Not surprisingly, the research demonstrates that incarceration damages parental closeness due to the inability for a parent to participate in their children’s lives. It fractures relationships and familial bonds, weakening communities and society as a whole.
Primary Source — Kristen Turney, 2023
A
2023 study by Kristen Turney examines the impacts of parental incarceration on youth, with a focus on parental closeness — the quality and warmth of the parent-child bond — as a distinct outcome measure. Turney is a sociologist at the University of California, Irvine, whose research on the collateral consequences of mass incarceration for families and children is among the most cited in the field.
What the Research Shows
Finding 01 — Parental Closeness
Incarceration prevents parents from participating in their children’s daily lives — milestones, routines, emotional support — in ways that directly erode the closeness that protective parent-child relationships require.
Finding 02 — Community Bonds
The fracturing of familial bonds extends outward. Weakened family units weaken neighborhoods and communities, compounding the social damage that incarceration produces beyond the individual sentence.
Finding 03 — Social Bonds Theory
Multiple psychological and criminological theories, including social bonds theory, stress the importance of community attachment in reducing criminal behavior. Incarceration actively dismantles the bonds theory identifies as protective.
Finding 04 — Prosecutorial Accountability
Prosecutors who default to incarceration rather than alternative programs and rehabilitation are not only overpopulating prisons — they are destroying the communities they claim to serve.
Theoretical Context — Social Bonds Theory
Social bonds theory, developed by criminologist Travis Hirschi, holds that individuals are less likely to engage in criminal behavior when they have strong bonds to conventional society: attachment to family, commitment to conventional goals, involvement in legitimate activities, and belief in shared norms. Rita names this theory specifically because its implications for incarceration policy are direct. If family attachment is a documented protective factor against criminal behavior, then any policy that severs parent-child bonds is actively undermining the social infrastructure that produces safer communities. The deterrence argument for incarceration collapses under this framework — and the prosecutorial default to prison becomes not just cruel, but counterproductive on its own stated terms.
Rita’s Conclusion
Prosecutors who do not implement alternative court programs and rehabilitation in lieu of sending people to prison are not only overpopulating prisons — they are ultimately destroying the communities they claim to serve.
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Related Coverage — Family Impact and the Collateral Consequences of Incarceration
