cultural variations in how heteronormative violence operates, heteronormativity nevertheless appears to be a consistent feature across most of the world. Key reading: Warner, M. (Ed.). (1993). Fear of a queer planet: Queer politics and social theory (Vol. 6). University of Minnesota Press.

5.1  Gender-Based Violence and the Family

Gender-based violence is a global social problem that pervades all communities to a greater or lesser extent. To understand violence in families, it is useful to frame it as part of this larger problem. In this section, we discuss what we mean by ‘gender-based violence’ and explore its prevalence and contours, while in the second part we examine the different ways it manifests within the family. 5.1.1  What Is Gender-Based Violence?

According to the World Health Organisation (2013), one in four adults worldwide have been physically abused in childhood, with 20% of women

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and six per cent of men experiencing sexual abuse in childhood. Thirty per cent of women worldwide have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) at some point in their lives, and 16% of people who are aged 60 years and older have experienced some form of abuse in non-institutional settings. Gender-based violence (GBV) refers to violent and/or abusive behaviours that are targeted because of a victim’s gender or sexual identity. As such, this violence is legitimised by heteronormative ideas about gender and sexuality which may not necessarily be criminalised. Gender-based violence includes a range of harmful behaviours, including physical and sexual violence, rape, stalking and harassment. However, while anyone can experience GBV, it is rooted in a patriarchal system of gender inequality: women and girls are overwhelmingly targeted, and men are the main perpetrators. Research suggests that, around the world, one in three women experience some form of gender-based violence in their lifetime, with women in low-income countries most at risk (WHO, 2013). Gender-based violence is recognised as representing an abuse of a citizen’s human rights and fundamental freedoms, and its role in hindering the achievement of equality, development and peace was recognised in the United Nations’ Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women in 1993. Taking a gender-based approach to understanding such violence is helpful because it highlights how ‘mild’ and severe forms of violence are part of the same continuum. Thus, while of course the most severe forms of violence are particularly damaging, so too is the everyday presence of violence that permeates a person’s life. A GBV approach also allows us to make sense of similarities and differences in the violence experienced by women and men throughout their lives, particularly in terms of vulnerabilities, types of violation and its impacts. It is particularly useful to understand GBV from a life-course perspective because it helps us to highlight the continuum of violence and its cumulative impact over time. As . Fig. 5.1 highlights, some forms of GBV can take place at any point during the life course, while other forms, such as forced marriage or coerced pregnancy, are specific to a particular period within the life course and are shaped by both maturational processes and social norms. Furthermore, while some forms of GBV can be experienced by any gender (e.g. rape), other forms of GBV, such as dowry abuse and female genital mutilation (FGM), exclusively victimise women and girls. However, while we know that GBV overwhelmingly targets women and girls throughout the life course, there is an intersectional element to it. In

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. Fig. 5.1  The life-course of gender-based violence

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1993, the United Nations identified particular groups of women as especially vulnerable to such violence, including:

» …

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women belonging to minority groups, indigenous women, refugee women, migrant women, women living in rural or remote communities, destitute women, women in institutions or in detention, female children, women with disabilities, elderly women and women in situations of armed conflict. (United Nations, 1993: 02)

This list usefully highlights how dimensions of power—including race and ethnicity, dis/ability, age, class, culture, religiosity, caste and nationality— intersect with gender and sexuality and mutually reinforce one another to produce contexts that are particularly prone to violence, or which are particularly inhibiting of empowerment. This is borne out by evidence that has found that women from minoritised groups experience greater levels of GBV, including femicide, and face greater barriers to accessing support services (see Siddiqui, 2018). Similarly, Black children and children who experience disability are disproportionately more likely to come to the attention of professionals because of abuse and/or neglect by family members (Sedlak et al., 2010). Men can also be victims of gender-based violence. For example, in his examination of conflict situations, Carpenter (2006) identifies sexual violence, forced conscription and sex-selective massacre as particular contexts where GBV is targeted against boys and men. The gendered basis of such violence is rooted in the collective assumptions about men’s roles and responsibilities that serve to reproduce heteronormative hierarchies during war and peacetime. Gender-based violence can involve female perpetrators. In such cases, it is important to recognise the iniquitous social, economic and political context in which such violence takes place. For example, female infanticide and female foeticide are both common practice in parts of India, and a gender-based framework allows us to understand women’s participation in them in terms of how women protect themselves in a patriarchal context where the production of female offspring is not valued. This is not to deny women’s agency in perpetrating such violence, or to remove their accountability for it. However, it is important to recognise the extent of women’s victimisation—and the social structures which operate to support this victimisation—while also acknowledging the capability of women to engage in acts of gender-based violence, some of which can be very severe.

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5.1.2  Gender-Based Violence in the Family

While GBV takes place in almost every institutional and social arena, a large proportion of it takes place within the family. This may be surprising given the extent to which ‘home and family’ is traditionally constructed as a ‘safe haven’ from the crime that is ‘out there’ in the world.1 But one consequence of positioning crime so firmly within the public realm is that crime within the private ‘domestic’ realm becomes invisible. When it is recognised, it is seen as ‘less serious’ and is less likely to be categorised as a crime. ‘Domestic abuse’ is a broad term that includes all forms of controlling, violent or abusive behaviour between adults who are (or have been) intimate partners or family members. In 1979, the extent of domestic abuse was highlighted in research by Dobash and Dobash in Violence against Wives: A Case against the Patriarchy. This study drew on police records to highlight the extent of domestic abuse in the United Kingdom, finding that a quarter of all violent incidents attended by the police involved domestic abuse. Three years later, Straus et al. (1982) published Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family, which drew on survey data from 2000 families in the United States to highlight the extent of family violence more broadly over the past year. The study examined the prevalence of a range of forms of family violence, including intimate partner violence (28%), corporal punishment (77% of parents thought this was ‘normal’), violence between siblings (82%) and child/adolescent violence towards parents (20% of mothers, 14% of fathers). To make sense its prevalence, Gelles and Straus (1979) suggested that the family possesses a unique set of characteristics that make it particularly prone to violence. These characteristics include: 1. The intensity of time spent together 2. The intensity of (often involuntary) commitment to each other 3. The nature of family interactions, which are often conflict-structured and have a ‘zero-sum’ quality to them (e.g. who holds the television remote control) 4. The different social locations of family members, in terms of gender and age (and the roles ascribed to them) 5. The high degree of privacy the family enjoys away from formal controls

1 As we discussed in 7 Chapter 2, such constructions explain why the home and family is frequently claimed to offer the solution to crime.

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. Fig. 5.2  The life-course of gender-based violence in the family

6. The extensive knowledge of social biographies (which includes family member’s vulnerabilities) 7. The continual life transitions which a family undergoes which makes it particularly stress-prone If we return once again to our diagram of gender-based violence across the life-course and focus specifically on family violence, the extent and range of such violence within the family arena becomes evident (see . Fig. 5.2). There is a wide range of behaviours that constitute gender-based violence within the family, and these include: 5 Physical violence—e.g. hitting, slapping, spitting, pushing, punching, making threats to physically harm the victim or their loved ones (e.g. other family members or pets), forcible physical restraint, damaging property, withholding of physical needs (e.g. sleep, food, urination). 5 Emotional abuse—e.g. continuous degradation, intimidation, manipulation (including processes of coercive control); Includes verbal abuse. 5 Sexual violence—e.g. using force or manipulation to make the victim engage in sexual activity, making sexual contact without consent (e.g.

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while asleep), making sexually offensive comments, excessive sexual jealousy, sexually taunting or ridiculing victim. 5 Economic abuse—e.g. controlling household finances (including the victim’s access to money), hiding money in secret accounts, making a victim lose their job or preventing the victim from taking a job. 5 Neglect—ongoing failure to meet a person’s basic needs for whom one is in a caring relationship with. Includes food, clothing, shelter, hygiene, medication and health care, as well as emotional neglect (e.g. ignoring, isolating) and educational neglect. While violence within families is pervasive, the specific form it takes is determined by the nature of the familial relationship between perpetrator(s) and victim, and their age. Thus, in relationships that are characterised by dependency (for example, between parent and child, or between adult and elderly parent), then neglect is more likely to feature. On the other hand, sexual violence in families is more common against women and children, in part because of the way in which women and children are sexualised in Westernised cultures. However, quite often family violence involves a combination of different kinds of abuses. This is referred to as poly-victimisation (Finkelhor et al., 2007) and it is particularly harmful in its cumulative effects.2 In some families, so-called ‘honour’ based violence may form the landscape of gender-based violence. According to Gill, ‘honour’ is a multi-dimensional concept that includes ‘familial respect, patriotism and social prestige’ (Gill, 2013: 147) and it is particularly associated with families of African, Asian and Middle Eastern heritage. In honour-based systems, much of the family’s ‘symbolic capital’ (see 7 Chapter 8 and the discussion of social capital) is produced through the maintenance of ‘honour’, and this is achieved by conforming to a set of norms and traditions that operate within a (socially constructed) value system. The loss of honour, most frequently mobilised by perceived female transgressions of acceptable behaviour, can bring shame and stigma upon the family. In a minority of cases, the perceived loss of honour is used to legitimise a range of violences against women and girls, including ‘hymen repair’, forced abortion,

2 This framework for understanding harms in terms of its cumulative effects also underpins the increasingly influential ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) approach to understanding trauma and resilience.

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abduction and imprisonment, forced marriage and ‘honour’ suicide. ‘Honour’-based violence may also be perpetrated against young men if they do not conform to expectations in terms of gender identity, marriage choice or heterosexuality, for example. In cases of ‘honour’-based violence, there may be multiple perpetrators, including non-family community members. Men may also be subject to forms of gender-based violence in their intimate and family relationships, most often perpetrated by men. In some cases, this can make them particularly vulnerable. For example, in samesex intimate relationships, the use of coercive tactics such as threats to ‘out’ the victim can, in a homophobic society, be sufficiently frightening to both enforce compliance with the perpetrator’s demands and prevent the victim from accessing support services. Homophobia can seep into family violence in other ways, such as in cases of intrafamilial hate crime, particularly against children and adolescents who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and/or queer (LGBTQ) and who are subject to violence by family members (see Asquith & Fox, 2016). While different forms of domestic and family violence have unique characteristics, they share similar impacts in terms of the immediate and longterm harms they cause: 5 Physical health: Injury, disability, sexual and reproductive health problems, chronic health problems (e.g. hypertension, IBS), pregnancy problems and low birth weight, death 5 Mental health: Anxiety, fear, mistrust, difficulties in concentration, loneliness, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), psychosomatic illnesses, low self-esteem, self-medication (via alcohol/drug use), depression, suicide 5 Economic and social harm: stigma and discrimination, reduced participation in social and economic activities, fear of future violence, absenteeism/job loss 5 Family life: separated/divorced families, economic hardships, increased vulnerability to other types of violence, emotional impact on wider family members (including family alienation) 5 Society: burden on health and judicial systems, lost productivity, reduced ability to respond to social or economic change, breakdown of trust, weakened community networks and social support Questions for reflection: – Should all family violence be considered to be a form of gender-based violence? Are there any examples of family violence that fall outside of this conceptualisation? If we understand family violence as gender-based, what does this mean for prevention and intervention strategies?

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Box 5.1 Coercive Control Coercive control is a concept introduced by Evan Stark to highlight the pattern of controlling behaviour that is fundamental to understanding how domestic abuse operates. According to Stark, coercive control is a ‘strategic course of self-interested behaviour designed to secure and expand gender-based privilege by establishing a regime of domination in personal life’ (Stark, 2013: 21). Stark suggested that coercive control is ongoing (rather than ‘incident-based’), involves rational and instrumental behaviour, and produces harms that are cumulative. Stark identified four major tactics that are involved in coercive control: 1. Violence—achieved through beatings, choking and sexual violence 2. Intimidation—achieved through threats, surveillance and degradation, which instils fear, hides violence and maintains compliance 3. Isolation—achieved by keeping the victim from leaving the house (e.g. to socialise or go to work/college), denying the victim money and access to transport, preventing others from coming to the house, and destroying personal mementoes

. Image  5.1  Gunby and Barnes’ (2017) representation of coercive control tactics (Source ©Gunby and Barnes)

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4. Control—achieved by controlling money, food, sex, sleep, housing, bodily functions, transport and communication (including online communication) Following their research into coercive control, Gunby and Barnes (2017) produced a powerful image ‘to illuminate the subtext and communicate what being in an abusive relationship looks like’ (Gunby & Barnes, 2017) (see . Image 5.1)

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5.2  The Nature and Causes of Family Violence

Family violence can be understood in a number of ways, and it has gone through a transition in recent decades from its normalisation to its problematisation. In this section, we explore some of the ways in which family violence has been both conceptualised and theorised. In the first part, we explore some of the different frameworks for understanding family violence, drawing specifically on ‘family conflict’ and ‘gender-based violence’ approaches. In the second part, we examine some of the key theories that have been used to explain family violence. 5.2.1  Conceptualising Family Violence

An examination of historical records tells us that family violence has been with us for a long time. For example, Amussen (1994) cites a range of documentary sources such as crime pamphlets and Assizes court records to highlight the extent of public debate on family violence in England during the early modern period (c. 1550–1750). However, in Westernised cultures, the way in which we talk about family violence has significantly changed over the past fifty years. Historically, violence and abuse were often considered to be part of normal family life. The physical disciplining of children (known as corporal punishment) was seen as a necessary part of child-rearing, and wives were often considered to be deserving of ‘a quick slap’. Such assumptions were supported by statute (for example, rape in marriage was legal in the United Kingdom until 1991) and by criminal justice practice (for example, police were often reluctant to get involved in ‘domestics’, especially if they involved poor and/or Black women from inner-city areas). The result of such processes of normalisation is that family violence, and the harms it produced, continued unchallenged.

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However, feminist campaigning during the 1960s and 1970s was important in the shift towards the problematisation of family violence. Thus, rather than accepting it as normal, family violence was identified as a significant social problem that needed addressing. Yet while there is often a consensus about the identification of a particular social problem, there can be much debate on how best to conceptualise it. For example, one approach conceptualises family violence as a problem of ‘family conflict’. This approach acknowledges the problem but individualises it, and families where family violence features are often described as ‘dysfunctional’. Such a conceptualisation facilitates the provision of a therapeutic response, which acts as a soft control on the violence. Thus, individuals get ‘corrected’ and the problem seemingly goes away. Within this framework, even victims themselves can be pathologised. One example of this is the term battered wife syndrome (Walker, 1977), which was developed to describe the ‘learned helplessness’ that was assumed to characterise women who stayed with men who abused them. One consequence of this is that it served to create a new category of deviance in its problematisation of the victims, and shift attention away from the perpetrators of violence (Loseke & Cahill, 1984). An alternative approach to family violence adopts a feminist approach by problematising it as ‘gender-based violence’. This conceptualisation highlights the political nature of the violence, in terms of how it (re)produces broader systems of inequality that structure society, particularly the system of patriarchy. This approach advocates hard control measures in the form of criminal justice responses to underscore the unacceptability of its perpetration. This approach to family violence has been formalised over recent years with an increasing statutory and policy emphasis on combating domestic abuse. These policy shifts reflect broader cultural shifts, which include the rise of online feminist campaigns such as #MeToo and #TimesUp to highlight the endemic nature of gender-based violence.3

3 #MeToo and #TimesUp are examples of digital feminism that sought to challenge the epidemic of gender-based violence. Following allegations of sexual assault by film producer Harvey Weinstein in 2017, the #MeToo hashtag was used in social media (particularly Twitter) to share personal stories of sexual assault to highlight its prevalence, especially within the cultural industries. The #MeToo hashtag gained attention when used by Hollywood actor Alyssa Milano, though it was initially used in 2006 by Black women’s activist Tarana Burke. The #TimesUp movement started in 2018 in solidarity with the #MeToo movement, and was set up to campaign against the extent of sexual assault across all workplaces.

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However, the GBV approach is still resisted by many in everyday public discourse. Back in 2008, Romito identified a number of tactics that are frequently used to both deny and legitimise its gendered nature. These tactics include: 5 Euphemising—using language to hide the centrality of male violence against women and girls (e.g. by describing it as ‘marital conflict’) 5 Dehumanising—allowing people to distance themselves from the victim through the systematic devaluation of women and children 5 Blaming—blaming others for the violence (including victims, mothers and other family members4) 5 Psychologising—de-politicising and individualising the cause of the violence (e.g. by suggesting that the perpetrator (or the victim) is mentally ill) 5 Naturalising—drawing on an evolutionary framework to suggest violence is inevitable (e.g. that it is due to testosterone or ‘natural urges’) 5 Separating—distinguishing different forms of gender-based violence to hide its continuity. This final point about ‘separating’ is particularly important because mainstream Criminology tends to reproduce this practice by organising its research on family violence into distinct categories (e.g. ‘child abuse’, ‘intimate partner violence’, ‘elder abuse’). Sometimes this can be helpful as it allows us to closely examine different kinds of violent relationship—for example, see Kelly and Johnson’s typology of different kinds of intimate partner violence (see 7 Box 5.2). However, separating out different forms of family violence makes it difficult to identify patterns across them. While there is much statistical data on family violence, it tends to be collected in terms of specific types of violence, with each collecting the data from different time-points and drawing on different variables to organise the data. This means that we can miss important components of family violence. For example, for a long time, the idea that children and young people could instigate violence towards their parents was often dismissed as a problem of ‘poor parenting’ by practitioners who worked with families because it did not fit into traditional conceptualisations of what ‘family violence’ is (see Holt & Retford, 2013). Thus, while we have very clear understandings of what ‘child abuse’ is, and what ‘domestic

4

Romito explains that ‘In systemic family therapy the couple is considered as a problematic unit and the relationship is analysed from a circular perspective’ (2008: 65). Thus, from a feminist perspective, the use of family systems theory in understanding family violence is problematic.

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. Fig. 5.3  Conceptualising family violence across child and adult dyads

abuse’ is, it is more difficult to conceptualise the nature of abusive family relationships when the instigator is not adult-aged (see . Fig. 5.3). This ‘separating’ effect is also reproduced within the statutory organisations that have been set up to intervene in suspected cases of family violence. While of course the police can and should intervene in any case of family violence in which a criminal incident has taken place, different statutory agencies have responsibilities for different kinds of family violence. For example, in England and Wales: 5 In cases of suspected child abuse/neglect, children’s social care departments have a responsibility to intervene in cases where children are at ‘risk of significant harm’ or are a ‘child in need’ (Children Act, 1989). 5 In cases of suspected elder abuse/neglect, adult social care departments have a responsibility to intervene in cases where the adult is considered to be vulnerable or at risk (Social Care Act, 2014). 5 In cases of suspected domestic abuse, a multi-agency response, in the form of a MARAC (Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference), is convened to enable a range of agencies (including police, housing, health, children and/or adult social care) to review the case and put together a response plan. While this organisational framework allows specialists to focus on the needs of specific populations, it can lead to problems when more marginalised forms of family violence occur and there is no obvious line of responsibility. An example is the case of child/adolescent-to-parent violence which does not fit in any particular organisational framework because (a) the

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child her/himself is not at risk of harm (so it is not ‘child abuse/neglect’), (b) the instigator is not adult-aged (so it is not ‘domestic abuse’), and (c) the victim is not a vulnerable or older adult (so it is not ‘elder abuse’). Questions for Reflection: – Should we conceptualise child/adolescent-to-parent violence as a form of ‘domestic abuse’? What are the reasons for and against doing this? In what ways should responses to child/adolescent-instigated family violence be different from responses to adult-instigated family violence?

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Box 5.2: Typology of Intimate Partner Violence The most pervasive form of family violence is intimate partner violence (IPV). One continual conundrum within IPV research concerns the extent to which it is gendered—some research suggests that it is highly gendered and that IPV is predominantly a problem of male violence against women and girls, while other research suggests it is less so. To explain this, Kelly and Johnson (2008) suggest that there are five different types5 of intimate partner violence, and that different research studies are tapping into different types. The five different types are organised according to three dimensions: the presence of coercive control, the extent of gender symmetry and the escalation of the violence: 1. Coercive controlling violence is the most severe kind of violence that escalates over time, is significantly more likely to be perpetrated by men and is significantly more likely to feature in the case histories of domestic homicide 2. Violent resistance refers to protective violence mainly instigated by women in response to coercive controlling violence—as such, it tends not to escalate or come to the attention of the police unless it results in homicide 3. Situational couple violence tends not to be gender-specific and does not have a ‘controlling’ aspect to it—it emerges from arguments and generally involves minor forms of violence, including verbal abuse 4. Mutual violent control violence is an incredibly rare form of violence that involves both partners who are each violent and controlling towards the other

5 In an earlier version of this typology, Johnson (1995, 2006) suggested that there were two types of IPV: ‘intimate terrorism’ (re-worked into coercive controlling violence) and ‘common couple violence’ (re-worked into situational couple violence).

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5. Separation-instigated violence happens during the separation process, tends not to be gender-specific or follow a history of violence, and it is often instigated by the partner who has been left Kelly and Johnson’s typological model has been welcomed for reconciling the opposing ‘family conflict’ and ‘gender-based violence’ conceptualisations of intimate partner violence by suggesting that each conceptualisation focuses on different populations and that, as such, IPV is not a unitary phenomenon. There is also empirical support for the typology through self-report data from community surveys as well as clinical data from the courts, treatment programmes and domestic abuse shelters. However, concerns have been raised that this model might serve to minimise the impact of domestic abuse during decision-making in the family courts, with fathers claiming that the violence reported by mothers is merely situational couple violence (see Meier, 2015 for a discussion).

