Incarceration alters, weakens, and can even sever the ties that bind. Prisons are isolated, difficult to access via public transport and unsuited for visits, making them unfavourable environments for maintaining relationships. For relatives, the journey to the visiting room may come at great financial and personal cost. In addition to the expense and the travel time, visitors are often stigmatised by the prison staff, even “accused of being complicit in, if not partially guilty of, the crimes committed by the prisoners”, notes sociologist Caroline Touraut. Solange*¹ and François*, whose son is incarcerated in Canada, have experienced this first-hand: “As relatives, we are treated like social pariahs, as if we were responsible for what our son did.”

For that matter, many prisoners say they prefer other means, besides visits, for keeping in contact. This was the case for Adel*, who was incarcerated for nearly ten years in France: “At first, visits are nice. But after a while, I didn’t want them anymore. We get so stressed before our families come, out of fear that something might happen on the road. Then, when they leave, it’s very emotionally charged, and we’re sad. In the end, I staggered my visits so they were less frequent.” Telephone calls seem to be the preferred form of communication with the outside, despite their exorbitant cost. Although mobile phones are prohibited in Belgium, Canada and France, many prisoners have one, like Adel*: “I always had a mobile phone. I called my parents every day, usually video calls. It reassured them to know I was doing okay. We’re a really close-knit family. It helped me.”
Written correspondence remains a key method of communication. Véronique explains that, for her partner imprisoned in Canada, “letters are less painful. He can think about what to say. And no one is asking him any questions. It gives him more freedom and doesn’t require as much of a commitment.”

Alain Grosjean, President of the Platform for Released Prisoners (Plate-Forme Sortants de Prison) in Belgium, points out that maintaining ties while in detention can be the source of a great deal of stress and suffering for prisoners. “It’s painful to have their feet inside and keep their mind outside,” observes Véronique, speaking about her partner. “When his mother asks him when he’ll be released and he doesn’t have an answer, he doesn’t want to hurt her. So he often puts off the calls. People don’t know how painful it is for prisoners to see that they’re causing pain and creating expectations.” It is common for prisoners to feel guilty for putting their relatives through the burden of incarceration. Some prefer less frequent visits and calls, deliberately isolating themselves.

Maïven Socquet, a psychologist at the Marchois Service for the Assistance of Litigants (Service Marchois d’Aide aux Justiciables) in Belgium, notes that families are unable to picture the reality of their relative’s experience in detention. This creates additional distance from the prisoners. The exclusion caused by prison inevitably generates a disconnect between the outside world and the world on the inside. Prisoners sometimes decide not to discuss the difficulties they face in order to avoid worrying their loved ones. When they do talk about them, they feel misunderstood. Maïven Socquet explains, “When you’re on the outside and something is wrong, you can call someone, go see a friend, take a bath, exercise… In prison, you’re locked up in your cell and you have no way of taking your mind off of whatever’s wrong.” The disconnect generated by imprisonment can become a source of tension over time, causing relationships to break down. When relatives fail to understand daily life in prison, prisoners may become frustrated and may even trivialise problems on the outside, wondering how their loved ones can complain despite having their freedom. “All the little problems and challenges faced on the outside would seem like nothing compared to what is experienced in detention”, observes the psychologist.

Prisoners are not immune to gender inequality. Quite the opposite: prison exacerbates it. The division of roles based on gender determines the manner in which relationships are maintained in detention. Women are expected to support, care for and look after their relatives. Accordingly, most people in visitation areas are mothers, wives, female partners, or sisters who are there to support incarcerated men.

Incarcerated women are much more isolated. They rarely receive support from networks of friends and family. Ruth Gagnon is Executive Director of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Quebec in Canada. She explains that “many [of these women] come from disadvantaged social backgrounds and had difficult, sometimes traumatic, family lives. Before prison, some experienced periods of homelessness and/or substance use disorders. In these cases, the ties were already fragile or broken.”

Women are usually the main carers of children, which comes with certain consequences during incarceration. Most prisoners who are fathers have partners, ex-partners or mothers on the outside who can take care of the children. Imprisoned mothers leave their children with the children’s grandmother, aunt or older sister. When such arrangements are not possible, the children must be placed in foster care.

 Caroline Touraut points out that maintaining relationships is not discussed in the same way for men as it is for women. For men, relationships are a source of support, even if they are fathers. For women, who are viewed as mothers above all else, relationships reflect their responsibility towards their children.

“People tell men that they will be taken care of, and women, that they cannot afford to make mistakes because their children are dependent on them”, she explains. The mother-child relationship is thus more encouraged, supported, and even sanctified by the prison staff. This is true even in some cases where the relationship is unhealthy for the mother and/or for the child. “We have cases where maintaining family ties seems to be counterproductive or even traumatic. Even so, we are required to bring the child two times per month”, observes Laurence Libert, coordinator of the association Résilience in Belgium.

