Family Dynamics and Social Inequality in an Era of Mass Incarceration

Abstract

Over the last few decades, American society has been fundamentally reshaped by what has come to be called mass incarceration. In response, a large body of academic literature has grown to document the various ways that individuals are impacted by many different forms of contact with the criminal justice system. Such contact typically does not occur in isolation, however, and instead often coincides with other forms of troubles (such as delinquency or substance use) and material or financial hardships. It also has the potential to extend beyond individuals and alter the multifaceted and oft-fragile family dynamics within which system-involved individuals are embedded.On one hand, these correlated complexities make it difficult to causally isolate the impacts of familial system involvement, which Chapter 2 addresses with a novel methodological approach. On the other hand, these family troubles are themselves worthwhile and interesting conceptual aspects worth examining in tandem with system contact, which Chapters 3 and 4 explore. Finally, because contact with the criminal justice system has become so common yet is also highly unequally distributed by race and socio-economic status, these indirect familial disruptions are likely to both reflect and reproduce patterns of social inequities. This dissertation, therefore, explores the intersection of system involvement and family life by using three distinct sources of data and methodological approaches to analyze how the criminal justice contact of one’s family members (both parents and siblings) can come to bear on less-visible outcomes such as parenting strategies and investment and the ways that children think about their future.