5.2.2  Explaining Family Violence

Comparative research shows us that there is more family violence against women and girls in countries that have greater gender inequality (Yodanis, 2004). Furthermore, while family violence is a pervasive global problem, it is not inevitable: anthropologists have found that it is almost absent in smallscale societies such as the Wape of Papua New Guinea (see Heise et al., 2002). The wide variations in family violence around the world, and its lack of inevitability, suggest that there is hope for change. However before we can develop prevention strategies, we need to be able to explain the differences found in family violence between individuals, families, communities and societies. Ecological systems theory can help us to make sense of the many different research findings that have attempted to identify the causes of family violence. This theory was initially developed by Bronfenbrenner (1977, 1979) to highlight how human development operates within a dynamic set of inter-related and interactional environmental contexts. In relation to family violence, the ecological systems theory can usefully highlight the multifaceted and interactive nature of those factors that increase the likelihood that a particular person in a particular environment will perpetrate family violence in a particular way. It can also help us to identify and develop preventive strategies by highlighting both its risk factors and its protective factors. . Figure 5.4 identifies some of the factors that have been found to shape the perpetration of family violence.

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. Fig. 5.4  Causes of family violence perpetration

Many of the theories discussed elsewhere in this book have been applied to explain particular mechanisms that operate at different levels to shape the perpetration of family violence. Some of these are outlined in . Table 5.1. It is important to recognise that each subsystem does not operate independently: they each interact with each other. For example, the cultural acceptance of rigid and unequal gender roles at the societal level is likely to shape how gender is organised within families (including the organisation of emotional labour) at the interpersonal level. This may, in turn, affect the nature and extent of violence against family members. For children living with family violence, epidemiological research suggests that early exposure to it may shape an infant’s nervous, endocrine, and immune systems (Anda et al., 2010): that is, the violence itself may instigate changes at the individual level. Thus, none of these processes should be considered within a simplistic ‘cause and effect’ framework. As 7 Chapter 2 highlights, making deterministic assumptions about a child’s background (such as the assumption that those growing up with violence will become perpetrators) can be particularly stigmatising and harmful. Research by Callaghan et al. (2017) about children growing up in violent households found that children have agency in managing these difficult experiences: indeed, such experiences enable children to build resilience by engaging in emotional regulation strategies.

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. Table 5.1  Summary of theories to explain the perpetration of family violence >ĞǀĞů /ŶĚŝǀŝĚƵĂůůĞǀĞů

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džĂŵƉůĞ ŝŽůŽŐŝĐĂůĐŽƌƌĞůĂƚĞƐŝŶĐůƵĚĞďĞŚĂǀŝŽƵƌĂůŐĞŶĞƚŝĐƐ;ƐĞĞŽdž ϭ͘ϭͿ͕ŚĞĂĚŝŶũƵƌŝĞƐ;ŝŶĐ͘ƚĞŵƉŽƌĂƌLJůŽďĞĚLJƐĨƵŶĐƚŝŽŶͿ͕ ƉƐLJĐŚŽƉŚLJƐŝŽůŽŐLJ;Ğ͘Ő͘ŽǀĞƌͲƌĞĂĐƚŝǀĞƐƚƌĞƐƐƌĞƐƉŽŶƐĞͿĂŶĚ ŶĞƵƌŽĐŚĞŵŝƐƚƌLJĂŶĚĞŶĚŽĐƌŝŶŽůŽŐLJ;Ğ͘Ő͘ŚŝŐŚůĞǀĞůƐŽĨ ƚĞƐƚŽƐƚĞƌŽŶĞĂŶĚƐĞƌŽƚŽŶŝŶͿ /ŶƐĞĐƵƌĞĞĂƌůLJĂƚƚĂĐŚŵĞŶƚ;ƐĞĞŽdžϭ͘ϮͿůĞĂĚƐƚŽůĂƚĞƌ ƌĞůĂƚŝŽŶƐŚŝƉƉƌŽďůĞŵƐ͕ŝŶĐůƵĚŝŶŐǀŝŽůĞŶĐĞƚŽǁĂƌĚƐƉĂƌƚŶĞƌƐ ĂŶĚĐŚŝůĚƌĞŶ͘ ŚŝůĚƌĞŶǁŚŽŽďƐĞƌǀĞŽƌĞdžƉĞƌŝĞŶĐĞǀŝŽůĞŶĐĞůĞĂƌŶƚŽƵƐĞ ƚŚŽƐĞƐĂŵĞďĞŚĂǀŝŽƵƌƐŝŶƚŚĞŝƌŽǁŶƌĞůĂƚŝŽŶƐŚŝƉƐ͕ǁŚŝĐŚĂƌĞ ŽĨƚĞŶƌĞŝŶĨŽƌĐĞĚ͘ ^ƚƌĞƐƐƉƌŽĚƵĐĞƐĨĂŵŝůLJĐŽŶĨůŝĐƚƐ͕ĂĐĐŽŵŵŽĚĂƚŝŽŶƐĂŶĚ ƵŶŚĞĂůƚŚLJƌĞƐƉŽŶƐĞƐ;ŝŶĐůƵĚŝŶŐǀŝŽůĞŶĐĞͿǁŝƚŚŝŶƚŚĞǁŚŽůĞ ĨĂŵŝůLJƵŶŝƚ >ŽĐĂůƐŽĐŝĂůŶŽƌŵƐǁŝƚŚŝŶƉĞĞƌŐƌŽƵƉƐĂŶĚĐŽŵŵƵŶŝƚŝĞƐ ĨĂĐŝůŝƚĂƚĞŽƌŝŶŚŝďŝƚĨĂŵŝůLJǀŝŽůĞŶĐĞ;Ğ͘Ő͘ƌŝŐŝĚƐĞdžƌŽůĞƐĂŶĚ ŵĂůĞĚŽŵŝŶĂŶĐĞ͕ĞŶĚŽƌƐĞŵĞŶƚŽĨĐŽƌƉŽƌĂůƉƵŶŝƐŚŵĞŶƚͿ &ĂŵŝůLJǀŝŽůĞŶĐĞŝƐƉĂƌƚŽĨĂǁŝĚĞƌƚĂƉĞƐƚƌLJŽĨƉĂƚƌŝĂƌĐŚĂůĂŶĚ ŚĞƚĞƌŽŶŽƌŵĂƚŝǀĞǀĂůƵĞƐƚŚĂƚƐƚƌƵĐƚƵƌĞƐŽĐŝĂůƌĞůĂƚŝŽŶƐ

The ecological systems theory is useful because it helps us to avoid a simplistic focus on ‘perpetrators’ and ‘victims’ and extends the analytic lens to consider the interaction of biological, familial, cultural, institutional and legal factors in the perpetration of family violence. It also allows us to recognise the importance of global campaigns (such as #MeToo and #TimesUp) and the role that they can have in shaping personal experiences of, and responses to, gender-based violence in families.

Theories of Family Violence Victimisation Alongside the development of theories to explain the perpetration of family violence, a number of theories have been put forward to explain victimhood. As with theories of crime victimisation more generally, such theories are controversial because they imply that the victim is somehow responsible for their own victimisation. Certainly, many early theories of domestic abuse victimisation were highly victim-blaming. For example, one early theory posited that women stayed with violent men because they were inherently ‘masochistic’ and deliberately sought out violent men. Similarly, the concept of battered wives syndrome (see earlier) serves to medicalise the victims of domestic abuse, rather than understand the controlling context of their situation and the challenges this produces when attempting to leave. Such frameworks of understanding, or discourses, serve to shame victims and prevent them from reaching out for help. In contrast, Gondolf and Fisher’s (1988) survivor theory highlights how victims’ responses are active

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and dynamic. For example, as the violence increases in frequency and/or severity, victims shift from the invisible ‘private realm’ to the visible ‘public realm’ as they start to disclose their experiences and seek help.6 5.3  Responding to Domestic and Family Violence

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Significant shifts over the past fifty years have meant that a number of strategies have now been put in place to prevent domestic and family violence. Prevention work is mainly through two key methods: legislation and education, and in this section we discuss each of these methods in turn. 5.3.1  Preventing Family Violence Through Legislation

Legislation represents a hard control approach to combating social problems. In relation to family violence, there are two specific ways in which the law can be used: using a criminal justice framework and using a civil law framework.

Criminal Justice Responses First, the criminalisation of specific forms of family violence (e.g. child cruelty, assault, rape, sexual harassment, coercive control) aims to eliminate it by increasing the costs to perpetrators and by sending a clear social message about the unacceptability of such violence. In England and Wales there has been incremental progress in the legislation of new offences that have a ‘family violence’ dimension to them, from the criminalisation of child neglect in 18687 to the criminalisation of coercive control in 2015.8 The criminal sanctions that follow may include additional measures to reduce further

6 This theoretical approach taps into broader debates about whether those who experience family violence should be understood as ‘victims’ or ‘survivors’. The term ‘victim’ recognises the powerlessness and vulnerability of those subject to such violence, and the relational nature of the term implies the existence (and thus accountability) of the perpetrator. In contrast, the term ‘survivor’ recognises the strength and resilience of those who have endured such violence and rejects the weakness that the term ‘victim’ connotes. However, others suggest that any kind of labelling of a designated victim/survivor status is unhelpful, and that people should instead be simply described as people who have experienced family violence. 7 8

Poor Law Amendment Act (1868) Serious Crime Act (2015)

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violence at an individual level, for example, through court-mandated treatment programmes for those who offend (see 7 Box 5.3).9 However, it has been suggested that responding to family violence within a criminal justice framework is problematic because domestic abuse and family violence is cumulative, and the criminal justice system is set up to respond to ‘incident-based’ crimes that have a clear start and end. It is also sometimes seen to be overly concerned with punishing the offender, rather than with supporting the victim. In particular, the criminal justice processes that a victim must endure can be re-traumatising for them, resulting in experiences of secondary victimisation. Concerns have also been raised about how effectively legislation is implemented across the criminal justice process. This includes concerns about: 5 The police not responding appropriately to incidents (both at first response and during investigation) 5 The (un)willingness of the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute 5 Biased juries who blame the victims for their own victimisation 5 Overly lenient sentencing A lack of resources, clear protocol and specialised knowledge can accentuate these problems. Furthermore, much could be done to challenge criminal justice agents’ perceptions about the nature of domestic and family violence. For example, research suggests that some police officers hold incorrect assumptions about domestic and family violence, such as that it is only serious if there is physical injury, that women ‘could easily’ leave but choose not to, and that domestic violence is a ‘relationship issue’ in which the police should not ‘take sides’ (see Douglas, 2019 for a review). Given this context, there is an understandable reluctance for victims to report such incidents. Victims’ concerns include shame and embarrassment, fear of retaliation, feeling that the incident was too trivial to report, and fear of police discrimination. In their systematic review of research, Voce and Boxall (2018) found that past experience of abuse, previous reports of violence to the police, higher severity and frequency of injury, use of a weapon and perpetrator intoxication all increase the likelihood of victim reporting to the police. Reporting family violence can reduce recidivism, but previous negative experiences of police response reduce the likelihood that victims will report future incidents. This suggests an area where improvement is essential. 9

See also 7 Chapter 7, Sect. 3.1 for a discussion about ‘whole family approaches’ to IPV intervention work.

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Civil Law Responses

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Second, prevention can be legislated for by improving law and policy to protect victims using a civil law framework. In terms of protecting children, significant statutes introduced in the United Kingdom include: 5 The introduction of two thresholds for social care intervention (the child ‘in need’ and the child ‘at risk of significant harm’) in 198910 5 The recognition of witnessing domestic abuse as a form of ‘significant harm’ in 200211 5 The removal of ‘reasonable punishment’ as a defence for cases of assault against children in 200412 In terms of protecting adults, significant recent UK statutes include: 5 The introduction of specialist domestic violence courts in 200513 5 The introduction of forced marriage protection orders in 200714 5 The implementation of the domestic violence disclosure scheme (known as Clare’s Law) in 2015 Furthermore, in recognition that family violence prevention needs a multi-agency response, legislation has been used to widen institutional responsibilities for preventing such violence. For example, in terms of protecting children, legislation introduced new safeguarding responsibilities for all those who work with children, including a protocol for how they should disclose any suspicions about a child who is at risk of forced marriage, female genital mutilation and child maltreatment.15 Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) were set up in 2004 to ensure that there is a co-ordinated and multi-agency response to safeguarding concerns. In terms of protecting adults, statutory guidance requires that a range of professionals who work in the public sector, including those in health, housing, education and the police, must assess risks and respond appropriately to any concerns about domestic abuse that they may come across in their work. For the most part, these measures have tended to align with overarching legal frameworks set out by a series of international conventions, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights 10 11 12 13 14 15

Children Act (1989). Adoption and Children Act (2002). Children Act (2004). Domestic Violence Crime and Victims Act (2004). Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007. Education Act (2002); Female Genital Mutilation Act (2003).

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of the Child (1990) and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993). As with criminalisation, the success of such protection measures is determined by their implementation, and there is evidence that this is not always effective. This is particularly the case when the problem may not ‘look like’ a typical case of family violence—for example, if the perpetrator is female, adolescent-aged or the relationship involves same-sex couples. For example, the DASH (Domestic abuse, Stalking and Harassment) risk assessment tool that is currently used by UK police forces was developed in line with what is known about adult male violence against female partners. Consequently, practitioners struggle to make the checklist criteria apply to cases that involve other forms of family violence (such as child/adolescent to parent violence), resulting in police officers often failing to complete the checklist (McManus et al., 2017). Of course, there is an intersectional element to this: those from minoritised communities (such as LGBTQ and Black and minority ethnic communities) are less likely to be able to access justice and receive the protection they need. There are many reasons for this, including language barriers, lack of knowledge about services, concerns about immigration status, fear of (additional) stigmatisation, previous negative experiences with such services and the risk of reprisals. On the part of practitioners, a lack of specialist knowledge, discriminatory attitudes towards minoritised communities, and culturally insensitive communication practices all play a role. Despite the progress in this area, there is nevertheless a common pattern that remains a concern: a high-profile death through family violence, an inquiry, and then legislative change.16 In his analysis of child protection inquiries following a high-profile death, Hopkins (2007) found that the same set of problems are identified in every one: children not being listened to, parents’ requests to remove the child being ignored, social workers feeling too scared to intervene, poor partnership between agencies, and poor communication and record-keeping amongst agency staff. Thus, despite demands for ‘new laws’ whenever a new social problem emerges, legislation is rarely the answer without corresponding changes made to professional cultures, which is slower and more complicated to achieve.

16 Examples include the deaths of Denis O’Neill in 1944, the death of Maria Colwell in 1973, the death of Victoria Climbie in 2000 and the death of Peter Connolly (Baby P) in 2007.

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Box 5.3: Family Criminology in Practice: Using the Duluth Model in Perpetrator Programmes

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Treatment programmes for reducing the perpetration of family violence usually operate within one of three theoretical frameworks: cognitive-behavioural, psychoanalytic and feminist-informed. Perhaps the most influential programme for adult family violence is the Duluth Model, which was developed in the 1980s in Duluth, Minnesota, United States to re-­educate men who perpetrate IPV (Pence & Peymar, 1993). It is a community-­ oriented programme that recognises family violence as gender-based, with its core aims to make perpetrators accountable and to keep victims safe. An important component of the Duluth Model is the Power and Control Wheel, which aims to expose perpetrators’ use of abusive behaviours and to help them identify alternative ways of relating to others. The programme is embedded within a larger set of strategies, such as safety planning for victims, pro-arrest policies, and well-resourced referral routes (e.g. mental health support, alcohol and drug treatment, child protection services). The model has been replicated around the world and has been adapted to work with other forms of family violence, such as child/adolescent-to-parent violence (Routt & Anderson, 2015). However, there are issues with its application to such cases, as well as to others which do not fit the ‘male-to-female IPV’ model on which it was based (e.g. cases which involve violence within samesex couples and/or that involve women perpetrators). While some research has found a reduction in violence in the 12 months following programme completion, there is a disparity in the self-reported change between those who perpetrate the violence and those who are victimised (Westmarland, 2015). The model has also been criticised for being one-dimensional in its psycho-educational goals because it does not address the perpetrator’s therapeutic needs such as emotional dysregulation and developmental history (see Bohall et al., 2016 for a review).

5.3.2  Preventing Family Violence Through Education

Prevention through education represents a soft control approach to family violence, and a number of educational strategies are used to combat it. They are often seen as being relatively cost-effective and, because they are

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implemented universally, they do not stigmatise particular groups who are seen as ‘at risk’. We discuss two such approaches here: education in schools and education through the media.

Violence Prevention Strategies in Schools Schools have long been identified as a useful site for preventing family violence. School programmes emerged during the 1970s alongside women’s violence prevention programmes and became popular during the 1990s. In some jurisdictions, there is a mandatory requirement for schools and other education providers to deliver such programmes. Such programmes aim to prevent violence and abuse by: i. Exploring models of masculinity and acceptable gender norms ii. Teaching conflict-resolution skills and self-protection strategies iii. Providing children and young people who are ‘at risk’ with the skills and knowledge to seek help School programmes tend to operate alongside work with adults (such as teachers) to ensure that they know how to respond appropriately if a child discloses experiences of maltreatment. Such programmes tend to be presented to groups of students and are adapted to their age and cognitive ability. Common teaching methods include instruction, modelling, rehearsal, reinforcement and feedback. Two specific models illustrate such programmes: The PANTS programme is designed for children aged 5–9 years to support their help-seeking and safety behaviours, and to challenge myths about sexual abuse. It offers a range of resources for schools including lesson plans and activities, a film featuring the friendly dinosaur Pantosaurus, curriculum links and further reading for children and adults. Lesson activities include exercises such as completing a body parts puzzle and creating a ‘pants’ picture. There are also resources for parents/carers so they can reinforce the message at home, with adaptations available for children with hearing impairments, learning disabilities and who are neurodiverse. Each of the resources aims to reinforce the ‘five rules’ that form the PANTS acronym, namely: Privates are private, Always remember your body belongs to you, No means no, Talk about secrets that upset you, Speak up, someone can help. Other goals include teaching children the names of body parts (and identifying which ones are private), the difference between appropriate and inappropriate

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touch, the right to say ‘no’ to unwanted touch, and who to approach if feeling unsafe. The Tender education and arts programme is designed for children aged 14–16 years and uses drama-based workshops to explore issues around violent and abusive relationships. The programme adopts a ‘gender-based violence’ framework and explores violence in the context of gender inequalities. Through 10 hours of contact time (either as two full days or 10 weekly sessions), the programme explores statistics on violence against women, how to identify early warning signs of violent and abusive behaviours, how power dynamics relate to abusive behaviours, and harmful cultural practices such as forced marriage and FGM. The programme also develops skills to support peers who may disclose their experiences of violence and abuse, and signposts young people to further resources and support. Workshop groups can be either same sex or mixed sex, and participants and peerto-peer learning is an important component, with students who participate presenting their skills and knowledge to their peers in a subsequent session (see Sanders-McDonagh et al., 2015). It is very difficult to measure how effective school programmes are in preventing family violence. Such programmes are frequently subject to evaluations, but post-intervention assessments often take place immediately or a few weeks after the intervention: long-term follow-ups of attitude or behavioural change are rare. Evaluations usually comprise of questionnaires (often using vignettes) and interviews/focus groups with children, teachers and with the practitioners who deliver the intervention. Such evaluations tend to focus on children’s knowledge development and attitude change and do not measure specific change in victimisation or perpetration, nor do they identify factors that might mediate the likelihood of change (Flood, 2011). A systematic review of 24 random-controlled trials (RCTs) of child abuse prevention programmes in primary schools found that such programmes are effective in increasing knowledge about abusive behaviours, with children more likely to engage in self-protection skills (measured via simulated situations such as being asked to accompany a stranger to their car). There was limited evidence that these effects hold over time, and little evidence that such programmes cause harm (such as increased fear or anxiety). Poor reporting measures meant that the review was not able to ascertain whether participation in such programmes increases the likelihood of disclosure of child maltreatment (Walsh et al., 2018).

