New book dissects the situation for the children of imprisoned parents

Children of imprisoned parents risk stigmatization, crime and mental health problems later in life. A new book analyse their situation and offers solutions for the prison systems.

Every year, millions of children around the world lose contact to a parent because of parental imprisonment. Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, Peter Scharff Smith, focus on these children and their rights in his new book "When the Innocent are Punished - The Children of Imprisoned Parents".

The book gathers the latest international research in the field and concludes that we need to reform our modern systems of justice and punishment in order to take the needs, situation and rights of these innocent children into account.

International research show that children of imprisoned parents often experience stigmatization and face an increased risk of negative outcomes later in life involving, for example, crime and mental health problems. It is therefore very important to focus on how society can protect these children, says Peter Scharff Smith:

- It is a paradox that we on the one hand hail the family as a fundamental unit in our societies, and insist on regarding children as an especially valuable and vulnerable group of citizens, but at the same time break up families on an increasing scale through the use of imprisonment. Often without considering alternative measures of punishing, that does not affect the children equally hard.

Solving the problems
Peter Scharff Smith explains that the book not only highlights a number of problems, but also focuses on how society can improve the human rights conditions for these children:

- The book disseminates the results of almost nine years of research at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. The findings are put into an international framework based on research from the U.S., Europe and the rest of the world. The book offers proposals for reform and good practices on how to help children of imprisoned parents.

The book is now available and has already attracted international attention and recognition from leading experts:

- Smith's insightful analysis is based on a truly impressive number of diverse and corroborating sources of data that enable him to provide both a compelling portrait of this critical problem and offer a number of practical yet urgent and humane solutions. A magnificent achievement, writes Craig Haney of the University of California in a review.

“When the Innocent are Punished - The Children of Imprisoned Parents”, was published June 26th and is available online.