Marie-Sophie Devresse, a criminologist in Belgium, expresses reservations about the promotion of motherhood in prisons. She warns that increased moral expectations are placed on mothers. She considers this focus to be detrimental to female prisoners, limiting their access to training or income-generating activities, which are crucial for their reintegration and autonomy upon release.

As for fatherhood, it seems to be overlooked in detention. “The system was designed in such a way that men do not have opportunities to fulfil their roles as fathers”, explains Samira Figuigui, Executive Director of the John Howard Society of Quebec. More and more programmes are emerging, particularly in Canada, to better assist and support parents in prison. Most of them exclusively address mothers. Those intended for fathers are less widespread and have more trouble finding financing. In Belgium, for example, the Child-Parent Relay (Relais Enfants Parents) meets each and every mother who enters detention, to discuss her family situation and needs. This assistance couldn’t realistically be offered to men – who are imprisoned in much larger numbers – due to a lack of resources and time.

A support network of relatives can contribute to preparing for release and making it a smooth transition. Friends and family can help establish a connection between the inside and the outside, provide the necessary papers, and start administrative procedures. This was the case for Camille and her husband, both incarcerated in France: their friends and families played a key role in preparing them for release. She explains, “The fact that they were there helped enormously. My relatives were the ones who handled my university enrolment and made sure I could do an internship at a newspaper over the summer. The same goes for my husband: he found his training course thanks to his relatives. I don’t see how people who don’t have this support can prepare for their release. On the inside, we don’t have the Internet or anything. If a phone number isn’t registered for the call box, we are blocked. My husband and I spent a year constantly calling on our relatives for help, splitting up the tasks so they wouldn’t always have to do the same thing. We were incredibly dependent.”

Prisoners without solid ties are at a higher risk of ending up on the streets or in shelters upon their release. They experience a new form of exclusion: isolation, without social support or a permanent address. Several studies emphasise that the involvement of relatives is likely one of the most important factors in the desistance process. In France in 2016, the reoffending rate at one year after release was 19.5% among married people, compared to 36.8% among single people. This is highlighted by Grégoire*, who spent several years in prison in France: “It helped me to have my girlfriend at the time in my life when I was released. After my sister died, she was all I had left. Her presence was purely beneficial. It soothed me.”

Children can also represent a source of motivation and lead to self-awareness, observes psychologist Maïven Socquet. “Incarcerated parents realise they need to work on themselves to provide their children with stability and provide for their needs.” Sophie Maury, Managing Director of Family Relay (Relais Famille) in Canada, agrees: “We accompanied a father who hadn’t lived with his daughter in a long time. When she spent a weekend with him, it was like a gift. It helped him get the ball rolling. Now he works towards having a nicer apartment so his daughter can visit on a regular basis.”

 Families and friends contribute to rebuilding confidence and self-esteem, which are often undermined by imprisonment. “My relatives are proud of me now. It’s very important to have my family here to support me and believe in me”, says Adel*.

Relatives are at the forefront of reintegration policies. In France, the Ministry of Justice notes that maintaining family ties is a “key condition for the reintegration of offenders and prisoners and for preventing recidivism.” Networks of relatives are consequently recognised as vital resources. “But how can the ‘ties’ factor be isolated to explain its role in reintegration?” wonders sociologist Caroline Touraut. “Would it be possible to evaluate if, in another situation, the ties could be detrimental to reintegration? How can we determine if a relationship or family affiliation might be detrimental or disadvantageous for the future?” Not all family relationships are conducive to desistance. On the contrary, some might contribute to a return to delinquency and violence.

Numerous organisations for support upon release note that prisoners and their loved ones must prepare themselves to be a family and to live together again. Programmes exist to encourage family and conjugal relationships during sentences as well as to equip prisoners for life outside of prison walls. For example, “parenting workshops” are offered in Belgium, Canada and France. Their objectives are to help the parent regain self-confidence and have a more positive experience of parenthood while in prison. Several civil society organisations, such as Relais Enfants-Parents, offer similar activities. They make it possible for incarcerated parents to spend quality time with their children, without the presence of another relative, in a specially designed location.

 In Canada and France, prisoners and their families can request extended visits¹. They can last up to 72 hours and take place in small furnished apartments, separate from the detention space. The goal of these visits is for prisoners to gradually re-establish contact with the realities of life on the outside and prepare themselves to reintegrate their social circle upon release.