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Violence Prevention in the Media ‘The media’ refers to communication platforms that disseminate a message: sources of media that communicate messages about family violence include the mass media (i.e. newspapers, television, radio), social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), arts media (e.g. theatre, music, film and literature) and local media (e.g. community notice-boards, flyers). In terms of violence prevention, the aims of such messaging might be to: 5 Make visible different forms of family violence 5 Promote particular solutions 5 Inform national and local policymakers 5 Educate the public (e.g. about their legal rights, how to ‘spot the signs’, how best to respond to it) These aims can be achieved either through a tactical and specific ‘media campaign’, or through the more general promotion of ideas and values. Specific media campaigns can be pushed by Government initiatives, campaigning organisations, charities or commercial companies. An example of the latter is the high-profile social media campaign by Gillette called The Best Men Can Be, which was developed in 2019 in response to the #MeToo movement.17 The campaign aimed to explore the idea of ‘toxic masculinities’ by encouraging young men to challenge the sexist culture that enables gender-based violence. The campaign involved a two-minute film featuring men engaging in sexist behaviour (which included clips from Gillette’s own past advertisements), followed by a series of young men challenging their peers’ sexist behaviour. All of this was accompanied by the voiceover ‘Because the boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow’. This advertisement was part of a wider campaign that featured a new website, a large donation to a US youth group and a written pledge that all future advertising will be sensitive to its depiction of masculinities and femininities. The campaign was controversial: the company (Proctor and Gamble) received a high number of complaints from its (mainly) male consumers, and it was subject to a boycott of its products. Yet the increase in corporate social responsibility (or, from an alternative viewpoint, the increasing commercialisation of social issues) may well mean an increase in these sorts of campaigns over time. More general media messaging about domestic and family violence can also make an educational impact in terms of raising issues and challenging

17 This is a play on their 30-year advertising tagline ‘The best a man can get’.

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attitudes. Examples which garnered particular media and public attention at the time include: 5 The play Gaslight (1938), and its subsequent two film adaptations (1940 and 1944) which featured a storyline of a man’s psychological abuse of his wife. This brought wider attention to processes of coercive control (and from which the term ‘to gaslight’ was taken, meaning to perpetrate psychological abuse) (see Shoos, 2017). 5 The song Luka, released in 1987 by singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega. The song depicted living with family violence from the child’s perspective. It was an international hit and raised attention to the issue (see Neustadter, 1994). 5 The bestselling autobiography A Child Called It (1995) by Dave Pelzer documented his childhood experiences of child abuse and neglect. A huge outpouring of similar so-called ‘misery memoirs’ were published in its wake during the 1990s and early 2000s (see Douglas, 2010). 5 The television show Coronation Street presented the first UK soap opera storyline to feature a case of child/adolescent-to-parent violence in 2015. Given its invisibility as a form of family violence, it garnered much press and public attention (see Bonnick, 2015). As difficult as it is to measure the impact of school programmes, it is even more challenging to measure the impact of media campaigns and representations of domestic and family violence. While globalisation means that the speed of such messaging is faster than ever before, social change is still relatively slow. Furthermore, it is difficult for any media campaign to change attitudes when social structures remain in place which maintain systems of inequality. This includes media structures that continue to perpetrate heteronormative and misogynistic values and messages. Box 5.4 Methodological Challenges: Counting family violence There are a number of ways in which family violence can be counted, and different methods often yield different kinds of results. For example, it might be possible to conduct a large-scale survey of a specific population (e.g. schoolchildren, readers of the New York Times) about whether they have experienced and/or perpetrated different forms of family violence. In some cases, it might even be possible to triangulate these responses to corroborate what different members of the same family say. One important question to address in such surveys is what question to ask. A common approach, such as that used in the

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domestic abuse module in the Crime Survey of England and Wales, is to ask participants how often in the past 12 months (to measure incidence) and/or how often since they were 16 years old (to measure lifetime prevalence) they have experienced abusive behaviours from an intimate partner or family member. Such surveys are able to represent large and diverse populations and can be conducted regularly to measure change over time. However, they can be problematic in their reliance on retrospective accounts and subjective interpretations, and they are limited to their own self-imposed criteria (that is, they rely on how the survey designer defines ‘abuse’ or ‘violence’). Given that the aim of such surveys is usually to ‘count’ family violence, they tend to conceptualise family violence as a series of static incidents, rather than as an ongoing abusive dynamic (see Walby et al., 2016 for discussion). These criticisms are often aimed at the Conflict Tactics Scale (e.g. Straus, 1979) which is commonly used to measure family violence over time and across different populations. Another approach is to examine existing data from specific populations, such as perpetrators and victims who have been processed by the criminal justice system, or who engage in treatment programmes, or who have sought support from agencies, or who have been processed by social service agencies who have intervened on the basis of a risk assessment. Such methods are likely to only include cases at the more extreme end of the family violence spectrum, and as such are likely to underestimate prevalence or incidence. Nevertheless, they provide useful information about the socio-demographic characteristics of such groups. Furthermore, they may provide richer data about the context of the violence (when, where and how), particularly if specific cases are then followed up with detailed interviews and/or case reviews.

Useful Websites The Duluth Model 7 https://www.theduluthmodel.org Offers resources and training for practitioners who are interested in drawing on ideas from the Duluth Model in their own family violence intervention work. NSPCC 7 https://www.nspcc.org.uk

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Provides information about child abuse and advice for parents, family members and practitioners about issues such as online safety, child mental health, sex and relationships and how to report abuse and neglect. Also offers resources for teachers and parents about the PANTS programme. The MeToo Movement 7 https://metoomvmt.org Provides information about sexual violence, campaigning toolkits and resources for practitioners who work with assault survivors. World Health Organisation 7 https://www.who.int/health-topics/violence-against-women Provides international research reports, statistics and infographics, and the WHO global plan of action to combat the many forms of gender-based violence around the world. United Nations Population Fund 7 https://www.unfpa.org/gender-based-violence Site run by the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency and includes statistics and infographics about gender-based violence, international research reports, and information about their campaigning work on gender equality and human rights.

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Carpenter, R. C. (2006). Recognizing gender-based violence against civilian men and boys in conflict situations. Security Dialogue, 37(1), 83–103. Dobash, R. E., & Dobash, R. P. (1979). Violence against wives: A case against the patriarchy. Free Press. Douglas, K. (2010). Contesting childhood: Autobiography, trauma, and memory. Rutgers University Press. Douglas, H. (2019). Policing domestic and family violence. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 8(2), 31–49. Finkelhor, D., Ormrod, R. K., & Turner, H. A. (2007). Poly-victimization: A neglected component in child victimization. Child Abuse & Neglect, 31(1), 7–26. Flood, M. (2011). Involving men in efforts to end violence against women. Men and Masculinities, 14(3), 358–377. Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality: Volume I-An introduction. Pantheon Books. Gill, A. (2013). Intersecting inequalities: Implications for addressing violence against Black and minority ethnic women in the United Kingdom. In N. Lombard & L. McMillan (Eds.), Violence against Women. Jessica Kingsley. Gondolf, E. W., & Fisher, E. R. (1988). Battered women as survivors: An alternative to treating learned helplessness. Lexington Books/DC Heath and Com. Gunby, C., & Barnes, R. (2017). Coercive Control. Available from 7 https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/doctoralcollege/researchimages/2017-competition/are-activity-trackers-tellingus-the-truth-about-our-physical-activity-level. Heise, L., Ellsberg, M., & Gottmoeller, M. (2002). A global overview of gender-based violence. International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics, 78, S5–S14. Holt, A., & Retford, S. (2013). Practitioner accounts of responding to parent abuse–a case study in ad hoc delivery, perverse outcomes and a policy silence. Child and Family Social Work, 18(3), 365–374. Hopkins, G. (2007, January 10). What have we learned? Child death scandals since 1944. Community Care. Available from: 7 https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2007/01/10/what-havewe-learned-child-death-scandals-since-1944/. Accessed 19 June 2019. Johnson, M. P. (1995). Intimate terrorism and common couple violence: Two forms of violence against women. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 57, 283–294. Johnson, M. P. (2006). Conflict and control: Gender symmetry and asymmetry in domestic violence. Violence Against Women, 12(11), 1003–1018. Kelly, J. B., & Johnson, M. P. (2008). Differentiation among types of intimate partner violence: Research update and implications for interventions. Family Court Review, 46(3), 476–499. Loseke, D. R., & Cahill, S. E. (1984). The social construction of deviance: Experts on battered women. Social Problems, 31(3), 296–310. McManus, M. A., Almond, L., & Bourke, J. (2017). Exploring child-to-parent domestic abuse: Offender characteristics and DASH individual risk factors associated with recidivism. Journal of Forensic Psychology, 2(3), 1–6. Meier, J. S. (2015). Johnson’s differentiation theory: Is it really empirically supported? Journal of Child Custody, 12(1), 4–24. Neustadter, R. (1994). The obvious child: The symbolic use of childhood in contemporary popular music. Popular Music & Society, 18(1), 51–67. Pence, E., & Paymar, M. (1993). Education groups for men who batter: The Duluth model. Springer.

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Rich, A. (1980). Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence. Signs: Journal of women in culture and society, 5(4), 631–660. Romito, P. (2008). A deafening silence: Hidden violence against women and children. Policy Press. Routt, G., & Anderson, L. (2015). Adolescent violence in the home: Restorative approaches to building healthy, respectful family relationships. Routledge. Rubin, G. (1992). Thinking Sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. In C. S. Vance (Ed.), Pleasure and danger: Exploring female sexuality (pp. 267–293). London: Pandora. Sanders-Mcdonagh, E., Rogers, S. A., Horvath, M., & Selwood, S. (2015). Available from 7 https://tender.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Final-Evaluation-Report.-The-Tender-Healthy-Relationship-Project.pdf. Sedlak, A. J., Mettenburg, J., Basena, M., Peta, I., McPherson, K., & Greene, A. (2010). Fourth national incidence study of child abuse and neglect (NIS-4). US Department of Health and Human Services, 9. Shoos, D. L. (2017). Gaslight, gaslighting, and the gothic romance film. In D. Shoos (Ed.), Domestic violence in hollywood film (pp. 39–62). Palgrave Macmillan. Siddiqui, H. (2018). Counting the cost: BME women and gender-based violence in the UK. IPPR Progressive Review, 24(4), 361–368. Stark, E. (2013). Coercive control. In N. Lombard & L. McMillan (Eds.), Violence against women: Current theory and practice in domestic abuse, sexual violence and exploitation. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Straus, M. A. (1979). Measuring intra family conflict and violence: The Conflict Tactics (CT) Scales. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 41(1), 75–88. Straus, M. M. A., Gelles, R. J., & Steinmetz, S. K. (Eds.). (1982). Behind closed doors: Violence in the American family. Transaction Publishers. United Nations. (1993). Declaration on the elimination of violence against women. New York: United Nations General Assembly. Voce, I., & Boxall, H. (2018). Who reports domestic violence to police? A review of the evidence. Australian Institute of Criminology Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice 559. Available at 7 https://aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi559. Walby, S., Towers, J., & Francis, B. (2016). Is violent crime increasing or decreasing? A new methodology to measure repeat attacks making visible the significance of gender and domestic relations. British Journal of Criminology, 56(6), 1203–1234. Walker, L. E. (1977). Battered women and learned helplessness. Victimology, 2(3,4), 525–534. Walsh, K., Zwi, K., Woolfenden, S., & Shlonsky, A. (2018). School-based education programs for the prevention of child sexual abuse: A Cochrane systematic review and meta-analysis. Research on Social Work Practice, 28(1), 33–55. Warner, M. (Ed.). (1993). Fear of a queer planet: Queer politics and social theory (Vol. 6). University of Minnesota Press. Westmarland, N. (2015). Violence against women: Criminological perspectives on men’s violences. Routledge. WHO, World Health Organisation. (2013). Global and regional estimates of violence against women Prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. WHO, Department of Reproductive Health and Research, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, South African Medical Research Council. Yodanis, C. L. (2004). Gender inequality, violence against women, and fear: A cross-national test of the feminist theory of violence against women. Journal of interpersonal violence, 19(6), 655–675.

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The Homicidal Family: The Killing of Family Members Contents 6.1  What Is ‘Family Homicide’? – 156 6.1.1  Defining and Measuring ‘Family Homicide’ – 156 6.1.2  Family Homicide Around the World – 159

6.2  Intergenerational Family Homicide – 163 6.2.1  Neonaticide, Infanticide and Filicide – 163 6.2.2  Parricide – 166

6.3  Intra-generational Family Homicide – 170 6.3.1  Siblicide – 171 6.3.2  Intimate Partner Homicide – 175

Useful Websites – 179 Audio/Visual – 180 References – 180

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Holt, Family Criminology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71169-6_6

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z Overview

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In the previous chapter, we explored the problem of violence and abuse perpetrated by and against family members—for example, towards intimate partners (or former partners), offspring, siblings and parents. In this chapter, we develop these themes by exploring family violence when it becomes fatal. In the first section, we examine the definitional and methodological challenges involved in measuring the extent of family homicide before exploring existing data on its prevalence around the world. We then explore current theoretical and empirical evidence for different forms of family homicide—first by exploring family homicide between the generations (i.e. the killing of offspring and parents) and then, in the final section, we explore family homicide within the generations (i.e. the killing of siblings and intimate partners). Conceptual Toolbox: Intimacy Social scientists who research family life have increasingly drawn on the concept of intimacy (or intimacies). Intimacy is a fluid term, but broadly refers to relationships between sexual partners, friends, family and wider kin. Jamieson theorises intimacy in terms of ‘practices of close association, familiarity and privileged knowledge, strong positive emotional attachments, such as love, and a very particular form of ‘closeness’ and being ‘special’ to another person, associated with high levels of trust’ (2005: 189). Embedded within this conceptualisation is the notion of ‘attachment’ (see 7 Box 2.2) and the idea of ‘practices’—that is, that intimacy is something that one does. The performative aspect of intimacy is central to its theorisation, and doing intimacy involves much of what anthropologist Barth (1969) termed ‘boundary work’ in establishing the limits of the ‘private sphere’ through particular actions and discourses. Many of the performative aspects of intimacy are closely associated with ‘family practices’, which Jamieson (2011) identifies as ‘giving to, sharing with, knowing, practically caring for, feeling attachment to, expressing affection for’ (s2.2). Social theorists have related recent changes to intimacy to wider social changes that have taken place in recent decades—for example, shifts towards globalisation and an increase in individualism and personal freedom of choice. In The Transformation of Intimacy, Giddens (1992) outlines how intimacy has changed in Westernised cultures in terms of: 5 The ways in which intimate partnerships are a product of personal choice (rather than of duty or expectation)

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5 The expectations of equality, companionship and self-fulfilment in intimate relationships 5 The importance of the ‘interpersonal’ aspect of intimate relationships 5 The loss of the importance of reproduction and longevity in intimate relationships Central to this shift is changes in gendered relations, including a weakening of heteronormativity, as traditional assumptions about gender roles and heterosexuality are increasingly challenged. Giddens is also optimistic about the ‘democratisation of families’ (p. 184) as a result of increased diversity and greater equality in society. However, other theorists suggest that such transformations are not as widespread as Giddens proposes. In particular, Giddens’ focus was primarily on intimate partners, and other family relationships (such as parent–offspring relationships) are inherently built on relationships of dependency (though the nature of this dependency shifts through the life course, as one transitions from care-taker to care-giver). It is also problematic to conceptualise intimate partner relationships as based on equality when many intimate and familial relationships continue to be characterised by gender-based violence which continues to be justified through the mobilisation of heteronormative values. Indeed, many perpetrators engage in their own ‘boundary work’ by prescribing who and what is and isn’t ‘family’, and therefore who is and isn’t ok to engage with, as part of their efforts to control partners and other family members (Jamieson, 2005). One particular social fact that is difficult to dismiss is the creeping individualism that is a feature of our globalised world in the twenty-first ­century. In her analysis of heterosexual intimate relationships over the past two hundred years, Illouz (2012) suggests there has been a shift from relationships of the past, which were structurally embedded and regulated by communal codes and rituals, to relationships today which are increasingly commodified and emotionally deregulated. As a result, responsibility and blame for relationship failure now lies firmly with the individual in ways which ignore structural disadvantage—notably gender, but also race and ethnicity, age, dis/ability and generation. This characteristic is particularly prominent in current theorisations of the most violated form of intimacy: domestic and family homicide. In understanding domestic and family homicide, there is a dominance of typological research that focuses wholly on the individual. The consequence of this is the silencing of the structural and cultural con-

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text, and the production of solutions that demand change in the individual, rather than social and political transformation. Key reading: Giddens, A. (1992). The transformation of intimacy: Sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies. Cambridge: Polity.

6.1  What Is ‘Family Homicide’?

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Family homicide refers to the intentional killing of another member of one’s family, and such cases are both fascinating and mundane. Fascinating because, when a father kills his entire family, or when a son turns a gun on his parents, such cases garner widespread publicity. At the same time, two women a week are killed in the United Kingdom by their partner or former partner, and yet such cases rarely make the news. Why is there such a difference in interest? Is it due to differences in prevalence, or other factors? How does family homicide vary in different contexts? In the first part of this section, we explore what we mean by ‘family homicide’ and discuss the methodological challenges involved in measuring it. In the second part, we explore family homicide around the world, with a specific focus on adult family homicide and child family homicide. 6.1.1  Defining and Measuring ‘Family Homicide’

In England and Wales, homicide includes the crimes of ‘murder’ and ‘manslaughter’. There are also other ‘unlawful homicide’ offences including infanticide (see 7 Box 6.1), causing death by dangerous driving, corporate manslaughter and causing or allowing the death of a child under the age of 16 or a vulnerable adult. For a murder conviction to pass, the following criteria must be satisfied:

» Where a person of sound mind and discretion (i.e. sane) unlawfully kills (i.e.

not self-defence or other justified killing) any reasonable creature (human being) in being (born alive and breathing through its own lungs) under the Queen’s Peace, with intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm (GBH). (Crown Prosecution Service, 2020; as set out by Sir Edward Coke, 1797)

The clarity of these criteria means that actions that some may consider to constitute ‘killing’ are automatically excluded and will not proceed to trial.

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Such actions include the destruction of foetuses,1 or causing civilian or military deaths during interstate war, civil war or genocide. Alternatively, an individual may fulfil the components of murder but use a complete defence such as self-defence or being without ‘sound mind’, leading to an acquittal or to a special verdict of ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ respectively. For other kinds of killing, a manslaughter conviction may pass. In some cases (known as ‘voluntary manslaughter’), there may be mitigating circumstances which enable a partial defence of diminished responsibility or loss of control, for example. In other cases (known as ‘involuntary manslaughter’), the death of another results from gross negligence or from an unlawful and dangerous act, but in such cases there is no intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm (GBH). Because the distinction between murder and manslaughter is often a legal one (rather than a phenomenological one), researchers usually include both categories in their examination of homicide. The most common method in homicide research is conducting secondary data analysis of national homicide databases.2 In England and Wales, the Homicide Index (HI) is a national database which was developed in 1977 as a victim-based recording system. Here, each of the country’s 43 police forces completes a ‘homicide return’ when they process a homicide, and these returns are collated by the UK Home Office and are updated as cases proceed through the criminal justice system.3 Data captured include: 5 area/region of the homicide 5 weapon(s) used 5 sex, age and ethnicity of suspect 5 sex, age and ethnicity of victim 5 involvement of multiple suspects/victims 5 the relationship of victim to suspect 1 If an unborn but viable foetus is destroyed (for example, through violence caused to the pregnant mother) then the perpetrator may be charged with the offence of child destruction (in England and Wales). 2 The US uses the Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) and the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS); Canada uses the Homicide Survey; Australia uses the National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP). 3 It is important to note that the date of homicide is always recorded as when the homicide was discovered, not when the homicide took place (which may not be known). This practice can produce absurdities within the data once it is analysed. For example, the 172 murders committed by Harold Shipman in Greater Manchester, England were dated as 2003 as a result of the Shipman Inquiry, even though the murders took place decades earlier. This has produced a ‘spike’ in the national statistics for the year 2002–2003.

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5 involvement of substances/alcohol 5 use of firearms 5 circumstances of the offence 5 the indictment 5 achievement of conviction 5 sentence passed

6

When researching family homicide, the key unit of analysis is ‘relationship of victim to suspect’ and homicide cases that involve relationships such as ‘son’, ‘mother’, ‘partner’ and ‘sibling’ are identified and analysed. However, one challenge of such analyses is that this category only refers to the ‘principal suspect’, and the same relationship status is then recorded for every ‘secondary suspect’ that was involved in the homicide. This can be misleading when trying to understand the relationship dynamics of family homicide cases where there are multiple perpetrators.4 Before the secondary data can be analysed, it first needs to be ‘cleaned’. This process may involve: 5 Dealing with missing data and anomalous data 5 Removing records where the homicide took place outside of a specified period 5 Cross-matching and aligning the categories of the dataset (because new categories emerge over time: for example, the ‘substances/alcohol’ category was introduced in 1996) 5 Deciding what to exclude: for example, should we exclude cases where the ‘principal suspect’ was acquitted at trial? Cases where there was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial? Cases where the suspect was unfit to plead? Cases where the suspect took his/her own life prior to (or during) trial? Sometimes, family members are complicit in both the death and the cover-up of a family homicide, and this can make measuring its prevalence very difficult. Measurement is also challenging because different jurisdic-

4 In cases of homicide where there are multiple suspects, the police must decide who to label as ‘principal suspect’. If a court outcome has been reached, then it is the person given the longest sentence or the most serious conviction. If it has not, then it is the person who is considered to have most involvement in the crime, or the person who had the ‘closest relationship’ to the victim. Such decision-making highlights how subjectivity seeps into the construction of data that are frequently presented as ‘objective’.

