Family Incarceration

In order to, gain a better understanding of how experiences during incarceration related to changes within the family relationship, researchers used several independent variables that can be broadly categorized into one of three domains: experiences while incarcerated, family measures, and other control variables.

Experiences while incarcerated. To account for experiences during the course of incarceration, researchers relied on several measures collected while the respondents were incarcerated. First, respondents were asked a series of questions about various programs and treatments they engaged in throughout their incarceration. The measures included whether the individual had completed a parenting skills class (10.6% of the sample reported

In addition, to experiences during incarceration, researchers knew that aspects of family relationships during incarceration were also important and probably linked to dimensions of post-release family relationships. For instance, visitation from family and friends was often related to successful reentry and should have been linked to family dynamics. As a result, researchers relied on 12 items that asked the respondent to report how often he or she had visits from a significant other in the three months leading up to release. The visits included visitation from a spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend, mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, grandparent, child, close friend, or other family member. Respondents chose from four responses (never, once or twice, monthly, and weekly). Researchers summed the number of visits for each respondent. The final scale of visitation has a mean of 3.27, with a standard deviation (SD) of 4.10, and a range of 0 (no visits) to

The interview included a series of questions assessing what barriers, if any, individuals faced in having contact with their family and friends, including prison or jail located too far away for regular visits; visitation rules were hard to comply with; prison or state jail was not a pleasant place to visit; lack of transportation; cost of visiting was too high; did not have access to a phone; either my family members or I had difficulty reading or writing; or some other reason. To capture how the influence of barriers to visitation related to changes in family relationships over time, researchers summed each measure to create an index, which represented the overall number of barriers presented to the individual that reduced or stopped family visitation. This index had a mean of .998, with a SD of 1.12, and a range of 0 (no barriers to visitation reported) to 7. Researchers noted this measure could have ranged to 8, but no respondent reported that all eight dimensions presented barriers to family