The Justice System and the Family: Police, Courts, and Incarceration

Around the globe, millions of individuals are entangled in justice systems daily. For individual offenders, contact often begins with the police, frequently leading to court involvement, and for offenders found guilty, to correctional supervision or incarceration. But how do these encounters affect the family? How do police and justice entanglements result in tremendous strains upon families economically and socially? Do they endanger family relationships?

To better comprehend how involvement at any level of the justice system affects families, this multidisciplinary edited collection focuses on the justice system and the family. Chapters include topics such as how court processes impact family members and their support networks; how prolonged incarceration impacts children and parenting processes and family coping; how intimate relationships are impacted during and after incarceration including marriage, divorce and partner violence; and, whether system involvement leads to unintended consequences among family members such as heightened fear of crime and victimizations and fears of the police.

An enlightening insight into the family dynamics surrounding contact with the justice system, Police, Courts, and Incarceration is interesting reading for researchers and students of family, sociology and criminology.

Sheila Royo Maxwell is a criminologist at the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. Maxwell is a Fulbright Scholar Awardee and studies offending behaviours and attitudes towards law and sanctioning across ethnic, cultural and social-structural milieus.

Sampson Lee Blair is a family sociologist and demographer at The State University of New York (Buffalo). A Fulbright Scholar Award recipient, he has served as chair of the Children and Youth research section of the ASA, vice-president of the Research Committee on Youth in the International Sociological Association, and received the Distinguished Career Service Award from the ASA.