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tions operate within different definitions of homicide, which change over time as new legislation is introduced. Even within a single jurisdiction, the process of deciding whether a killing constitutes ‘murder’, ‘manslaughter’ or another category such as ‘accidental death’ is ultimately a social one that involves the police, pathologists, coroners, prosecutors and juries. While criminal justice databases are the most common source for analysing family homicides, other datasets are available. For example, researchers might analyse public health data from coroners’ case files or from psychiatric evaluation reports of family homicide offenders. More qualitative information is often made available in multi-agency case reviews, either Domestic Homicide Reviews or Serious Case Reviews (see 7 Box 6.3). These case reviews can then be analysed collectively—examples include SharpJeffs and Kelly’s (2016) analysis of 32 cases of adult family homicide and O’Hagan’s (2014) analysis of 128 cases of filicide-suicide. Some researchers apply a content analysis to newspaper reports of family homicides, such as Boots and Heide’s (2006) international comparison of adolescent-perpetrated parricides between the United States and the rest of the world. Questions for Reflection: – What are the strengths and weaknesses of different sources of homicide data? What might be some of the challenges of comparing homicide data (i) over time (ii) across countries? Why is it important to analyse homicide data? 6.1.2  Family Homicide Around the World

The global homicide rate is 6.1 per 100,000 population and this has been decreasing over the past two decades. However, there is a large variation in homicide rates between countries, ranging from 62.1 per 100,000 in El Salvador to 0.2 per 100,000 in Singapore (UNODC, 2019). In England and Wales, the rate is 1.2 homicides per 100,000 population (ONS, 2020). Approximately 18% of all homicides around the world are family homicides. As with non-fatal family violence, family homicides disproportionately victimise women and children: indeed, women and children are much more likely to be killed by a family member or intimate partner (or ex-partner) than by a stranger or an acquaintance. Men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of family homicide. As with family violence, family homicide takes different forms depending on (i) which relationship dyads are involved, and/or (ii) where in the life-cycle it occurs. Homicidal dyads based on a specific familial relationship include filicide (the killing of a son or daughter), parricide (the killing of a parent), siblicide (the killing of a

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6

. Fig. 6.1  Family homicide across the life-course

sibling), and intimate partner homicide (the killing of an intimate partner/ ex-partner). While ‘family homicide’ is a useful term to describe all such incidents, the term domestic homicide is frequently used to refer to those incidents that involve victims and perpetrators who are adult-aged. Other homicidal dyads are age-based, and may not necessarily be committed by somebody within the family (though they often are). Examples include neonaticide (the killing of a newborn in the first 24 hours of life), infanticide (the killing of an infant aged 0–12 months), pedicide (the killing of a child 0–18 years) and eldercide (the killing of a person aged 65 years and older). . Figure 6.1 highlights the different forms that family homicide can take across the life course. Sometimes family homicides are not a straightforward case of one family member killing another within a domestic setting. Family homicide is a broad term that includes culturally-harmful practices such as sati, the ancient Hindu practice that involves widows sacrificing themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre; bride burning, where wives are killed (or driven to suicide) following physical and psychological abuse from her husband and/ or his family to extort a dowry; and deaths caused by female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that involves cutting a young girl’s genitals to prevent her from experiencing sexual pleasure.

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Adult Family Homicide Adult family homicide refers to the killing of adults by intimate partners (or ex-partners) and family members. However, while men are more at risk of homicide overall (at a proportion of 81:19 men:women), women are at far greater risk of adult family homicide (at a proportion of 36:64 men:women). This disparity widens further in cases of intimate partner homicide, where the proportion of victimisation is 18:82 (men:women) (. Table 6.1 highlights the gendered nature of family homicide around the world). Of all women intentionally killed in 2017, over half (58%) were killed by a partner, ex-partner or a family member (approximately 60% of these women were killed by a partner or ex-partner, and 40% were killed by a family member). The global rate of women killed through family homicide is 1.3 per 100,000. However, there are large national differences: women are at the highest risk of family homicide in Africa (3.1 per 100,000) and are at the lowest risk in Europe (0.7 per 100,000) (UNODC, 2019a). Around the world, the gendered nature of adult family homicide is stark. In England and Wales 2018–2019, 19% of all homicides were family homicides: for female victims, family homicides constituted 48% of all homicides; for male victims, family homicides constituted eight per cent of all homicides (ONS, 2020). The gendered nature of such violence, and its targeting of women, has led many to categorise it as a form of femicide, a term first used at the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women (1976) to explicitly recognise the gender-based nature of this form of violence within a context of patriarchy and misogynistic culture.

. Table 6.1  The gendered nature of adult family homicide victimisation around the world

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Child Family Homicide

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The global rate of child homicide is 1.6 per 100,000 population. As with adult homicide, there are large regional disparities, with a rate of 0.5 child homicides per 100,000 population in Europe and 3 child homicides per 100,000 in the Americas (UNODC, 2019c). While children are overall less likely to be victims of homicide than adults, some children are more at risk than others. Children aged 0–12 months and 15–18 years are most at risk of homicide victimisation, and boys are at a higher risk than girls worldwide (ratio 70:30 boys:girls). However, this figure is mostly due to the sharp rise in male homicides from adolescence onwards: up until the age of 9, boys and girls are at equal risk of homicide victimisation (Stöckl et al., 2017). Child family homicide constitutes approximately 63% of all child homicides worldwide: 60% of children are killed by a parent, with the other three per cent killed by other family members5 (with proportionately more girls than boys killed by a parent) (Stöckl et al., 2017). There are regional differences: within East Asia and the Pacific, 68% of child homicides are perpetrated by a family member, while in Africa 28% of all child homicides are perpetrated by a family member6 (Stöckl et al., 2017). The younger a child is, the more likely they are to be killed by a parent: 78% of children killed aged 0–12 months are killed by a parent,7 whereas 17.5% of children killed aged 10–17 years are killed by a family member. Furthermore, the older the child is, the less likely they are to be killed by a woman: neonaticides are primarily perpetrated by women, while increasingly older children are killed by men (UNODC, 2019c). In England and Wales (2018–2019), in 31% of all child homicides (ages 0–16 years), the victims were killed by a parent (with a further 9% of children killed by another family member, friend or acquaintance) (ONS, 2020).8

5 This estimate could be higher: nine percent of all child homicides are categorised as being committed by an ‘unknown perpetrator’. 6 These differences may tell us less about the family violence and more about the higher levels of other forms of child homicide in particular regions, such as homicides related to organised crime and other criminal acts, which take up a larger proportion of child homicides in Africa. 7 This figure rises to 100% for neonaticides. 8 Of the remaining 60% of child homicide cases, seven per cent were killed by a stranger and 53% were recorded as having ‘no suspect’ (which includes offences where suspects have been acquitted in court).

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6.2  Intergenerational Family Homicide

Intergenerational relationships refer to those which operate between individuals from different generations. In families, this refers to relationships between offspring and their parents (and grandparents), though it can apply to any intergenerational relationship, such as between aunts/uncles and their nieces/nephews. Power relations are central to relationships that pivot on generation and age, and this should be taken into account when understanding the context of homicide within particular dyads. In the following section, we explore some of the key research and theories that have developed to understand different forms of family homicide. In the first part we examine the killing of offspring through an examination of neonaticide, infanticide and filicide, and the second part we examine the killing of parents and grandparents. 6.2.1  Neonaticide, Infanticide and Filicide

The practice of infanticide has a long history. In ancient Cathage (100BC), child sacrifice was common and the ‘massacre of the innocents’ forms a powerful image in the Christian nativity narrative when King Herod ordered all boys aged two years and under to be killed within the district of Bethlehem (depicted by Poussin in . Image 6.1). Historically, infanticide was permissible in some cultures for reasons related to the othering of girls (e.g. sex-selective infanticide) and of children with disabilities (e.g. the killing of ‘spirit children’). Indeed, the first specific law against child killing in England—the Infanticide Statute (1624)—was steeped in processes of othering in its presumption that unmarried mothers who hid the body of their newborn must be guilty of infanticide (and therefore be subject to the death penalty) unless they could prove that the infant died through natural causes. This law did not apply to married mothers, and ran counter to other criminal laws where the burden of proof does not lie with the defendant. Neonaticide is a specific sub-category of infanticide and refers to the killing of a child within the first 24 hours of birth. Its distinction is in recognition that most neonaticides are committed within their own unique familial context: they are mostly perpetrated by birth mothers who are notably younger than average, who experience greater stress and social isolation, and who feel ambivalent about the pregnancy (Overpeck et al., 1998). More generally, infanticide (which includes neonaticide) is the most difficult of all homicides to detect, and it is very likely that statistics underes-

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6 . Image 6.1  The Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1628–1629, by Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) (Found in the collection of the Musée Condé, Chantilly (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

timate its prevalence. This is particularly the case when the birth mother has concealed the pregnancy and birth, and then quickly disposed of the body (which can be common in neonaticides). Furthermore, infants tend not to be killed by the same methods used in other homicides (which commonly use sharp or blunt instruments). Methods commonly used in infanticide, such as suffocation and shaking, often leave few clear-cut injuries that would enable a pathologist to identify the cause of death. Indeed, other causes of infant death such as SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) are pathologically indistinguishable from deliberate suffocation, and this can lead to misdiagnosis. Ultimately, it is the pathologist’s role to act as ‘gatekeeper’ of any potential homicide investigation, and this can be a difficult decision if there is no conclusive proof of deliberate harm, given the traumatic impact that a police investigation can have on a family. In their analysis of all recorded infanticides in England and Wales (1995–2002), Brookman and Nolan (2006) found that 70% of infanticides were perpetrated by the child’s biological parents. Mothers and fathers are equally likely to be perpetrators, though fathers are increasingly likely to be the perpetrator as the child grows older. While step-fathers perpetrated 10% of all male-perpetrated infanticides, step-mothers barely featured in the statistics at all.

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Box 6.1: Infanticide: Criminological v. Legal Definitions While the criminological definition of infanticide refers to the intentional killing of an infant aged 0–12 months, in England and Wales there is a more specific legal definition of infanticide. This is a category of homicide that was introduced in 1922 that allows for a defence against the unlawful killing of an infant (ĞŐŝƐůĂƚŝǀĞƌĞĨŽƌŵ ;Ğ͘Ő͘ŝŶƚƌŽĚƵĐĞŶĞǁ ůĂǁͿ ͻEĞǁƉƌĂĐƚŝĐĞƐ;Ğ͘Ő͘ ŶĞǁƉŽůŝĐŝŶŐ ƉƌŽƚŽĐŽůͿ

^ŽĐŝĂů:ƵƐƚŝĐĞ ͻEĞǁĐŚĂƌŝƚŝĞƐ;Ğ͘Ő͘ ƚŚĞ^ƚĞƉŚĞŶ >ĂǁƌĞŶĐĞ &ŽƵŶĚĂƚŝŽŶƚŽ ƐƵƉƉŽƌƚ ĚŝƐĂĚǀĂŶƚĂŐĞĚ LJŽƵŶŐƉĞŽƉůĞͿ ͻEĞǁĐĂŵƉĂŝŐŶƐ ;Ğ͘Ő͘,ĂĐŬĞĚKĨĨ͕ƚŽ ĐĂŵƉĂŝŐŶĨŽƌĂĨƌĞĞ ĂŶĚĂĐĐŽƵŶƚĂďůĞ ƉƌĞƐƐͿ

. Fig. 8.1  Process of family justice campaigns: individualised justice, criminal justice and social justice

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For victims’ families, miscarriages of justice can produce a deep sense of loss and a profound sense of injustice that can propel them to seek redress. Family justice campaigns usually involve searching for answers and righting the wrongs perpetrated by the state and its agencies, and include a range of activities such as legal action, public protest, media publicity and lobbying. Searching for answers might involve reviewing the existing evidence and/or searching for new evidence (including evidence of questionable actions or inactions on the part of state actors such as the police, the coroner or the judge). Righting the wrongs might seek to expose those wrongs (e.g. to force a public inquiry) or to reverse a decision (e.g. to quash a conviction). Initially, most justice campaigns set out to achieve ‘individualized justice’ (Walker, 1999)—that is, justice for a particular individual. However, as justice campaigns develop, they may achieve a broader kind of ‘generalised justice’ (Savage et al., 2007) that produces change at an institutional level or at a societal level. At an institutional level, this may be through policymaking or legislative reform to redress systematic ‘wrongs’ within the criminal justice system. At a societal level, this may be through setting up organisations to address particular ‘social wrongs’ such as systemic racism or domestic abuse (see . Fig. 8.1). The most successful justice campaigns require a degree of capital. For example, access to economic capital is useful in getting a campaign off the ground, as is access to cultural capital to ensure that families ‘present’ themselves in a way that is acceptable to both the public, and to others who they need to join the campaign. However, perhaps the most important form of capital required is social capital—that is, access to social

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networks and social resources which might enable access to important non-judicial actors. A broad range of non-judicial actors are often involved in high-profile family campaigns. Perhaps the most important of these, particularly early on, are campaigning organisations. Campaigning organisations may be specifically focused on miscarriages of justice, such as The Innocence Project, or they may focus on broader injustices that include miscarriages of justice within its remit, such as Black Lives Matter. As outlined by Savage et al. (2007), campaigning organisations are important in mobilising public support and applying pressure for a judicial response by: 5 Adding credibility to the campaign by publically supporting it 5 Opening up networks of influence (e.g. politicians, celebrities) 5 Providing access to resources (e.g. office space, legal advice, organising public vigils and press conferences). Other important non-judicial actors include investigative journalists, media organisations, renowned lawyers, celebrities and previous victims. For example, the Stephen Lawrence family justice campaign emerged in 1993 following the murder of London teenager Stephen Lawrence (see 7 Box 8.2). While Stephen’s parents, Doreen and Neville Lawrence, formed the backbone of the campaign, a number of key players were integral to its success. For example, the human rights campaigner, Nelson Mandela, visited the Lawrence family two weeks after Stephen’s death, and the publicity from this gave Doreen a platform to criticise the police and its handling of the investigation. The national right-wing tabloid, the Daily Mail, while initially dismissive of the campaign, eventually took on a key role in the campaign for a public inquiry. Imran Khan, the renowned campaigning lawyer, took on the case pro bono and Jack Straw, the UK Home Secretary, ordered the Inquiry. Campaigning organisations, such as the Anti-Racist Alliance and the Anti-Nazi League were also involved early on. External factors, such as advances in DNA testing or the reputational damage of an expert witness, can quickly change the fortunes of a long-running justice campaign. However, research suggests that it is victims’ families that are central to the success of most justice campaigns. It is therefore important to recognise how social capital (as well as economic capital and cultural capital) varies widely between families and how such structural factors are likely to shape the success of any family justice campaign (see Savage et al., 2007). Because the primary victim is either deceased or incarcerated, in most cases it is the victims’ families who are at the forefront of justice cam-

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paigns.4 Savage et al. (2007) suggest that victims’ families are particularly important in the success of justice campaigns for two key reasons. First, successful campaigns require a ‘human face’ to both establish case recognition and to elicit sympathy: the visible display of a family’s suffering is powerful in compelling people to act. Second, families provide the resilience and commitment required to sustain a campaign that cannot be found elsewhere. The very nature of the familial bond, and the anger, loss and helplessness that such families experience, is what propels them to persevere against what is, initially, a great deal of state resistance. In cases of wrongful conviction, the belief in their family member’s innocence is central to family members’ motivation in engaging in such campaigns. Families claim that they would not campaign if there was doubt about their loved one’s innocence, even if there was evidence of a procedural error (Jenkins, 2013). It is also important to acknowledge the context of justice campaigns: such families experience a great deal of stigma as a result of their loved one’s conviction, and the emotional, financial and social consequences of such stigma are profound (see 7 Chapter 3).

8 Box 8.2: Doreen and Neville Lawrence and the Long Campaign for Justice In April 1993, Stephen Lawrence was killed in a racially-motivated attack while waiting for a bus near his home in Eltham, London. In the hours following the killing, a number of witness statements identified five local young White men as key suspects, but the police failed to arrest them or obtain evidence from them until over two weeks later. The five men were eventually arrested, but charges were dropped due to ‘insufficient evidence’. Following an unsuccessful private prosecution against three of the suspects, Stephen’s parents, Doreen and Neville Lawrence, campaigned for an inquest into Stephen’s death. The inquest jury concluded that Stephen was unlawfully killed ‘in a completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths’ (cited in Macpherson, 1999:20). The Lawrence family then campaigned for an Inquiry, which was eventually ordered by the UK Government in 1998. The resulting Macpherson Report (1999), concluded that the Metropolitan Police

4 It is important to recognise that, much like our knowledge about crime more generally, our knowledge about miscarriages of justice is only based on cases that we know about. It is likely that most miscarriages of justice remain unexposed, with many individuals privately dealing with the consequences of wrongful conviction and/or a failure to convict.

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investigation into Stephen’s death was characterised by a failure in leadership and police incompetence that resulted a number of ‘fundamental errors’ that undermined the investigation, including a failure to follow up obvious leads and a failure to arrest the suspects in a way that may have resulted in convictions. The report also concluded that the Metropolitan Police was ‘institutionally racist’ and 70 recommendations were made for change across both policing practice and criminal law. These included changes to police recruitment, retention and promotion to ensure that there were more Black and Asian police officers at every level of the police, and the creation of the Police Complaints Commission which could appoint its own independent investigators. It also instigated changes to the Police Family Liaison role (see 7 Chapter 7). Following the emergence of new forensic evidence, two of the five men were tried for Stephen’s murder and were both found guilty in January 2012. The Stephen Lawrence Trust was set up in 1998 by Stephen’s parents to work with disadvantaged young people. While Doreen and Neville Lawrence initially sought individualised justice for their son, their campaign ultimately had a transformative impact on the way police investigate crime and, in many ways, the Lawrence family justice campaign can be considered a success. However, it came at huge personal cost, and the loss of their son and its aftermath was a key factor in the separation of Stephen’s parents. As Neville Lawrence explained (. Image 8.1):

» Our world began falling apart from the moment the hospital staff told

us our son had died…For some reason that I have tried to understand, and can’t, we couldn’t reach out to each other. We stayed together for another six years, but from that day we never physically touched each other again…[…]…Doreen has said that I closed up. But why? Because I felt such pain. I didn't see the need to speak about it – I just assumed she must be feeling exactly the same as me. It didn't occur to me until much later that people can grieve in different ways. (Neville Lawrence, cited in The Independent, 2012)

8.2.2  Memorialisation Laws and Victims’ Families

Westernised criminal justice systems have traditionally been concerned only with the offender v. the state. However, over recent years victims have played an increasingly central role within them. In England and Wales this

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. Image 8.1  Doreen and Neville Lawrence making their Family Impact Statement in January 2012 following the conviction of two men for the murder of their son Stephen in 1993. Pictured with their son Stuart and their solicitor Imran Khan (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

is evident in developments such as the introduction of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board in 1964 (see 7 Box 7.4), the establishment of Victim Support in 1974, the development of the Victims Charter in 1990, the development of Victim Impact Statements in 2001, and the statutory Code of Practice for Victims of Crime in 2004. However, a particularly important shift that has taken place over the past 20 years is the role of victims’ families in legislative reform: in particular, through the emergence of new laws that have been established in the name of victims, known as ‘memorialisation laws’. Memorialisation laws are laws which are named after a crime victim, particularly an ‘ideal victim’. It is usually victims’ families who campaign for such laws, and whose horrific experiences are used to justify the need for them. Memorialisation laws are particularly common in the United States, with perhaps the most well-known being Megan’s Law, which was established across a number of US States following the sexual assault and murder of seven-year old Megan Kanka in New Jersey, United States, in 1994. The person who killed Megan lived across the street from her and

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had two prior convictions for sexual offences against children. Megan’s parents, Richard and Maureen Kanka, subsequently campaigned for a change in the law to allow mandatory community notification of those who had previous sexual offences. This was enacted in New Jersey in 1994 and replicated across many other states, though they vary in the extent to which they make names and other information publically available. The Kanka campaign culminated in the International Megan’s Law to Prevent Child Exploitation and Other Sexual Crimes Through Advanced Notification of Traveling Sex Offenders (2016), which requires international governments to be notified if a US citizen who is on the sex offender register is travelling to their country. In the United Kingdom, the equivalent to Megan’s Law is the Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme (CSODS), which was implemented nationwide in 2011 following a campaign by the parents of Sarah Payne, an eightyear old girl who was murdered in 2000 by a man who had previous convictions for child sexual offences. Referred to as Sarah’s Law, the CSODS is less extensive than Megan’s Law, and only parents/carers or ‘third parties’ who have specific concerns can make a request about whether a person has a record of past child sexual offences (including unproven allegations) and may therefore pose a risk to a child (or, in some cases, to a vulnerable adult). Disclosure is made to those who are in a position to best protect the child, and this may not necessarily be the applicant. The Payne family campaign for Sarah’s Law was mobilised by the ‘name and shame’ campaign by the News of the World, a national tabloid newspaper that produced weekly list of names and photographs of suspected child sex offenders. As a result, cases of local organised vigilantism appeared, resulting in the Payne family asking the newspaper to stop its campaign (Critcher, 2002). It is certainly true that one of the concerns of such disclosure schemes is the increased risk of vigilante attacks, which have been documented (see Levenson & Cotter, 2005; Whitting et al., 2017). There are also concerns that such schemes may result in those with sexual offences failing to notify the police about their whereabouts, which may ultimately lead to increased risk, rather than reduced risk. A similar approach was adopted in the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (DVDS), which was implemented across England and Wales in 2014. Known as Clare’s Law, the DVDS memorialised Clare Wood, a young woman who was murdered in 2009 by her former partner who had a history of offences for violence against women. Clare’s father, Michael Brown, campaigned for Clare’s Law, claiming that, had it been in place when Clare was alive, she would not have been killed. Clare’s Law

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is predicated on the evidence that those who engage in domestic abuse are serial perpetrators, and that those most at risk of domestic homicide involve cases where there has been abuse in the perpetrator’s previous relationships (see . Fig. 6.2: Intimate Partner Femicide Timeline). Thus, the DVDS allow requests to be made to the local police for disclosure of a suspect’s history and the request can be made by their partner, their friends or family, or by an agency. As with Sarah’s Law, the police decide who to make the disclosure to on the basis of whoever is best placed to protect the person they are concerned about. A disclosure is made if it is deemed to be ‘lawful and proportionate’, after which a safety plan is established. As with Sarah’s Law, Clare’s Law is not without criticism, with Refuge highlighting that most perpetrators of domestic abuse are not known to agencies (mainly because of low reporting rates), so a disclosure of ‘no history’ may give false confidence to those who have concerns. It is also important to recognise that disclosed information is not enough without effective, co-ordinated support in place for those at risk of domestic abuse. Aside from these examples, other memorialisation laws have been campaigned for by victims’ families over the years, including Lillian’s Law,5 Claudia’s Law6 and Helen’s Law.7 Regardless of the merits and limitations of specific memorialisation laws, there are more general concerns about their increasing use. First, they frequently give a new name to powers that already exist. For example, the police already had powers through

5

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Lillian’s Law is named after Lillian Groves, who was killed when crossing the road in 2010 by a person driving under the influence of cannabis. Her parents, Michaela and Trevor Groves, campaigned to make it an offence to drive under the influence of substances, which would result in an automatic driving ban and a potential prison sentence. Lillian’s Law was legislated by The Drug Driving (Specified Limits) (England and Wales) Regulations (2014). Claudia’s Law is named after Claudia Lawrence who went missing from her home in York in 2009. Her father, Peter Lawrence, campaigned to create a new legal status of guardian for the families of those who go missing for more than 90 days. Claudia’s Law was legislated by the Guardianship (Missing Persons) Act (2017). Helen’s Law is named after Helen McCourt, who was murdered in 1988 but whose killer, who has since been released from prison, has refused to reveal the location of Helen’s body. Helen’s mother, Maria McCourt, has campaigned for parole boards to be legally required to consider the withholding of information when making decisions about release from prison. Helen’s Law was legislated by Prisoners (Disclosure of Information about Victims) Act (2020).

