Prisoners’ Families, Punishment and Social Justice

• In Event: Prisoners' Families: International Perspectives

Abstract

This paper makes the case for the wide-ranging impact of imprisonment upon the lives of the families of prisoners being fundamentally a question of social justice. Prisoners’ families have a number of rights and entitlements which they are denied by virtue of their kin relationship to a prisoner. As has long been documented, prisoners’ families are drawn into the criminal justice process and subject to a number of harms as a result. In thinking about the meaning of ‘justice’ within criminal justice it is important to consider the very real consequences of punishment which stretch beyond the offender and to consider the ways in which the state’s power to punish is wielded disproportionately against those who experience a range of social disadvantages. As Lacey (2013) has argued we cannot deliver criminal justice without attending to problems of social justice. The paper argues that the families of those who are punished need to be included in this endeavor and draws upon a number of theories of social justice to explore how this might operate.

Author

• Rachel Condry, University of Oxford