In the same vein, temporary release and prison leaves can be granted in France. Henri Bouchet, Director of Nantes Child-Incarcerated Parent Relay (Relais Enfants Parents Incarcérés de Nantes) explains, for example, that “temporary leave is an opportunity to start over and affect real change in the parent-child relationship, by restoring a sense of freedom [to the father] that can go to a restaurant with his children for lunch or take them to the cinema in the afternoon.” In Belgium, temporary release lasts for a maximum of 16 hours and is rarely authorised for reasons relating to maintaining family ties. Prison leaves, which last 36 hours, are more frequently granted for these purposes, but they are not necessarily suited to all prisoners. For some, these visits may seem too long when the ties have already been weakened by a long period of detention, explains Marie-Nathalie d’Hoop, Deputy Managing Director of the General Service for Justice and Justiciable (Service Général Justice et Justiciable) of the General Administration for Community Justice Centres (Administration générale des Maisons de Justice, AGMJ).

Some organisations help build bridges between release from the prison facility and the return to the family home. In Canada, and as of recently in Belgium², they exist in the form of halfway houses, which are designed to be “bridges between life in detention and a full return into the community”, according to David Henry, Executive Director of the Association of Social Rehabilitation Services in Quebec (Association des services de réhabilitation sociale du Québec). These halfway houses favour a gradual return to family life. Residents have their own telephones and can spend time with their loved ones outside of the facility. “Halfway houses are reassuring for families”, observes Sophie Maury. “They know their relative isn’t helpless, left to their own devices.”

The return to family life is not always smooth sailing. Former prisoners must juggle different expectations, find their place, and exercise patience, especially if they were incarcerated for a long time. For parents, this means acknowledging, no matter how difficult it may be, that their children grew up during their detention, and adapting to this fact when returning to the family home. “These people have missed some of their children’s development stages and often continue to treat them as if they were still the same age as when they entered prison”, explains Daniel Bellemare, Executive Director of the Radisson House (Maison Radisson) in Canada.

Upon their release, it is also necessary to accept that life on the outside continued during their incarceration. Some people hope to be welcomed with open arms upon their release. But this is not always the case. Release is often accompanied by an adjustment period and a period of revising or even redefining the roles of relatives. “A mother who handled everything for several years and took all the decisions concerning the children must learn to make room for the father who was recently released from prison. There are various dynamics operating within families”, observes the Executive Director of Relais Famille.

“Maintaining ties is not perceived as a right: it is primarily considered through the lens of reintegration. The entire dynamic is impacted by this view”, deplores sociologist Caroline Touraut. Friends and family are seen first and foremost as a resource for the prison administration. Their own needs are neglected or even ignored. “Families are not the State’s business. The State’s mandate is to look after the convicted”, laments criminologist Marie-Sophie Devresse. Many families find themselves at a disadvantage, trying to manage everything on their own. Organisations fill the vacuum left by the prison service, stepping in to assist and inform relatives.

Marie-Nathalie d’Hoop, Deputy Managing Director of the AGMJ’s Service Général Justice et Justiciable, argues that the burden the authorities place on families should be constantly questioned. Especially since supporting a prisoner or a person who has just been released is not always a choice for the relatives. Such a decision may be the result of a combination of constraints: moral, social, economic, geographic, legal. This is especially true for situations involving sentence adjustments. Electronic ankle monitors serve as a particularly telling example: they make it possible to avoid prison, so families agree to accommodate their relative in the absence of an alternative solution. As Marie-Nathalie d’Hoop points out, “There are cases where loved ones are forced to live with [the offender] with whom they are having problems because there is no one else who can take responsibility for them. When you are told ‘it’s either you or prison’, especially when you know the state of the prison estate, it’s hard to talk about choice.”

The involvement of relatives in the reintegration process raises the question: is it possible to reintegrate without the support of friends and family? “If it is absolutely necessary to have a family, wife or mother who commits to being there for sentence adjustments or releases, then anyone who does not have a family does not have access to those rights. But these provisions should not be dependent on an ability to maintain family ties”, warns Caroline Touraut. For many stakeholders, the State does not take responsibility for the application and consequences of the sentences it issues. “Under the guise of being an alternative to incarceration or for better reintegration, supposedly favourable for prisoners and social inclusion, responsibility is shifted from the prison administration to those housing the offender”, observes Marie-Sophie Devresse.

Marie-Nathalie d’Hoop notes, however, that the primary challenge is not within the family but rather in community life and the sharing of responsibilities. Relatives cannot and should not ever be solely responsible for reintegration. For Ruth Gagnon, Executive Director of Elizabeth Fry Society of Quebec, the entire community is responsible for reintegration. People leaving prison will face major challenges to their reintegration if they are victims of stigma or discrimination in the labour market. The individuals met for this paper are unanimous: our society has a long way to go, and prejudices are hard to shake. Although the part played by relatives in the incarceration experience of a person is questioned quite often, society’s role has not been examined enough. Ruth Gagnon wonders, “What is our responsibility as a society? We need to feel a greater collective responsibility and investigate the factors that led to incarceration, especially poverty.”