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common law to disclose information relating to previous charges or convictions to the public in order to prevent further crime. As such, efforts might be better spent properly implementing current law, rather than designing new laws. Second, the gendered branding of memorialisation laws implies that they concern crimes that only affect women and girls, contributing to a culture of shame and secrecy for male victims. Third, the focus on cause celebres, and the media attention they receive, tends to detract from other more pressing issues that relate to such incidents (for example, that it took the police 24 hours to respond to one of Clare Wood’s earlier calls for help). Fourth, memorialisation laws are seen as a cheap way for governments to be seen to be ‘doing something’ without providing the investment that is needed to more effectively address the problem (such as investment in domestic abuse support services). Instead, they enable the justification of a more punitive approach to crime. Finally, memorialisation laws, and their associated campaigns, can be difficult to challenge because they are so closely tied to the family who is campaigning for them. Asking for accountability from those who have been through such painful personal experiences can appear callous, and can easily be resisted by claims of having ‘never walked in their shoes’. Given this framing, any claim that family members make on behalf of their loved ones, particularly from parents, are difficult to challenge, as is the implicit assumption that their motive is driven only by love. Questions for Reflection: – Can you think of any examples of family justice campaigns? What features were central to their success (or failure)? To what extent should families be involved in justice campaigns for loved ones, and should there be any limits to families’ involvement?

Box 8.3: Family Criminology in Practice: Family Members as ‘Victim Figureheads’ Victim figureheads promote ‘victim’s voices’ within the fields of politics, social policy and criminal justice. They have always existed and the roles have often been performed by members of victims’ families. However, the role was formalised in the UK through the establishment of the Victims Champion in 2009. This was a 12-month post that aimed to provide an independent voice for victims and the champion was named as Sara Payne, the mother of eight year-old Sarah Payne who was murdered in 2000. As Victims’ Champion, Payne made a number of policy recommendations including increased criminalisation of ‘nuisance behaviours’ (e.g. substance misuse,

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verbal abuse) and the establishment of a National Victim’s Service, as well as the establishment of Sarah’s Law (see earlier). This role was replaced by the more wide-ranging role of Victim’s Commissioner in 2010 and, following the resignation of its first incumbent Louise Casey in 2011, the role was taken on by Helen Newlove, who had campaigned for safer communities following the murder of her husband Garry in 2007. Newlove remained in the role until June 2019. As Duggan and Heap (2014) observe, the role of Victims Champion and Victims Commissioner has always been taken by women, despite women being less likely to be victims of crime (unless the crime involves domestic abuse or sexual violence). Furthermore, it has primarily been taken by the family members of victims of high-profile homicides. In some ways, this is understandable: mothers and female partners of homicide victims have significant social capital that can make them effective in performing these roles in terms of the authenticity they provide and the platforms this can open up. However, the roles themselves have relatively little statutory power. For Duggan and Heap, this raises the question of whether such roles offer little more than a tokenistic approach to an otherwise male-dominated criminal justice system, while at the same time contributing towards a political ‘feminizing of victimisation’ (Duggan & Heap, 2014:46).

8.3  Collective Family Justice Campaigns

In this chapter, we have discussed how family justice campaigns emerge when a family seeks redress about an incident that harmed (or killed) a loved one and which then produces wider legislative or institutional reform. However, other sets of painful circumstances may produce broader, more loosely formed collective family campaign groups. In this section, we explore these groups in more detail: in the first part we focus on collective family campaigns, and in the second part we explore a very specific form of collective family campaign known as maternal activism. 8.3.1  Collective Family Campaign Groups

Collective family campaign groups may emerge from a single incident that produces a number of victims whose families come together to achieve

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their collective goals.8 One example is the Hillsborough Families Support Group,9 which formed in the days following the death of 96 supporters crushed at a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in England in April 1989. The families of those killed campaigned for truth via a public inquiry (amid mistruths primarily circulated by the police, politicians and the tabloid media) and for justice via criminal proceedings against the police (who were in charge of the football match that day) for gross negligence manslaughter. However, collective family campaign groups may seek other goals beyond truth and justice. For example, the Take Back the Memorial (TBM) group emerged following the terrorist atrocities on 11 September 2001 at the World Trade Center complex in New York City, where over 2606 people were killed. The TBM group emerged in 2005 and consisted of family members of the victims who had lost their lives during the incident and who were concerned about proposals for a museum (the ‘International Freedom Center’) at the site where the World Trade Center once stood. The TBM campaign was successful, with the plans for that particular museum soon abandoned.10 However, the campaign group continued their activities with the aim of establishing ‘…a fitting and proper memorial to be built for those who perished on September 11th, and to tell the story of that fateful day—and that day alone’.11 In her analysis of the TBM family campaign group, Donofrio (2010) highlights how the group was able to make credible claims to ‘place-making authority’ (that is, on what the meaning of the memorial should be) in two specific ways. First, they rejected the perceived ‘commodification’ of the site that intended to charge visitors and engage in fund-raising activities. Second, they rejected the perceived ‘politicisation’ of the site by criticising the academics, politicians and political activists who made their own claims about how the site should represent the collective memory. In particular, the TBM group’s re-

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One current example is the Covid Families for Justice group, which was formed by families who lost a loved one through the Covid-19 virus and who are campaigning for an independent inquiry into the UK Government’s handling of the pandemic. See 7 https://www. covidfamiliesforjustice.org. 9 A second campaign group, the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, was formed in 1998 by some of the families who were members of the Hillsborough Families Support Group following disagreements about the direction of the original campaign (see Scraton, 2016 for discussion). 10 The National September 11 Memorial and Museum was opened on the site in May 2014. 11 7 https://takebackthememorial.net/about.htm

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jection of these groups was important in countering alternative narratives about the state’s own role in the 9/11 atrocities through its military interventions into global politics. Despite its claims to be a ‘non-political group’, the TBM group is inherently political, just like any other campaign group. However, its political nature is hidden by its overt rejection of any kind of voice that disrupts the status quo. Such processes reflect Becker’s (1967) influential work Whose side are we on? that highlighted how, in Criminology as in life, actions are always political, but they tend to only be labelled as such when they seek social change. As a collective family campaign group, the aims and strategies of TBM are unusual (although not unique) compared with most other collective family campaign groups, which more commonly seek to disrupt the status quo and challenge official narratives. Indeed, the rhetorical strategies utilised by the TBM are often adopted by those in power who wish to maintain the status quo (including the inequalities and oppressions which maintain the status quo). These rhetorical strategies include: 5 Rejecting the claims of less powerful groups, such as women, people of colour and LGBTQ groups 5 Centring and universalising Whiteness and heteronormativity to enable it to be positioned as ‘neutral’ 5 Demarcating opposing voices as ‘political’ The Black Lives Matter movement provides a powerful example of this. In 2012, Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African-American, was killed in Florida, United States by a local white Neighbourhood Watch member. It took 16 months before his killer was tried, and he was eventually acquitted. The local community quickly mobilised and protested against what was seen as yet another example of Black lives seeming not to matter. The social media hashtag #BlackLivesMatter (or #BLM), and the movement project that mobilised in its wake, was initiated by Alice Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi in 2013. In the words of one of its founders, BLM is ‘an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression’ (Garza, 2014: 1). Further incidents, including the killings of African-Americans Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York City in 2014, both killed by White police officers, precipitated further BLM demonstrations. The kill-

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ing of African-American George Floyd12 in 2020 by White police officers in Minneapolis precipitated BLM protests around the world, highlighting the global nature of the problem. While the BLM movement has a specific focus on police brutality against Black people, as well as the racism inherent within the criminal justice system, BLM ultimately aims to highlight the broader ways in which Black people are deprived of dignity and human rights through state violence. Examples of how such state violence is practised include mass incarceration of Black people, discrimination against undocumented migrants, the fetishisation and profiteering of Black LGBTQ communities and the economic and emotional burden carried by Black women in protecting their children and families from systemic anti-Black racism (Garza, 2014). This final point is particularly significant in terms of the importance of, and the impact on, families who engage in political protest against the harms caused by state violence, including its use within the criminal justice system. The BLM movement is a loose, non-hierarchical and decentralised movement, and its strength lies in local and community-based ‘grassroots’ organisation. However, this means that the demands placed on those who are engaging in such activism, while mourning the loss of loved ones, can take its toll. For example, Eric Garner’s daughter, Erica Garner, continued the long tradition of Black rights activism following the loss of a family member to police violence. Yet her activism took its toll: “I’m struggling right now with the stress and everything…This thing, it beats you down. The system beats you down to where you can’t win” (Like It or Not, 2017). Erica died from cardiac arrest three weeks after she made this statement: she was 27 years old.13

12 Like so many similar incidents that came before it, the killing of George Floyd was recorded and (re)played around the world, producing not only a personal trauma for Floyd’s family, but a wider collective trauma for those who viewed it, particularly those from Black communities who recognised themselves in Floyd’s plight. As Smith points out, ‘The repeated, public and spectacular killing of black people by police reverberates. Communities, witnesses and family members suffer immeasurable, debilitating pain in the wake of these confrontations’ (Smith, 2017). 13 In the same interview, Garner highlighted the death of Venida Browder, who died of a cardiac arrest in 2016 following campaigning about conditions at Riker’s Island prison. Browder’s son, Kalief Browder, killed himself in 2015 after spending three years at the prison, nearly two years of which were in solitary confinement, for allegedly stealing a backpack.

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The intergenerational component of such activism is important, as Erica Garner explained: ‘Even with my own heartbreak, when I demand justice, it’s never just for Eric Garner. It’s for my daughter; it’s for the next generation of African-Americans’ (Garner, 2016). Yet there are many long-term material impacts of anti-Black racist police brutality on Black women. Smith (2016a) documented the sequelae of these in terms of physical and mental health problems, as well as the financial, social and familial harms that it causes. These impacts are felt particularly acutely by mothers. As Smith (2016b) highlights, ‘mothers are often at the forefront of the movement for justice, and [they are] emblematic representations of grief’ (p. 6). We now turn to explore this issue in greater detail. 8.3.2  Maternal Activism

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Research has highlighted that even single incident-focused family justice campaigns are highly gendered, and it is mothers, daughters, wives and sisters who are most commonly the ‘face’ of such campaigns. Charman and Savage (2009) highlight a number of reasons why this may be so. First, as documented elsewhere in this book, men are significantly more likely to be incarcerated and to be the victims of homicide. As a consequence, it is women who are ‘left behind’ to campaign on their behalf. Second, women’s central role in traditional families, particularly as mothers, means that they have a huge amount of personal knowledge about their loved one. This enables them to evoke sympathy for them, and facilitate public familiarity with them, more effectively than anyone else. Third, as highlighted in the previous chapter, research suggests that reactions to loss are gendered, with women’s more expressive responses to grief lending themselves to the practices that are integral to successful campaigning. However, more loosely formed collective family campaign groups are also primarily led by women and, in particular, by mothers. This gendering is not a coincidence: the emergence of campaign groups over the past five decades is intricately tied to the rise of protest movements which attempted to facilitate social change by focusing on single issues, rather than through more traditional means such as political party membership. Feminist organisations have always been intricately related to such movements, and have specifically oriented towards social transformation as a means of addressing the needs of those less powerful, particularly women and children. Examples of such feminist activist groups include Women Against Rape, founded in 1976, Southall Black Sisters, founded in 1979 to empower Black

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and minoritised women experiencing gender-based violence, and Women Against Gun Violence, founded in 1993. Maternal activism, specifically, refers to a ‘politics of visibility’ whereby ‘a woman, or a group, adopts the figure of the mother to make claims on behalf of her sons or daughters’ (Orozco Mendoza, 2016: 1). As such, maternal activism is a collective and public performance which aims to achieve social justice and is concerned with challenging the intersections of gender, race and class (as well as other dimensions of power) to produce social transformation. Historically, maternal activism has focused on a range of issues, including those related to education, health, welfare, housing and the environment. However, it has perhaps found most potency in the field of violence and criminal justice. For example, Voces Sin Eco (Voices Without Echo) was formed in 1998 in Juárez, Mexico by eight mothers and close relatives of femicide victims, following a spate of kidnappings, tortures and murders of young, poor women. Angered by police indifference to the problem, Voces Sin Eco co-ordinated its own searches in public spaces (rastreos) to find bodies and evidence. Their visibility acted as a form of social protest to highlight the authorities’ negligence in properly investigating the femicides (Orozco Mendoza, 2019). More recent examples include Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa A.C. (Bring our Daughters Back Home) in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and, as part of the #BLM movement, Mothers of the Movement, which comprises eight African-American mothers whose children were killed in high-profile cases of police violence. The group includes Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, and Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner. Maternal activism may also emerge outside of peacetime. For example, las Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo (the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) formed in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1976 by the mothers of children who were enforceably ‘disappeared’ by the military Junta during the Dirty War (see Image 8.2). Wearing white shawls and caps, and wearing photographs of their children around their necks, the mothers marched through the streets every Thursday at 3.30 p.m. to demand to know what happened to their children (who the authorities insisted had ‘gone to Europe on vacation’). Similar groups have formed around the world, such as the Mothers of Srebrenica following the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 and Mothers for Palestine following the Israel-Palestine conflict in 1987. While the families of victims of war of course share the loss and the anger experienced by other victims’ families, they differ in some important ways. For example, unique to them is the specific trauma produced by organised mass violence, the lack of bodies to grieve over, the difficulties faced

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. Image 8.2  las Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, c. 1982 (Daniel Garcia/AFP via Getty Images)

in establishing formal recognition of their plight and their resistance to demands to ‘forget’ for the greater good of national reconciliation (see Shute, 2016). Maternal activism is not without success in exposing state violence and structural inequalities. In demanding redress for the victims, the women’s bravery, resilience and care in the face of violence and corruption is admirable. However, despite individual successes, has maternal activism ultimately achieved the transformational change that it was seeking? State violence continues, bodies are still missing, femicide and domestic abuse is stubbornly persistent and structural inequalities continue to organise social and family life. The very concept of maternal activism reinforces the activists’ identities, first and foremost, as ‘mothers’ and it fails to question how their position in the family reinforces some of the same structural inequalities that are operating outside the family and to which their loved ones have fallen victim to (Dietz, 1985; Orozco Mendoza, 2019). The symbolic representation of ‘motherhood’ as a strategy for publically representing both grief and injustice is particularly powerful because of the prestige and moral authority that is awarded to motherhood. Thus,

8.3 · Collective Family Justice Campaigns

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‘maternal capital’ operates as a specific form of social capital. Its potency resides within the discourse of good motherhood, of which one strand is the deep and eternal instinctive love a mother is assumed to have for her child, an attachment bond which is like no other. Indeed, the archetypal ‘good mother’ is expected to know no bounds in protecting her child, and the criminal justice system is quick to punish those mothers who are seen to fall short of this. As this book has highlighted, there are many examples of this, including the censure (and potential criminalisation) of mothers who are seen not to have protected their child(ren) against abuse perpetrated by someone else (see 7 Chapter 7); mothers who are seen not to have sufficiently controlled their child(ren) from engaging in criminal behaviour (see 7 Chapter 2); and mothers who are seen as failing in their performance of grief (this chapter). Box 8.4: Methodological Challenges: Negotiating Researcher Access to Families One of the greatest challenges of both criminological research and family research is negotiating access to the people that one wishes to investigate. As discussed in 7 Chapter 1, both crime and family can be painful topics for both researcher and the researched, and this can make negotiating access to research participants particularly challenging. In her research on bereaved family activism, Cook (2018) writes about the challenges of ‘getting in’ (obtaining entry to the field), ‘getting on’ (negotiating the field) and ‘getting out’ (leaving the field). Cook describes how she negotiated entry with the Mothers Against Violence campaign group via an existing contact between her university and a long-standing member of the organisation. Following a number of conversations, Cook’s request to undertake ethnographic fieldwork via a volunteering role was agreed by the organisation committee. Cook describes the challenges of managing her insider/outsider status as both a ‘volunteer’ and a ‘researcher’. Cook’s access to those ‘casual interactions’ within the organisation that provided her with crucial insights about her object of study also required full disclosure with all of the campaign group members to ensure that they were aware of her dual role and of her intentions. Alongside her participant observation of group meetings, workshops and public events, Cook also engaged in individual interviews with members. These required individual consent, and Cook found that these interviews were easier to negotiate once she had been volunteering at the or-

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ganisation for a number of months and had become known and trusted by the team. Some of the practical challenges that Cook faced included difficulties in scheduling the interviews with participants who had very busy lives, which often included other volunteering work, and finding a safe and quiet space in which to conduct the interviews. Cook also faced ‘research fatigue’ on the part of potential participants: their previous experience as research participants in other projects not only took its emotional toll, given the sensitive and often-painful subject matter, but also produced frustration because their research participation produced little positive change once the research had been completed and the researcher had seemingly got what they wanted (Cook, 2018).

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Useful Websites Black Lives Matter 7 https://blacklivesmatter.com Provides news updates, resources and toolkits, research reports and campaigning activities and information in the fight for racial justice.

References Barak-Brandes, S., & Shaul, G. (2014). “The cameras were everywhere”: Media conduct through the eyes of homicide victims’ families: Switzerland, Italy, and Israel. The Communication Review, 17(4), 269–285. Becker, H. S. (1967). ‘Whose Side Are We On?’ Social Problems, 14(3), 239–247. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). Greenwood Press. Charman, S., & Savage, S. P. (2009). Mothers for justice? Gender and campaigns against miscarriages of justice. The British Journal of Criminology, 49(6), 900–915. Christie, N. (1986). The ideal victim. In From crime policy to victim policy (pp. 17–30). Palgrave Macmillan. Cook, E. (2018). Bereaved family activism in the aftermath of lethal violence (Doctoral dissertation), The University of Manchester, UK. Cotterill, J. (2011). Mugshots and motherhood: The media semiotics of vilification in child abduction cases. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law-Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 24(4), 447–470.

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Critcher, C. (2002). Media, government and moral panic: The politics of paedophilia in Britain 2000–2001. Journalism Studies, 3(4), 521–535. Dietz, Mary G. (1985). Citizenship with a feminist face: The problem with maternal thinking. Political Theory, 13, 19–37. Donofrio, T. A. (2010). Ground zero and place-making authority: The conservative metaphors in 9/11 families’ “Take back the memorial” rhetoric. Western Journal of Communication, 74(2), 150–169. Duggan, M., & Heap, V. (2014). Administrating victimization: The politics of anti-social behaviour and hate crime policy. Springer. Fader, J. J. (2016). Criminal family networks: Criminal capital and cost avoidance among urban drug sellers. Deviant Behavior, 37(11), 1325–1340. Garner, E. (2016). Black lives like my fathers should matter in America, that’s why I’m endorsing Bernie Sanders. Washington Post, 29 January 2019. Available from: 7 https://www. washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/01/29/black-lives-like-my-fathers-shouldmatter-in-america-thats-why-im-endorsing-bernie-sanders/?utm_term=.84b942771a2d. Garza, A. (2014, 7 October). A herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Feminist Wire. Available from: 7 https://www.collectiveliberation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ Garza_Herstory_of_the_BlackLivesMatter_Movement.pdf. Greer, C., & McLoughlin, E. (2012). A paedophile scandal foretold Sir Jimmy Savile, child sexual abuse and the BBC. British Society of Criminology Newsletter, No. 71, Winter 2012, 7–11. Holmes, L. (2008). Living in Limbo: The experiences of, and impacts, the families of missing people. Missing People. Holmes, L. (2016). Missing person appeals: A UK perspective. In Handbook of missing persons (pp. 19–35). Springer. The Independent. (2008, March 2). Missing: The contrasting searches for Shannon and Madeleine [online]. Available from: 7 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/ missing-the-contrasting-searches-for-shannon-and-madeleine-790207.html?service=Print#r3z-addoor. 8 October 2020. The Independent. (2012). How love can be torn apart [online]. Available from: 7 https://www. independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/how-love-can-be-torn-apart-6286322.html. 8 October 2020. Innes, M. (1999). The media as an investigative resource in murder enquiries. British Journal of Criminology, 39(2), 269–286. Jenkins, S. (2013). Secondary victims and the trauma of wrongful conviction: Families and children’s perspectives on imprisonment, release and adjustment. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 46(1), 119–137. Levenson, J. S., & Cotter, L. P. (2005). The effect of Megan’s Law on sex offender reintegration. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 21(1), 49–66. Like It or Not. (2017). Erica Garner interview Like It or Not with Benjamin Dixon, webshow (Content:Progressive). December 2017. Macpherson, W. (1999). The Stephen Lawrence inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny. Available from: 7 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/277111/4262.pdf. Mills, A., & Codd, H. (2008). Prisoners’ families and offender management: Mobilizing social capital. Probation Journal, 55(1), 9–24.

