By  Kristin Turney , Amy Gong Liu, and Estéfani Marín

Despite reasons to believe that paternal incarceration has heterogeneous consequences for children, little research explores the processes underlying variation in children’s responses to this adverse event. We use data from the Jail and Family Life Study, an in-depth interview study of incarcerated fathers and their family members (including their children), to understand the heterogeneous processes linking paternal incarceration to children’s well-being. Children commonly reported that their father’s incarceration restructured their lives by altering their emotional and instrumental responsibilities. Within each of these domains, though, children expressed considerable variation in their responses, with some children seamlessly stepping into new responsibilities stemming from paternal incarceration and other children, especially older children who had witnessed their fathers’ frequent entanglements with the criminal legal system, consciously stepping away from these responsibilities. These findings illustrate the range of responses that children have to paternal incarceration, shedding light on processes that have not been observed in survey research

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 10(1):132–150. 2024, 29p.

By The Agenda for Youth Justice

This report is about girls and young women aged 17 to 25 years old in contact with the criminal justice system. In particular, it highlights the experiences of Black, Asian and minoritised young women, and young women with experience of the care system as both groups are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. 1 For a list of organisations and individuals Agenda and the Alliance for Youth Justice have engaged with over the course of the Young Women’s Justice Project, see Appendix 1. This is the final report of the Young Women’s Justice Project, run by Agenda and the Alliance for Youth Justice since January 2020. Based on new research, it builds on the work of the Young Women’s Justice Project literature review and two briefing papers produced during the project, with a focus on young women’s experiences of the transition from the youth to adult justice system, and young women in the criminal justice system’s experiences of violence, abuse and exploitation. 

London: Alliance for Youth Justice.2022. 68p.