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Orozco Mendoza, E. F. (2016). Maternal activism,. In N. Naples, R. C. Hoogland, M. Wickramasinghe, and W. A. Wong (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies (pp. 1–6). Wiley Blackwell. Orozco Mendoza, E. F. (2019). Las Madres De Chihuahua: Maternal activism, public disclosure, and the politics of visibility. New Political Science, 41(2), 211–233. Newton, J. (2011). The knock at the door: Considering bereaved families’ varying responses to news media intrusion. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics, 8(3/4), 7–13. Parr, S., & Stevenson, O. (2013). Families living with absence: Searching for missing people. University of Glasgow. Pugach, D., Peleg, A., & Ronel, N. (2018). Lingual injury: Crime victims between the criminal justice system and the media. International Review of Victimology, 24(1), 3–23. Savage, S. P., Grieve, J., & Poyser, S. (2007). Putting wrongs to right: Campaigns against miscarriages of justice. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 7(1), 83–105. Scraton, P. (2016). Hillsborough-the truth. Random House. Shute, J. (2016). Bereaved family activism in contexts of organized mass violence. In S. Walklate & D. Spencer (Eds.), Reconceptualizing critical victimology: Interventions and possibilities. Lexington Books Smith, C. A. (2016a). Facing the dragon: Black mothering, sequelae, and gendered necropolitics in the Americas. Transforming Anthropology, 24(1), 31–48. Smith, C. A. (2016b). Sorrow as artifact: Radical Black mothering in times of terror—A prologue. Transforming Anthropology, 24(1), 5–7. Smith, C. A. (2017). Slow death: Is the trauma of police violence killing Black women? AP News [online]. 25 December 2017. Available from: 7 https://apnews.com/article/72f3f483011a946d892f0aaa369c20c3. Accessed 22 October 2020. Walker, C. (1999). Miscarriages of justice in principle and practice. In C. Walker & K. Starmer (Eds.), Miscarriages of justice: A review of justice in error (pp. 31–62). Blackstone. Whitting, L., Day, A., & Powell, M. (2017). An evaluation of the impact of Australia’s first community notification scheme. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 24(3), 339–355.

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Discussion Contents 9.1  Family Criminology: Themes and Questions – 250 9.1.1  Family Criminology: Key Themes – 250 9.1.2  Family Criminology: Key Questions – 253

9.2  Family Criminology: Now and in the Future – 256 9.2.1  Families, Crime and Current Contexts – 256 9.2.2  The Future of Family Criminology – 258

9.3  Working at the Intersections of Families and Crime – 260 9.3.1  Working with Families of Those Incarcerated – 260 9.3.2  Working with Domestic and Family Violence – 263 9.3.3  Working as a Police Family Liaison Officer – 267

Useful Websites – 269 References – 270

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Holt, Family Criminology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71169-6_9

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z Overview

One of the challenges of writing this book has been in pulling together and making sense of many disparate strands of theory and data from across the spectrum of criminological scholarship. There are no obvious ‘go to’ journals or books that house all of the relevant conceptual frameworks and empirical evidence in a single accessible source. At least initially, I hope that this book becomes the ‘go to’ source for family criminologists, although I also hope that further texts build on this work in the future. In this final chapter, I wish to highlight some of the key themes that have shaped this book, and identify some important questions that the book has raised. I also wish to consider what is next for Family Criminology: what its future is beyond this book, and what Family Criminology means in the current global context. Finally, by speaking with practitioners who work at the intersections of crime and the family, I wish to highlight the value of such work and to share insights about what Family Criminology means in practice. 9.1  Family Criminology: Themes and Questions

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So, having explored the many ways in which families and crime intersect, what can we conclude? And what questions does such an exploration raise? In this section, we briefly explore the thematic commonalities across the book and highlight the lessons to be learned from them. We then address some important questions that this book raises in terms of structural violence and the role of culture. 9.1.1  Family Criminology: Key Themes

A number of themes resonate in every chapter of this book, but three seem particularly pertinent across the different intersectional sites where crime meets the family: shame, loss and invisibility. We discuss each of these in turn.

Shame Shame is an emotional, cognitive and physiological experience that is predicated on how others feel about us, how we feel about ourselves, and cultural norms about what is shameful. Thus, like guilt and pride, shame requires both self-awareness and self-evaluation. Shame pervades the whole self and shapes our personal, familial and social identities, and it is intimately connected to stigma and the production of ‘spoiled identities’. Given its mul-

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ti-dimensional nature, it is no surprise that shame as a scholarly concept is of interest to psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, moral philosophers and anthropologists. Increasingly, shame has been of interest to criminologists, particularly since Braithwaite’s (1989) influential work on the role of shaming, stigmatisation and recidivism. Shame is an overwhelmingly painful experience that is often at the root of actions such as non-disclosure and social withdrawal, and it may result in negative psychological sequelae such as low self-esteem, depression, alcohol and substance misuse and suicidal ideation. Shame is a feature of the lives of most, if not all, of the families that are discussed in this book. It would appear that engagement with crime or the criminal justice system is an inherently shaming experience, regardless of the circumstances that led to the family’s interaction with it. Of course, the criminal context, the structural context and the familial context shapes the landscape of the shame. For example, wider cultures of mother-blame and victim-blame must surely feed into this process. Furthermore, the criminal justice system engages in shaming sanctions against particular family members, either directly (e.g. through court orders against particular parents whose children offend or are deemed ‘at risk’) or indirectly (e.g. through the shaming experiences of a ‘home raid’). Shame also plays a role in the perpetration of gender-based violence, either explicitly (e.g. through the mobilisation of shaming practices against the victim) or implicitly (e.g. through shaming discourses that position victims of domestic and family violence as culpable for their own victimisation).

Loss Across every chapter, loss is everywhere. Loss may not always be finite (as it is in death), but the absence of something that was present and important in one’s life can nevertheless be painful and can take a long time to adjust to. Such ‘non-finite losses’ may involve social, cognitive, emotional or spiritual loss which are often unacknowledged by others. They often involve the loss of hopes, dreams and ideals (what could have been, or should have been) and are often accompanied by a sense of helplessness and powerlessness (see Bruce & Schultz, 2001). This book highlighted the range of losses that are experienced at the intersections of families and crime. Parents lose their authority when their children offend (or are seen as ‘at risk’); families lose their loved ones, and the intimacy they shared, to incarceration; wives and children lose their autonomy within a Mafia family; families lose their personal and familial identity if they become protected witnesses; families lose their dignity through domestic and family violence, or may even lose their loved ones

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through family homicide; families lose their confidence when their loved ones are victimised; and families lose their faith in the criminal justice system when a loved one does not receive the justice they deserve. In many of these cases, the loss is ambiguous and can be difficult to process. This book also highlighted the common set of impacts that crime makes on families despite their different circumstances. These include stigma and strain; physical, mental and emotional ill-health; financial loss; loss of intimacies; strains on family and social relationships; and harms to community relations. These impacts and losses are profound, and this book has highlighted how they are shaped by the structural context in which we live, with those with least resources finding themselves (and their loved ones) at the sharper end of both the criminal justice system and of broader systems of privilege and oppression.

Invisibility

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Families are all around us and, as this book has highlighted, they play key roles in criminal justice system. However, they are rendered invisible as the strengths that they have, the roles that they play and the pains that they carry are all unacknowledged. Families whose lives intersect with crime are rarely talked about and, in some fields of research, there is very little knowledge about them or their experiences. Despite making a lot of assumptions about who they are and the moral transgressions they have made, we hear relatively little from the families of children and young people who are involved in youth justice processes, of those incarcerated, of organised crime families and of those whose loved ones are victims of crime. One area where concerns about the invisibility of families and crime have long been raised is domestic and family violence. Feminist campaigners have continually challenged the hidden nature of such violence and the harms it produces, particularly to women and children. But it is fair to say that some families are more invisible than others. For example, those from minoritised communities, including Black, minority ethnic and refugee communities and LGBTQ communities, are less likely to have their experiences of victimisation recognised, or to receive adequate support. Media attention also renders some cases of gender-based violence more or less visible. For example, in cases of domestic homicide, those which are more commonplace—the two women a week that are killed by their intimate male partners—garner the least media attention, while cases of family homicide that are the most unusual—the familicides and the parricides—garner a huge amount of media attention. Sometimes, in difficult circumstances, families emerge out of the shadows. Families who have lost someone to serious crime, particularly a child, can be

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rendered visible in a raw and brutal way. Daily appearances across media platforms can produce its own set of harms, including intrusive questions about a family member’s own culpability. Families may also be rendered visible without choice, such as when a loved one has been involved in a high-profile crime, and they become known primarily as being ‘X’s’ mother or son. Sometimes families may seek visibility in order to raise attention about a miscarriage of justice for which they are seeking answers or righting wrongs. Such visibility is rarely welcomed by the state, at least initially. Yet many of these cases, such as those highlighted by the Lawrence family in the United Kingdom or the Garner family in the United States, have achieved real change that has reverberated well beyond their respective criminal justice systems. Those who are perhaps rendered most invisible within families are children. It was only in 2002 that children in England and Wales were recognised as victims of domestic and family violence who could experience ‘significant harm’. Children are rarely visible in cases where a family member has been arrested, convicted or incarcerated, or in cases where a family member is missing or victimised, or in cases that involve a family justice campaign. Children’s invisibility implies that they are untouched by events and that they are not ‘key players’ in the families’ responses to them: neither of these assumptions is true. Once children become visible, processes and practices will need to adapt to accommodate their needs—for example, by addressing prison visiting regimes, ‘home raid’ practices, witness protection programme policies, organised crime family intervention protocols or victim support strategies. This book has highlighted the work that urgently needs to start in these areas. 9.1.2  Family Criminology: Key Questions

As well as identifying common themes across the many areas of Family Criminology, this book has also raised questions. In this section, three specific questions will be addressed: Does the criminal justice system perpetrate structural violence on families? Is the family itself a form of structural violence? How does wider culture shape the intersections of families and crime?

Does the Criminal Justice System Perpetrate Structural Violence on Families? When we talk about structural violence, we are referring to violence that is perpetrated systematically (and indirectly) as a result of iniquitous social structures. Examples of structural violence include racism, sexism and mi-

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sogyny, classism and poverty. Structural violence is institutionalised and is exerted by everyone who is part of it, often through state apparatus. As well as physical harms (e.g. injury or death), structural violence can cause psychological and emotional harm, financial harm, stigma and shame, and social isolation. In terms of the criminal justice system, policing practices, court practices, youth justice practices, probation practices, can all mediate and exacerbate structural violence against particular marginalised groups of people. Even outside of the criminal justice system, therapeutic practices, social work practices, health practices and educational practices can all serve to mediate and exacerbate structural violence. Indeed, structural violence can become so normalised that it is rendered invisible, even to those who are subject to it. Its effects can become internalised, shaping one’s sense of self and resulting in self-blame and shame, reduced self-esteem, increased risk-taking and a sense of fatalism (Sarang et al., 2010). When structural violence results in a failure to meet fundamental needs, it becomes a human rights violation. So, to what extent can we say that the criminal justice system mediates and exacerbates structural violence on those families who must engage with it? The evidence discussed in this book suggests that, to some extent, it does. For example, the parents of children and young people who are drawn into the youth justice system are shamed, responsibilised and made accountable by it. However, not all parents equally are subject to it: as 7 Chapter 2 highlighted, it is mothers, lone parents, and those with fewest economic resources who experience the sharp end of parental accountability laws and youth crime prevention policies. Similarly, the families of those who are arrested, charged, tried and/or convicted are shamed and stigmatised for their perceived failings. For those whose loved ones are incarcerated, there are financial losses and social hardships, and emotional strains in navigating a criminal justice system which does not accommodate them with decency and justice. Again, it is particular families that face the greatest violations, because the criminal justice system compounds already-existing economic, health, social and educational disadvantages. Furthermore, other institutions, such as the mass media, coalesce to reproduce these same structural inequalities in their coverage of particular marginalised groups who do not conform to the ‘ideal family’.

Is the Family Itself a Form of Structural Violence? Perhaps a more unsettling question concerns whether the family itself mediates and exacerbates structural violence upon its own members. The importance of family is evident, and the harms enacted upon families by crim-

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inal justice processes would not be so great if families were not such a central and meaningful part of people’s lives. Families are a huge source of support when someone is arrested, incarcerated or indeed when they are released and are trying to ‘go straight’. Families can also offer significant support when family members are victimised or killed, whether by members of their own family or by ‘outsiders’. Many families will go to extraordinary lengths to support each other, sometimes giving up their own home, life and relationships in the face of witness intimidation. However, families can also be torn apart in the face of these same situations, and guilt and blame can play a profound role in this process. This book has highlighted how families can be an oppressive force. This is not only in relation to violent households and the coercion and control practised by family members, but also in relation to more subtle practices that are similarly gendered. For example, in the practice of emotional labour, or in the expectation that women in Mafia families will reproduce ‘family values’, however harmful they might be. Loyalty is often seen as a central component of family life, and the code not to ‘grass up’ other family members has a strong force that can result in individual family members carrying a burden that can be hard to bear.

How Does Wider Culture Shape the Intersections of Families and Crime? As this book has discussed, there is a wealth of research from across the social sciences that has highlighted how particular individual and/or familial factors play a role in producing particular ‘risks’ in terms of offending, incarceration and victimisation. Less tends to be said about the role of culture, and what this means for crime and families. However, this book has identified some useful insights about this, such as how individuals and families experience loss and trauma differently, and how engagement in different coping strategies reflects their cultural norms and values. Sometimes culture shapes the nature of violence within a family. For example, in cultures where honour values such as reputation and social interdependence are a central force in families’ lives, violence may be perpetrated against those who are perceived to have brought dishonour to the family— as can be seen in both Mafia family cultures and in some South Asian cultures. In more individualistic cultures that value personal independence and achievements of the self, family concerns about shaming the ‘family honour’ will not be so central, and will not be used to justify violence and other controlling behaviours (though that is not to say that other sets of values are not used to justify violence and controlling behaviours in such families).

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Culture also shapes professional practice at the intersections of crime and the family. For example, parenting support programmes and family therapeutic interventions are primarily based on theory and knowledge that is based on Westernised, White, middle-class and often male research samples. It is obviously a good thing that practitioners have acknowledged this and have started to adapt their programmes to their particular client group. Nevertheless, this kind of Westernised knowledge remains the norm and cultural difference is often constructed as ‘other’ at best and as pathological at worst. 9.2  Family Criminology: Now and in the Future

In this section, we briefly discuss what Family Criminology means – both currently, particularly as we experience a period of enormous global change, and looking forward, towards new horizons in theory and research. 9.2.1  Families, Crime and Current Contexts

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Much of this book was written during the tumultuous year of 2020, and it would be remiss of me not to discuss how world events have transformed many of the sites where families and crime intersect. The global nature of the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus has resulted in enormous and profound changes to the way we live our lives. Governments around the world have issued an unprecedented range of measures that have restricted citizens’ rights and freedoms by curtailing work and leisure practices, and confining whole populations to their homes and/or their local communities. While such changes have produced opportunities for some, for many it increased stress and has placed a real strain on family relationships. Evidence is only just emerging about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns, and we will not know about its long-term consequences for some time. However, early findings suggest that it has been hugely detrimental to those families whose lives intersect with crime and with criminal justice agencies. For example: 5 While it has resulted in an overall reduction of children entering the youth justice system (compared with the previous year), for those children and young people already in custodial settings, family visits have been limited or suspended, as have visits from YOT staff, social workers and lawyers (Bateman, 2020). 5 For those incarcerated, it has made it more difficult to maintain family relationships. Prison visits have been severely restricted or, in some

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areas of the United Kingdom, entirely suspended during lockdowns (HM Prison and Probation Service, 2000). For children with a parent in prison, lawyers have warned that the lack of contact with their parents in prison breaches their human rights (Proctor, 2020). 5 The poverty, unemployment and inequality that followed the pandemic and lockdown in Southern Italy have helped Italian Mafia clans to thrive. In the absence of state support, the Mafia stepped in with food parcels, offers of work to the unemployed, and offers of loans to struggling businesses which, it is feared, the Mafia will then take over (Anesi & Civillini, 2020). 5 Self-reported victimisation and police-recorded crime were significantly down on previous levels during Spring 2020, particularly domestic burglary and theft (ONS, 2020). However, reports of domestic and family violence significantly increased, as families spent more time at home, perpetrators found more methods to control their partners and families, and access to support was curtailed (Women’s Aid, 2020). A 27% increase in children being killed or seriously harmed has also been reported during the first Spring 2020 lockdown, compared with the same period the previous year (Department for Education, 2021). 5 There is also indications that domestic homicides have increased during the early lockdown stage of the pandemic (Ingala Smith, 2020). 5 Criminal justice processes have slowed down (or, in some cases, have stopped) in the wake of the pandemic, which has extended the length of legal processes for victims’ families. In some cases, processes and procedures have transformed entirely (e.g. shifts to ‘remote justice’, limits to trial by jury, etc.) and this has led to concerns about an increased risk of miscarriages of justice. These issues are difficult for families and other justice campaigners to raise when the current policy agenda is focused only on Covid-19 (Foot & Robbins, 2020). 2020 was also a momentous year in relation to civil rights protests and, in particular, the Black Lives Matter movement. The killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, United States precipitated the largest social protests in American history, and similar protests followed around the world during the Spring and Summer of 2020. The protests demanded that significant change be made to policing and community relations, and specific proposals were put forward including the re-assignment of funding and other responsibilities away from the police to other community practitioners, increased police training on the use of force, and the development of community policing strategies. State responses to the protests have been mixed, but

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the protests have enabled discussions to take place around the world about prosecution strategies for police violence, new initiatives on police use of force and the qualified immunity doctrine for police. The BLM protests also raised awareness about broader racial injustices that extend into, and go beyond, the criminal justice system. Of course, these protests form part of a long history of civil rights protests which, as 7 Chapter 8 highlighted, have taken their toll on both the protesters and their families. However, the continued use of anti-Black policing, including the use of targeted violence, has taken a much greater toll on its victims and their families, and the calls for change need to be part of any dialogue about the future of Family Criminology and what its purpose should be. 9.2.2  The Future of Family Criminology

Theory and Research

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This book has highlighted many of the specific challenges involved in researching crime and families, such as evaluating family intervention programmes, researching children and young people about painful and sensitive issues, engaging in research that safeguards family members, measuring family violence, developing typological frameworks, negotiating access to specific populations and ensuring that methods align with theoretical priorities. In the Introduction to this book, I wrote that families seldom feature within criminal justice frameworks in any meaningful way. Whether within the criminal justice system or within criminological scholarship, families are rarely considered beyond their role as ‘tools for crime prevention’, or as ‘collateral damage’. If we are to take Family Criminology seriously, then our research parameters need to extend sufficiently to allow us to conceptualise families as the complex and complicated group of people that they are. As this book has highlighted, there are many different ways in which we can conceptualise families, and it may be that different conceptualisations are needed for different contexts. But in order to do this, we need to know much more about families than how they are ‘impacted’ by something or how they can ‘prevent’ something. Our conceptualisations must leave room for agency within families, as both a group of individuals and as an individual group, and we must shift our gaze from what is in the interests of the state to what is in the interests of families. This includes knowing much more about the extent of the problems of which we speak. For example, how many family members experience the pains of having a loved one in prison? How many parents face violence and abuse from their chil-

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dren? How many families are currently challenging miscarriages of justice? We just don’t know.

Responses and Strategies Current responses to the needs of families whose lives intersect with crime are inconsistent. As this book has documented, the past thirty years have seen some real shifts in institutional responses to families’ needs: for example, the introduction of family impact statements, the professionalisation of family liaison officers, the development of tailored therapeutic responses to address the specific needs of families, policy initiatives to allow incarcerated mothers to spend time with her children, violence prevention strategies in schools and in the media, and the development of family intervention programmes for work in different settings. However, there have also been changes that have not served families well: for example, parental responsibilisation policies and laws that are coercive, stigmatising and leave parents feeing like they are ‘on trial’; prison practices that leave families with difficult, stressful and expensive journeys and which require visits to take place in impersonal spaces which prevent the maintenance of intimacy. There are also policy absences, such as the lack of support for families left behind following a family member’s engagement with a witness protection programme. A further concern is the cultural insensitivity of many of these measures. Any intervention or strategy needs to reflect the distinct experiences of family members, and the ways that their families are configured. They should also challenge (rather than reinforce) stereotypes about what families should be, whether that is in terms of how family members should grieve, what ‘good motherhood’ should look like, and how growing up with violence should shape adult behaviours. We also need to avoid making assumptions about whether certain experiences are not as ‘bad’ for some family members than for others. Part of this involves questioning what we consider to be the ‘nature’ of family life, including the gendered, racialised and classed assumptions upon which this is based. It also involves challenging assumptions about crime, including— again—gendered, racialised and classed assumptions about what kind of person is a victim, and what kind of person perpetrates crime. In turn, we need to challenge our assumptions about how families and crime connect, relate, interact and influence one another. It is evident that, in all kinds of criminal contexts, families already feel judged, blamed and shamed for their situation. We do not need to exacerbate this with our own responses and strategies.

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The challenges outlined here go beyond the common policy and institutional attempts to protect and prevent, and call for a broader project of social transformation. Not only of wider structural relations—of sexism and misogyny, of racism, classism, ableism, and ageism/generationism—but of the institutions which currently support them. That is, the criminal justice system, and the family. As this book has highlighted, families have played an important role in the delivery of justice—not only in the service of the criminal justice system, but also in terms of broader social justice. It is time for criminal justice systems around the world to respond as positively in their delivery of support for families. 9.3  Working at the Intersections of Families and Crime

Family criminology is not only an intellectual endeavour, and its value also lies in the work that practitioners do in supporting families whose lives are harmed by crime and criminal justice processes. In this section, I interview four practitioners who work in three distinct fields about the work that they do, the value that they add and the lessons they have learned.

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9.3.1  Working with Families of Those Incarcerated

Clementine Manning is a Community Outreach Worker at Sussex Prisoners’ Families in Brighton, UK. Her work involves supporting the families of those who are in prison (. Image 9.1). 1. Can you tell me about your professional background and what led you into this role? I have always had an interest in the criminal justice system and after studying Politics at university my first job was at a Children’s Centre as a Community Outreach Worker. It was here that I realised how much I enjoyed working with children and their families. After this I went on to be a Youth Worker and then a Project Coordinator. The project I ran had received funding to provide support for families, and one of the organisations the project worked with was Sussex Prisoners Families. As the project was coming to an end I saw my current role being advertised and realised it would combine my interests in the criminal justice system and working with children and their families.

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2. How would you describe this role, in terms of the day-to-day tasks and its overall aims? The role varies day-to-day, week to week. A large part of our role is to support families, who may come to us at any stage during their journey in the criminal justice system. We often support families whose loved ones have just gone to prison as they can be left confused and not knowing how to contact their loved one or whether they are ok. We also advocate with prisons on the behalf of families as prisons are usually happier to speak to organisations than with individual family members. The support we offer depends on what each family’s needs are at the time. Offering support and training to professionals who are already supporting families is also part of the role, as is attending networking meetings. Sometimes it can be beneficial for a family to maintain a relationship with one supporting person rather than having many professionals in their life. For example, schools are often already providing pastoral support to students and it may be better for this support to be maintained with additional resources, information and support being given to the professional who already has regular contact with the student. Throughout the month we run activities for families such as bowling, support groups, and an online family forum. An important element of the role involves making links in the community, networking and reaching out to schools, youth groups and other charities. We also contact prisons, courts, police, and any other services involved in the criminal justice system. 3. What is the most challenging aspect of your role? Getting the families to see that they themselves need support through the process. Often families are focused on their loved one’s wellbeing rather

. Image 9.1  Clementine Manning

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than themselves. The person in prison will have an Offender Supervisor as well as access to other support from the Chaplaincy and healthcare and education teams (admittedly it is not always easy to get this support, but it is there). Families on the outside do have access to GPs, school staff and other community workers, but it is about getting families to know the support is there. Often families don’t want to tell others about their situation and this can lead to feelings of isolation. Supporting individuals to feel confident to attend the support groups can help overcome this isolation. Sometimes there is an element of denial on the side of the family, particularly for the families of those who engaged in sex offences. This can be challenging as the support you give can vary depending on where the family is on their personal journey. 4. What qualifications, experiences and personal qualities are needed to do well in this role? There are no specific qualifications you need for this role although any qualifications that are linked to community work, working with families or children, or around the criminal justice system will help. You need to be able to listen well, and be empathetic and non-judgemental. It is important to be aware of trauma-informed approaches and the support you can offer. Families can suffer trauma at various stages through the criminal justice system, from arrest all the way the way through to probation. You need to be a good communicator, both with families and with other professionals. It takes time to build relationships, especially with children and young people, and being aware of activities to help gain trust can be useful. Often families have encountered various professionals through their journey in the criminal justice system and may be cautious of what support you can give. 5. What have you learned about families and crime in your role? Families have almost always gone through trauma and sometimes more than one type. From the moment of arrest, a family’s emotions and strength is tested time and time again. Families are usually innocent, but they often complete their own hidden sentence. Fortunately, there are organisations which support them through the process. Overall, the criminal justice system does not take families into consideration. You’ll find government research documents, some judges, certain governors or probation teams that are aware of the importance of maintaining family links but unfortunately the system is not set up to implement this. Offenders who maintain a connection to their family, even if it is just one person, are less likely to reoffend. Even with this knowledge a system has not been created that place the families in the centre.

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9.3.2  Working with Domestic and Family Violence

Jaclyn Messerges and Libby Sanders are Clinical Services Managers at the Northeast DuPage Family & Youth Services (NEDFYS) in Addison, Illinois, United States. They both work on a range of projects that focus on reducing violence in the home, including the pioneering Step Up Program which aims to reduce adolescent family violence (. Images 9.2 and 9.3).

Can you tell me about your professional backgrounds and what led you into this role? . Image 9.2  Jaclyn Messerges

Jaclyn: I began working with adolescents after college in a range of settings, including coaching, working with autistic adolescents and working with those with special needs and learning disabilities. I loved working with this age range, but wanted to do something more. I obtained my Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and then became a Licensed Clinical Professional Counsellor. I have now been with NEDFYS for 12 years. When I began working with our domestic violence programme, I started to focus on family violence and on helping families to learn, grow, and repair. Libby: During my Master’s programme in marriage and family therapy/ counselling, I was very interested in working with children and adolescents within their family system and the dynamics that contribute to developmental problems. I completed my internship and was introduced to a family therapy intervention for adolescents who have been charged with domestic battery against a parent and/or siblings. I became very aware of the children and adolescents that need support before they end up in

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. Image 9.3  Libby Sanders

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mental health crisis or in the juvenile justice system, and I wanted to be a part of expanding treatment options for families dealing with domestic violence. How would you describe this role, in terms of the day-to-day tasks and its overall aims? Jaclyn: My current role is part administrative and part direct service to clients. My administrative role includes supervision, clinical management staff meetings, clinical documentation for intake and assessment, training development and programme development and coordination. My direct service role includes facilitating our domestic violence group, a group for youth who have a history of trauma (including family violence), a community service/skills group, and a group for adolescents who have been incarcerated in a youth prison. I develop and create material for lessons for these groups and co-ordinate all cross-agency communication with partners of these groups, including law enforcement, juvenile probation, and clinical administration at the youth prison facility. Working with family violence clients involves more than just weekly group sessions. Some families move in and out of crisis where the violence is still happening in the home and they need additional support outside of the group. We incorporate weekly phone calls to check-in with parents to see how things are going and, if it has been a challenging week, we provide individual sessions to help get them on track and eliminate the physical violence so we can address all of the other issues, like communication, ­resolving conflict, respecting boundaries, and building trust back into re-

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lationships. This role aims to provide clinical treatment, skills, and guidance to youth and families to improve their well-being, relationships, and communication with each other. Libby: I do a mixture of overseeing the quality of the clinical services our agency provides to the community and maximizing our reach further into the community. I provide supervision and support to clinicians and interns and I also carry my own clinical load of cases, which is a mixture of individual, family/couple, and group therapy. The clientele I work the most with are adolescents that are either dealing with the effects of trauma and mental health concerns, or that have found themselves in the juvenile justice system. I also reach out and establish relationships with community partners (i.e. schools, libraries, police departments, etc.) to find as many ways as possible to collaborate and extend our counselling and psycho-educational services. Day-to-day, I will be in meetings with our agency leadership, meetings with potential partners, supervising clinicians, and seeing clients. What is the most challenging aspect of this role? Jaclyn: There can be a lot of resistance from both young people and parents to engage and have a positive outlook that the treatment can work. It can take time to build the relationships within a group setting, rather than one-on-one. Since our family violence program is a group therapy program, it can sometimes be difficult to maintain a positive group dynamic. Even though the clients are all there for the same the reason (violence towards parents), the families have different insights and opinions and sometimes it can be more difficult to get a parent/guardian to see that they also need to make changes, rather than just the young person changing. Libby: Expanding access and finding lasting and sustainable funding to provide services to the community. Our agency is non-profit and low/no cost to our clientele, yet the services we provide can be of such value to not only the clientele, but to the community as a whole. Our clientele is mostly low income, and their access to good, quality care is low. When civil unrest and community issues arise, as they have in recent months, our agency has an opportunity to show how the services we provide can be to the betterment of everyone—not just the people receiving them. We work to make people healthier, which can help them be better neighbours, citizens, friends, and family members.

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What qualifications, experiences and personal qualities are needed to do well in this role? Jaclyn: Having relevant experience of working with young people involved in the justice system, being able to quickly build rapport with the adolescent population, and being a good listener are all things that can be helpful in this role. You also need to have knowledge of youth and adolescent development. You have to be flexible, patient and a good communicator when working with this population. You also have to be comfortable working with parents and challenging them about the changes they also need to make to improve family relationships. Libby: Being able to work with the community means that one has to be open to working with anyone and not be afraid of taking on difficult cases, as there is so much to learn from these. In addition to the qualities that all therapists should have—self-awareness, empathy, active listening, caring, non-judgmental etc.—one needs to have a passion for doing work that impacts all levels, from the individual to the larger system. Most people who find their way into the helping profession have personal experiences that drive them forward. In my case, I use these past and current experiences to be better at helping others. What have you learned about families and crime in your role? Jaclyn: Well where do I start! In families who have domestic violence in their home, there is a lot more than meets the eye. Typically, there is much more going on with the young person as to why they act out physically towards their parents or caregivers. We have found that almost all young people we have assessed that were referred to our family violence group programme have some sort of history of trauma. And not only are we seeing trauma in the young people, we also are seeing it in their parent(s). Libby: Too much attention is on finding the right person to label as the ‘victim’ and the ‘perpetrator’, and not enough attention is given to simply helping the family system function better so all members are supported and cared for. I work with adolescents that can easily be seen as ‘perpetrators’ and their parents as ‘victims’, but this is not useful if it does not challenge the entire family system to come together for change. The Step Up Program, and other interventions that I have utilised, highlight how much children and adolescents need to have a solid support system to enable change to happen. This is hard to discuss when personal safety is a priority, but when kids are being told to change their ways, and then treatment puts this solely in their laps, I see the stress and, eventu-

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ally, their giving up, as they struggle to do this without solid family support. But we also have to pay attention to the systems in which our families live, in order to manage the effect that these systems have on how our families are functioning.

9.3.3  Working as a Police Family Liaison Officer

Fiona Wright is a retired police detective who served with the London Metropolitan police for 23 years (1972–2005). During that time, she often performed the role of the police Family Liaison Officer (FLO) (. Image 9.4).

1. Can you tell me about your professional background and what led you into this role? When I joined the police in 1972 it was a very different organisation and ‘Women Police’ were a separate department, like the Dog Section or Mounted Branch. In 1974 equality of pay for men and women officers was implemented and the Women Police department was disbanded. This was at about the same time as I joined the CID. Female detectives were a rarity then, so anything that was considered to require a ‘gentle touch’ was assigned to the female. This included delivering bad news (colloquially know as “death messages”). I quickly learned to do my best to give the news with empathy and found myself frequently in this role and sub. Image 9.4  Fiona Wright

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sequently updating families of any developments. However, the role of Family Liaison Officer (FLO) was not formalised until after the Macpherson Inquiry into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence. I spent most of my career as a detective, retiring in 2005, and was usually given the role of FLO when involved in a murder or serious crime investigation. 2. How would you describe this role, in terms of the day-to-day tasks and its overall aims? Stephen Lawrence’s murder is known for being a watershed moment. Before that, the families of victims were considered a bit of a nuisance and were excluded from the day to day investigation. It has been recognised that the family may have important information concerning the crime so the first priority of an FLO is as an investigator. Gaining the confidence of family members so that they will trust you with any information which may progress the investigation is vital. A member of the family may have that information, but not realise it. Keeping the family informed of any progress the investigation is making is important but can sometimes be difficult. Confidentiality during the investigation can be compromised by a member of the family talking to the press, or using social media to discuss the case. Emphasising to families not to share details concerning the investigation, especially at the early stages, is very important. In addition, one should be able to point the family in the right direction for help for themselves. The FLO should also support the family in any court proceedings. 3. What is the most challenging aspect of this role? The role of FLO is always challenging because every case and every family is different. It is impossible to say what the most challenging aspect is as this will be very different in each case. Sudden and violent death has such a shocking impact that it will often cause a rift in the family as different members deal with their grief in different ways, so dealing with warring relatives needs careful handling. Reports in the press are often incorrect and consoling families who have read inaccuracies is part of the role. I would say that one of the most challenging aspects is making sure not to become too involved with the family and then neglect one’s role as an investigator. There can sometimes be a conflict between what the family perceive the investigation needs to do, and the actual progress of the investigation. The exit at the conclusion of the case, usually after the trial, is always a difficult time. Some families become dependent upon their FLO and it can be hard to leave them, but the FLO is always a reminder

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of the crime so contact should be ended at the appropriate time. Another difficulty is ensuring not to ‘take the investigation home’ at the end of the working day as the role of FLO carries with it a lot of emotional stress. 4. What qualifications, experiences and personal qualities are needed to do well in this role? There are no formal qualifications but FLOs need to attend a training course. A broad life experience always helps, together with a good knowledge of the availability of support for the family from government schemes, for example the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme, and any local or national charities. Obviously a good knowledge of the court procedure is essential. Personal qualities needed are those which most police officers should possess: the ability to remain calm in any circumstances and to listen carefully and remember accurately anything heard or seen. Boundless patience is helpful in dealing with people and their fluctuating emotions. One should also be able to cope with the graphic details of violent crime because one has to prepare the family for these details coming out in any court case. Most important is being a good communicator on all levels: families affected by violent crime come from all walks of life and one should be able to talk equally to both the Queen and the homeless person. 5. What have you learned about families and crime in your role? No family is the same. No violent crime is the same. No family’s needs are the same. All families are bereft by the sudden and violent death of a loved one. This can tear families apart and the break-up of marriages/ partnerships is quite common as each party deals with their grief in their own way. Families will react differently for no obvious reason. Each family member is an individual and has to be treated as such. I have learned that no family will ever recover or ‘move on’—they will just learn to live with the loss.

Useful Websites North East DuPage Family and Youth Services 7 https://www.nedfys.org Sussex Prisoners Families 7 https://www.sussexprisonersfamilies.org.uk

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References

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Anesi, C., & Civillini, M. (2020). Coronavirus has only made the mafia stronger [online]. Available from: 7 https://www.vice.com/en/article/935dgy/mafia-italy-profit-coronavirus. Bateman, T. (2020). The state of youth justice 2020: An overview of trends and developments [online]. National Association for Youth Justice. Available from: 7 https://thenayj.org.uk/ cmsAdmin/uploads/state-of-youth-justice-2020-final-sept-(1).pdf. Braithwaite, J. (1989). Crime, shame and reintegration. Cambridge University Press. Bruce, E. J., & Schultz, C. L. (2001). Nonfinite loss and grief: A psychoeducational approach. Paul H. Brookes Publishing. Department for Education. (2021). Serious incident notifications: Part 1 (April to September) 2020–21 [online]. Available from: 7 https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/ find-statistics/serious-incident-notifications. Foot, M., & Robbins, J. (2020, September 30). Nothing like a pandemic to expose the frailties of our ‘broken’ justice system [online]. Justice Matters: Essays from the pandemic. Legal Action Group. Available from: 7 https://www.thejusticegap.com/justice-matters-its-timewe-talked-about-miscarriages-of-justice/. HM Prison and Probation Service. (2020). Coronavirus (COVID 19) and prison visits [online]. Available from: 7 https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-and-prisons. Ingala Smith, K. (2020). Coronavirus doesn’t cause men’s violence against women. 7 https://kareningalasmith.com/2020/04/15/coronavirus-doesnt-cause-mens-violence-against-women/. Mayer, C. H. (2019). Crime and shame: Reflections and culture-specific insights. In The Bright Side of Shame (pp. 117–129). Cham. ONS. (2020). Coronavirus and crime in England and Wales: August 2020 [online]. Available from: 7 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/coronavirusandcrimeinenglandandwales/august2020. Proctor, K. (2020, July 31). Ban on prison visits in England and Wales breaches children's rights, say lawyers. The Guardian. UK Edition. 7 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jul/31/ban-on-prison-visits-in-england-and-wales-breaches-childrens-rights-saylawyers-coronavirus. Sarang, A., Rhodes, T., Sheon, N., & Page, K. (2010). Policing drug users in Russia: risk, fear and structural violence. Substance Use & Misuse, 45, 813–864. Women’s Aid (2020). A perfect storm: The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on domestic abuse survivors and the services supporting them. Available from: 7 https://www.womensaid.org. uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/A-Perfect-Storm-August-2020-1.pdf.

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Supplementary Information Key Terms – 272 Index – 279

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Key Terms Adultification—a process that involves a child adopting the role and responsibilities of an adult at an earlier age than those of their advantaged peers. Such roles and responsibilities might include caring for younger siblings, emotionally supporting parents (or other adult family members) and providing financial support to the family. It is more likely to happen in disadvantaged contexts, where the parent(s) is either physically or emotionally absent (for example, through imprisonment, alcohol and/or substance misuse, or through physical and/or mental health problems). Age-crime curve—the nature of the relationship between offending and age, which takes a curvilinear form as offending increases in adolescence, peaks in early adulthood, and then falls. The age-crime curve has been explained in terms of life-course experiences, with those experiences that are common in middle-adulthood onwards (such as steady employment and starting a family) facilitating desistance. However, the age-crime curve does not apply to all crimes—notably domestic violence-related crime and organised crime. Corporal punishment—the practice of using physical force against a child with the aim of correcting behaviour. Corporal punishment is premised on the assumption that the pain experienced will act as an aversive stimulus to prevent the child from performing the unwanted behaviour again. While once socially and legally acceptable around the world, corporal punishment is increasingly seen as a problematic method of child discipline, in terms of both its effectiveness and its moral acceptability. Corporal punishment is shaped by cultural norms: the past fifty years has seen a reduction in its use around the world and a reduction in its social acceptability, with some countries having imposed a total ban on its use. Collective trauma—the damaging impact of trauma that occurs at the collective level, and which includes the impact on the social networks, resources, institutions and relationships that form the basis of society. According to Hirschberger (2018), collective trauma transforms into a collective memory which culminates in a process of meaning-making where those affected redefine who they are and their place in the world, ultimately producing a new trans-generational sense of ‘collective self’. Criminal Career—the start, continuation, escalation and (in some cases) cessation of criminal trajectories. Research in this field traditionally examines longitudinal data sets and focuses on criminal trajectories that start

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in adolescence. Moffitt (1993) identified two distinct criminal career pathways: ‘adolescence-limited’ and ‘life course persistent’ trajectories. ‘Adolescence-limited’ trajectories are more common and tend to end in adulthood, and are more situational and transient. ‘Life-course persistent’ trajectories are less common, begin in early childhood and persist into adulthood. They are also more pervasive across settings and are influenced by neurodevelopmental and family risk factors (Moffit, 2006). Criminalisation—the social processes that result in an act becoming prohibited through criminal law and identified as a ‘crime’ (and its instigator as a ‘criminal’) and that are regulated and punished as such. Taking this social approach to understanding crime means recognising how crime is culturally and historically contingent, and how a range of criteria (such as morality, offensiveness, harm and social reaction) shape whether it is determined as a crime. Processes of criminalisation are also determined by their structural context and dimensions of power, such as gender, age, race and social class, shapes which individuals and groups are disciplined in this way. Desistance—the process of cessation of offending behaviour (‘going straight’). Desistance research is often claimed to represent a challenge to mainstream criminology by asking not what causes offending? but how and why do people stop from offending? While the role of family bonds has been important in the development of desistance scholarship, it is increasingly recognised that desistance is shaped as much by broader cultural and structural contexts as by individual motivations and specific rehabilitation strategies. Discourse—this term is used in a number of ways, but broadly speaking it refers to a framework for understanding particular aspects of social life. For example, a medical discourse will provide the framework (including the vocabulary and concepts) for understanding disability as an individual and biological deficiency within a person, perhaps because a part of the body ‘doesn’t work properly’. In contrast, a political discourse will provide the framework for understanding disability as a social and political category that is subject to ablest conceptualisations of normalcy, which includes the organisation of the physical and social world in ways that ensure that those with differences are disadvantaged. Gatekeeper—individuals whose role is to provide or authorise researcher access to potential research participants and/or research sites. The gatekeeper may be someone in a position of authority within the research site (e.g. a manager) or it maybe someone with whom the researcher already has contact with (e.g. through an existing friendship). While it is an essential role within the research process, caution must be taken as the gatekeeper

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has control over who the researcher can access, and they may have their own agenda which may not align with the researcher’s agenda. Globalisation—this term is widely contested, but broadly refers to the long process of states, societies and communities around the world becoming increasingly interconnected (Franko, 2019). While it impacts on economic, political and technological landscapes, globalisation also shapes ­cultural life, including our sense of ‘collective self’. Labelling theory—a sociological theory, which seeks to explain the social processes by which individuals or groups come to be categorised ­ (or  ­labelled) by others, usually by those in more powerful positions. Those labelled will then behave in ways expected of them, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy. The theory is associated with the work of Howard Becker, who claimed that there is nothing inherently deviant about ‘deviance’, and that deviance is the product of social reactions that label it as such. Liberalism and authoritarianism—political philosophies that offer a ­vision about a particular kind of society. Liberalism values the principles of freedom of the individual, equality of all before the law, and government by consent. In contrast, authoritarianism values the principles of strong (and often autocratic) central government, strict social order and limits on individual freedoms. Authoritarianism is a concept also used in personality theory (in terms of people having ‘authoritarian personalities’) and in ­typologies of parenting styles (in terms of parents engaging in an ‘authoritarian parenting style’). Life-course perspective—an approach to understanding social life that prioritises the examination of change over time in the context of social processes and their meaning. A life-course perspective does not focus only on changes at the individual level (whether that is biological or psychological changes), but also on changes at the socio-structural, historical and cultural levels. This approach also explores the individual and social meanings ascribed to these changes. The focus may be on processes of change for individual family members, for family units or for families across generations. Narrative victimology—developed out of ‘narrative criminology’ (Presser, 2009), it refers to a methodological approach for understanding the impact of crime through victims’ narratives. This approach captures the complexity of crime victimisation within victims’ storied experiences. Rather than focusing on the veracity of their narrative, the analysis focuses on ‘how people understand their own experience and actions in relation to their identity and the wider collectives to which they belong’ (Pemberton et al., 2019: 392). The strength of narrative victimology is in its capacity to

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offer insights into how people experience wrongdoing and how this relates to subsequent motivations, actions and identities. Nature-nurture debate—the question about what is the essence of personhood has long been deliberated in the (social) sciences via ‘the ­ ­nature-nurture debate’. That is, are we the product of nature (e.g. through genetic and physiological processes) or are we the product of nurture (e.g. through social learning and cultural processes)? Of course, any answer to this question must recognise the complex interaction between nature and nurture. However, everyday discourses around crime and criminal behaviour often resort to one or the other position on the spectrum, usually to justify particular crime prevention policies that are premised on the extent of the belief in whether those who offend can change. Newsworthiness—news is constructed and the decision-making about what to produce as ‘news’ tends to be a subjective and selective process that usually takes place from a Westernised, White, male, middle-class and heteronormative viewpoint. Characteristics that deem a story to be newsworthy—that is, worthy of becoming ‘news’—include drama, unusualness, alignment with existing news themes and its physical and cultural proximity to the audience. In relation to crime, there is a hierarchy whereby stories that involve extreme violence (particularly homicide), and particularly those perpetrated by a stranger, are more newsworthy, as are stories that ­involve victims who are female, White and particularly young or elderly. Parentcraft—a genre of skills and knowledge (or texts) that aims to facilitate the practice of child-rearing, particularly in the early years. ­ Parentcraft became prominent during the middle of the twentieth century with the emergence of Dr. Spock's books that were written for new mothers to inform them of the best way to care for their newborns. Since then, parentcraft has expanded into self-help books, magazines, online forums, parenting classes and ‘transformative’ television shows. Parentcraft draws on ideas derived from developmental psychology and ‘parenting expertise’ that some have argued has served to cultivate parental dependency on ­experts and create uncertainty in their own parenting abilities. Problematisation/Normalisation—Problematisation refers to the process whereby a previously unnoticed set of circumstances or behaviours is turned into a specific object of thought that requires a response—that is, it is turned into a ‘problem’. Foucault (1985) conceptualised problematisation as a social and political process that requires critical attention to be paid to not only what gets identified as a ‘problem’ but also to how it is constructed as a problem, as this will shape the possible solutions that can be proposed. In contrast, normalisation refers to how a set of circumstances or

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Key Terms

­ ehaviours which could (and maybe should) be seen as a problem but are b not—indeed, they are downplayed and framed as something unworthy of attention: they are normalised. Othering—a sociological concept that is rooted in feminist theory (e.g. de Beauvoir, 1949), post-colonial theory (e.g. Said, 1978) and Lacanian ­psychoanalysis. Othering refers to practices of social differentiation, as well as identity development processes, whereby the powerful define the world and position themselves as central within it. Thus, the world and its ­people are differentiated in terms of the norm (‘us’) and the other (‘them’), who are constructed as pathological and morally and/or intellectually inferior. Othering is a multidimensional concept where sexism, racism, ableism and other dimensions of power intersect to degrade and dehumanise those who are least powerful, and to legitimise and maintain the position of the ­powerful. Reflexivity—the critical examination of research processes, from ­research design, data collection and analysis, to write-up and dissemination. Reflexivity involves both reflection and analysis of how one’s own role shapes the research process and its outcomes. Reflexivity challenges ­assumptions about the possibility of doing ‘objective’ research and of ­being a ‘neutral’ researcher. As such, it is a concept that is central to feminist ­research. Restorative justice—an approach to delivering justice that aims to repair the harms caused by the offence and to make the perpetrator accountable. It is underpinned by the assumption that crime is committed against individuals and communities, and that therefore they should be central to reparation processes (rather than the state assuming centrality, as is the case with more traditional methods of delivering justice). Restorative justice tends to be more flexible and informal than traditional methods of criminal justice, and while it can be used in any situation where there is conflict, it is seen as particularly appropriate for situations involving young people. Secondary victimisation—an analytic concept derived from victimology that attends to the harms caused not to those directly victimised by crime (i.e. primary victims) but to those who are harmed indirectly by the crime and by subsequent criminal justice processes. It is a contested concept, but ‘secondary victimhood’ status has been claimed by witnesses, victims’ families and friends and criminalised people’s families and friends. Such a status enables a response of compassion, compensation and exoneration which might otherwise be unforthcoming. Social justice—fairness in the distribution of resources, opportunities, freedoms, responsibilities and rewards. As Charmaz explains, a concern

Key Terms

277

with social justice means attending to ‘…inequalities and inequality, barriers and access, poverty and privilege, individual rights and the ­collective good, and their implications for suffering’ (2011: 291). An important question for criminologists concerns the extent to which the criminal justice ­system should account for social injustice, and whether societies with significant social injustice challenge the legitimacy of criminal justice. Social learning theory—a broad psychological theory that attempts to explain learning processes through ‘reciprocal interaction between cognitive, behavioural and environmental influences’ (Bandura, 1978: 344). ­Social learning theory emphasises overt and observable behaviour and its reinforcement, though later theoretical developments identified the important role of cognition. Social learning theory has found particular traction in explaining trajectories into youth offending. For example, Sutherland’s ‘differential association theory’ emphasised how particularly favourable motives, attitudes and rationalisations about crime, learned from one’s close group (e.g. family, peer group), may propel someone towards offending. Social problem—a social problem is a category of behaviour that causes harms to a number of people and is recognised as such by governments, their associated institutions (e.g. media, academia) and their citizens. While many behaviours cause many harms, a social problem is one that has been defined as being worthy of attention and deserving of a response. Often the same behaviour may become a social problem over time through processes of problematisation—an example being domestic abuse, which has always existed but only became the subject of attention during the 1970s. Soft controls/Hard controls—terms used in Criminology to denote the kinds of power used to control citizens. Soft control refers to a paternalistic approach that relies on self-regulation to ensure compliance, and utilises relationships and policies that encourage practices of responsibility and self-improvement (practices that are sometimes referred to as governmentality). Hard control refers to an authoritarian approach that utilises command, coercion and punishment to ensure compliance. Vigilantism—An organised attempt by private citizens to control crime by harassing, assaulting or harming another individual who is seen to have behaved deviantly/criminally and to have not been subjected to an adequate response by the criminal justice system. Welfare and justice approaches—As with adult criminal justice systems, youth justice systems tend to operate according to principles of deterrence, retribution and rehabilitation, with different jurisdictions emphasising some of these components more than others. Jurisdictions that emphasise welfarism tend to emphasise the importance of rehabilitation and, as such,

278

Key Terms

apply a relatively high age of criminal responsibility, use more informal judicial procedures and emphasise treatment through educational and social care services. Other jurisdictions emphasise a justice approach, and tend to apply a relatively low age of criminal responsibility, with emphasis on accountability, formal judicial procedures and punishment. References Bandura, A. (1978). The self system in reciprocal determinism. American Psychologist, 33(4), 344–358. Bengtson, V. L., & Allen, K. R. (2009). The life course perspective applied to families over time. In Sourcebook of family theories and methods (pp. 469–504). Springer. Charmaz, K. (2011). Grounded theory methods in social justice research (pp. 359–380). Sage. de Beauvoir, S. (1949). The second sex. Gallimard. Foucault, M. (1985). Discourse and truth: The problematization of Parrhesia. Northwestern University Press. Franko, K. (2019). Globalization and crime (3rd ed.) Sage. Hirschberger, G. (2018). Collective trauma and the social construction of meaning. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1441. Moffitt, T. E. (1993). Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: A developmental taxonomy. Psychological Review, 100(4), 674–701. Moffitt, T. E. (2006). Life-course-persistent versus adolescence-limited antisocial behavior. In D. Cicchetti & D. J. Cohen (Eds.), Developmental psychopathology: Risk, disorder, and adaptation (pp. 570–598). Wiley. Pemberton, A., Mulder, E., & Aarten, P. G. (2019). Stories of injustice: Towards a narrative victimology. European Journal of Criminology, 16(4), 391–412. Presser, L. (2009). The narratives of offenders. Theoretical Criminology, 13(2), 177–200. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.

279

B–D

Index A Adolescence  162, 272, 273 Adoptive families  167 Adultification  79, 81, 84, 116, 272 Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)  129 Age-crime curve  78, 109, 178, 272 Amoral familism  99, 100 Arts-based methods  11, 80 Attachment  6, 19, 34, 35, 38, 40, 41, 49, 80, 81, 87, 88, 154, 189, 198, 203, 245 Authoritarianism  45, 274

B Bandura, Albert  33, 277 Baumrind, Diana  34, 50 Becker, Howard  240, 274 Behavioural genetics  36 Black Lives Matter  26, 231, 240, 257 Bordieu, Pierre  220, 221 Bowlby, John  33, 34, 40, 41 Braithwaite, John  47, 48, 251 British Journal of Criminology (BJC)  6, 7

C Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development  7, 11, 37, 82 Campaign groups  26, 238–240, 242 Catharsis  192, 199, 223 Child/adolescent-to-parent violence  135, 136, 144, 148, 167 Child maltreatment  38, 39, 142, 146 child abuse  47, 134–136, 146, 148, 200 child neglect  140 child sexual abuse (CSA)  25, 192–194, 200, 203 Children’s rights  89, 168 Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme (CSODS)  235 Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS)  11, 149 Conflict Tactics Scale 2 (CTS-2)  11

Coronavirus. See Covid-19 Corporal punishment  127, 132, 168, 169, 272 Cosa Nostra  12, 101–104, 107, 109, 115 Covid-19  14, 256, 257 Criminal career  37, 109, 272 Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme  211, 269 Criminalisation  3, 4, 8, 15, 21, 42, 46, 81, 122, 140, 143, 237, 245, 273 Culturally-adapted programmes  52 Cultural representation  104, 172 Cycle of deprivation theory  97

D Defence mechanisms  18, 80 Desistance  7, 9, 35, 37, 64, 73, 77–80, 109, 221, 272, 273 Developmentalism  18 Disability  74, 126, 130, 273 Discourse  30, 31, 33, 39, 40, 44, 45, 56, 68, 134, 139, 154, 203, 245, 251, 273, 275 DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)  72 Domestic abuse  9, 13, 15, 16, 21, 22, 39, 47, 85, 112, 127, 131, 133–137, 139, 141, 142, 148, 166, 167, 174, 177, 191, 205, 230, 236–238, 244, 277 Domestic homicide  13, 136, 160, 175, 236, 252, 257 adolescent intimate partner homicide  178 intimate partner homicide (IPH)  160, 161, 171, 177 parental intimate partner homicide (IPH)  194, 195 Domestic Homicide Review (DHR)  13, 159, 174, 175 Domestic violence. See Domestic abuse Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (DVDS)  142, 235, 236 Drugs. See Substance misuse Duluth Model  144

280

Index

E Ecological systems theory  97, 137, 139 Ecomaps  10, 13 Elder abuse  134–136, 167 Eldercide  160, 167 Emotional labour  22, 48, 67, 68, 82, 138, 255 Ethics  15 Ethnography  12 autoethnography  12 netnography  12 visual ethnography  12 Evolutionary theory  173

F Familicide  169, 170, 252 Family annihilation. See Familicide ‘Family (circles of crime)’  8 Family group conferences (FGCs)  24, 30, 42, 46–48 Family Impact Statement (FIS)  204, 208– 210, 234, 259 Family Intervention work Functional Family Therapy (FFT)  53, 54 holistic family therapy  204, 205 Keeping Foster and Kin Parents Supported and Trained (KEEP)  55 MST for Family Integrated Transitions (MST-FIT)  55 Multi-Systemic Therapy (MST)  53, 54 Restorative Retelling  207 survivor family therapy  204, 206, 207 Treatment Foster Care Oregon for Adolescents (TFCO-A)  53, 55, 56 Family Liaison Officers (FLOs)  204, 208, 209, 259, 267, 268 Family systems theories  6, 17, 19–21, 24, 50, 53, 54, 134, 203 Family therapy. See Family Intervention work Farrington, David  7, 11, 37–39, 82, 83, 97 Female genital mutilation (FGM)  124, 160 Femicide  126, 161, 243, 244 Feminism  17, 21–23, 106 Black feminism  23 digital feminism  133

FGM. See Female genital mutilation (FGM) Filicide  13, 159, 163, 165, 166 Firearms  158, 169, 170, 172, 175, 177, 178, 195 Floyd, George  241, 257 Forced marriage  124, 130, 142, 146 Foster care  85 Foucault, Michel  30, 31, 122, 275 Freud, Sigmund  18

G Gangs  11, 80 Garland, David  4 Gatekeeper  12, 16, 164, 273 Gender-based violence (GBV)  9, 122–130, 132–134, 137, 139, 146, 147, 155, 167, 176, 243, 251, 252 Genealogy  73 Genes  35, 36, 172 Genocide  5, 113, 157, 192 Genograms  10, 13, 14 Giddens, Anthony  114, 154, 155 Globalisation  104, 148, 154, 274 Godfather, The  104 Governmentality  30, 31, 68, 277 Grief   19, 69, 82, 86, 88, 189, 192, 199, 207, 223, 225, 242, 244, 245, 268, 269 Stages of Grief Model  192

H Hacked Off  223, 226 Hard controls  133, 140, 277 Heteronormativity  103, 107, 122, 123, 155, 199, 208, 240 High-profile cases  222, 224, 243 Hillsborough Families Support Group  239 Homicide  2, 13, 17, 21, 25, 65, 156–165, 167–169, 171, 175, 177, 178, 186, 188– 191, 195–198, 202, 204, 206–208, 210, 212, 222, 224, 226, 238, 242, 275 Homicide Index (HI)  157 ‘Honour’  103, 129 -based killing  108, 174 -based violence  123, 130, 173, 174

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Index

193, 195–199, 202, 205, 206, 211, 223, 224, 226, 230, 232, 233, 241–243, 250– 252, 255, 269 ambiguous loss  82, 114, 195–197

Human rights  3, 5, 74, 124, 231, 241, 254, 257

I Ideal victims  191, 228 ideal family  228 Identification  18, 22, 37, 72, 76, 100, 133, 178, 190, 209, 229 Incarceration. See Prisons Infanticide  126, 156, 160, 163–166 Insider/outsider  245 Intergenerational transmission  41, 96–98, 110, 187 International Criminal Court (ICC)  113 Intersectionality  17, 21–24 Intimacy  76, 88, 110, 114, 154, 155, 202, 220, 251, 259 Intimate Partner Femicide Timeline  13 Intimate Partner Homicide (IPH)  160, 161, 171, 175, 177 Intimate partner violence (IPV)  7, 38, 124, 127, 134, 136, 137, 144, 175, 178, 202, 205, 206

J Juvenile delinquency. See Youth crime

K Kinship care  75, 85, 168

L Labelling theory  97, 274 Lawrence, Stephen  209, 220, 231, 232, 253, 268 Liberalism  45, 274 Life-course  79, 128, 160, 272 Life History Interviews  11, 79 Lombroso, Cesare  32, 33, 35 Longitudinal research  11, 36, 190 Loss  16, 19, 21, 38, 68, 74, 79, 86, 107, 114, 116, 129, 155, 157, 175, 176, 189, 192,

I–N

M Macpherson Report  209, 232 Malestream  9, 203 Masculinities  79, 103, 122, 123, 147 Maternal activism  26, 220, 238, 242–244 Mediatisation  224 Megan’s Law  234, 235 Memorialisation  207 memorialisation laws  26, 220, 229, 233, 234, 236, 237 Mental health  41, 52, 54, 55, 68, 74, 76, 83, 85, 87, 130, 144, 167, 179, 189, 195, 199, 206, 242, 264, 265, 272 anxiety  18, 64, 69, 82, 84, 85, 130, 189, 191 depression  77, 85, 130, 191, 194, 202, 206 suicide  74, 130, 194 Methodology  10 Methods interviews  11, 12, 36, 80, 170 participant observation  12 questionnaires  37, 146, 201 secondary data analysis  157 Miscarriage of justice  229 Missing persons  72, 195, 196, 208, 224 Mother and baby units (MBUs)  24, 64, 81, 85–88 Mother-blame  68, 69, 194, 251

N Native Americans  4, 187 Nature-nurture debate  33, 275 ’Ndrangheta  101, 102, 107, 110 Neonaticide  160, 162–164 Neurodiversity  145, 167 Newsworthiness  191, 223, 275 Normalisation  132, 171, 275

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Index

O

S

Organised crime  9, 11, 15, 25, 39, 96, 98– 101, 103–106, 108–112, 116, 117, 122, 162, 221, 252, 253, 272 Othering  104, 163, 276

Same-sex relationships  4, 143, 146, 199, 177 Schools  14, 20, 31, 40, 45, 47, 56, 77, 108, 114, 145, 146, 220, 259, 261, 265 Secondary data  13, 158 Secondary victimisation  117, 141, 276 Self-fulfilling prophecy  97, 274 Serious Case Review (SCR)  159, 174 Sexual offences  71, 235 sex offender register  235 Sexual violence  85, 123, 124, 126, 128, 129, 131, 187, 238 Shame  16, 48, 67, 68, 70, 71, 74, 78, 110, 129, 139, 141, 235, 237, 250, 251, 254 family shame  174 ‘web of shame’  70, 71 Shaming. See Shame Siblicide  13, 159, 171–173, 175 Sibling violence  171, 172 Social bond theory  35 Social capital  79, 100, 129, 220, 221, 226, 230, 231, 238, 245 cultural capital  221, 230, 231 economic capital  221, 230, 231 symbolic capital  129, 221 Social class  198, 221, 226, 273 Social justice  3, 4, 26, 43, 230, 243, 260, 277 Social media  115, 133, 147, 196, 226, 240, 268 Social support  130, 192, 199, 201, 202 Soft controls  133, 144, 277 Spoiled identity. See Stigma ‘Square of crime’  8 Step-parents  166 step-fathers  164 step-mothers  164 Stigma, stigmatisation  9, 40, 64, 70, 71, 74, 82, 129, 192, 194, 232, 250, 251, 254 courtesy stigma  64, 70 spoiled identity  64, 65, 225, 250 Strain  71, 77, 84, 193, 204, 210, 252, 254, 256 Structural violence  253, 254 Substance misuse  54, 56, 83–85, 87, 167, 237, 251, 272

P PANTS programme  145 Parental incarceration  82, 85 Parentcraft  68, 275 Parenting  17, 34, 39, 40, 45, 46, 49–52, 54, 56, 64, 65, 67, 68, 88, 97, 108, 205, 256, 275 parenting styles  34, 49, 50, 97, 274 Parenting Orders  43, 45, 46, 64, 66, 67 Parenting programmes  24, 30, 49–52 Parricide  159, 166–169, 252 Participant observation  12, 245 Patriarchy  22, 122, 133, 161 Pets  128 Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)  69, 130, 186, 187, 189, 203, 204, 206 Prisons prison visits  64, 74, 76, 84, 88, 256 resettlement  64, 84 secondary prisonization  75 Problematisation  132, 133, 275, 277 Protective factors. See Risk factors Psychoanalysis  18, 19, 173, 276 Psychoanalytic. See Psychoanalysis Psychopathology  168, 192

R Random controlled trials (RCTs)  52, 146 RCTs. See Random controlled trials (RCTs) Recidivism  47, 54, 74, 76, 79, 87, 251 Reflexivity  16, 276 Responsibilisation  43, 48, 57, 259 Restorative justice  48, 206, 208, 276 Risk assessment  115, 143, 149, 174 Risk factors  31, 37–39, 54, 97, 137, 273 Risk-Needs-Responsivity (RNR)  54

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Index

Surveys  11, 13, 36, 37, 52, 137, 148, 149, 167, 171, 178

T Take Back the Memorial  239, 240 Tender education and arts programme  146 Terrorism  5 Trauma  16, 19, 50, 84, 87, 97, 98, 108, 129, 168, 186–188, 195, 196, 201, 204, 241, 243, 255, 262, 264–266, 272 collective trauma  187, 272 secondary trauma  16, 187, 203, 205, 208 transgenerational trauma  187 trauma-informed policing  88, 89 Trial by media  25, 220, 221, 224–227 Troubled Families  30, 40, 41, 43–45 Typology  134, 137, 178, 179

U Unaccompanied minors  116, 117 United Nations (UN)  85, 114, 117, 124, 126, 174 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women  124, 143 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child  117, 143

T–Y

V Victimisation  9, 13, 25, 85, 108, 110, 122, 126, 139, 146, 161, 162, 167, 172, 186– 188, 191, 193, 196–200, 202, 204–206, 220, 228, 229, 251, 252, 255, 257, 274 re-victimisation  191 Victimology  9, 186, 276 narrative victimology  192, 274 Victim Personal Statements  210 Vigilantism  70, 235, 277

W War  113, 126, 157, 243 Welfarism  277 ‘Whole family approaches’  205, 206 Winnicott, Donald  18, 186 Witness protection programmes (WPPs)  15, 25, 96, 107, 111–117, 253, 259 World Trade Center terrorist atrocities  198

Y Youth crime  2, 9, 24, 30–33, 35, 39–42, 48, 49, 52, 56, 254 Youth justice  9, 24, 30, 42, 43, 47–49, 66, 67, 70, 82, 252, 254, 277 Youth offending. See Youth crime