Interrupting Intergenerational Offending in the Context of America's Social Disaster of Mass Imprisonment

View/ Open
Author(s)
Roettger, Michael E
Dennison, Susan
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2018
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Paralleling the growth of the U.S. criminal justice system in recent decades, American families have increasingly experienced a social disaster of parents, and subsequently their children, undergoing imprisonment. Adopting a life course perspective to examine the likely drivers of the intergenerational transmission of offending and incarceration, we contextualize the development of antisocial behavior in an era of mass imprisonment. In doing so, we draw from the literature on the sociology of disasters to examine how traumas related to intergenerational incarceration may be both understood and ameliorated through appropriate ...
View more >Paralleling the growth of the U.S. criminal justice system in recent decades, American families have increasingly experienced a social disaster of parents, and subsequently their children, undergoing imprisonment. Adopting a life course perspective to examine the likely drivers of the intergenerational transmission of offending and incarceration, we contextualize the development of antisocial behavior in an era of mass imprisonment. In doing so, we draw from the literature on the sociology of disasters to examine how traumas related to intergenerational incarceration may be both understood and ameliorated through appropriate policies and interventions. We argue that it is possible to better frame how risk factors for antisocial behavior, such as prenatal maternal stress, exposure to trauma, and deviant peer groups, may be integrated with factors that promote resilience and recovery. This includes improving safety, self-efficacy, and connectedness to prevent intergenerational offending and incarceration and facilitate desistance. By framing mass incarceration as a social disaster, a multifaceted, comprehensive approach takes on new urgency so as to reduce the prevalence of intergenerational offending and incarceration among millions of families in the United States.
View less >
View more >Paralleling the growth of the U.S. criminal justice system in recent decades, American families have increasingly experienced a social disaster of parents, and subsequently their children, undergoing imprisonment. Adopting a life course perspective to examine the likely drivers of the intergenerational transmission of offending and incarceration, we contextualize the development of antisocial behavior in an era of mass imprisonment. In doing so, we draw from the literature on the sociology of disasters to examine how traumas related to intergenerational incarceration may be both understood and ameliorated through appropriate policies and interventions. We argue that it is possible to better frame how risk factors for antisocial behavior, such as prenatal maternal stress, exposure to trauma, and deviant peer groups, may be integrated with factors that promote resilience and recovery. This includes improving safety, self-efficacy, and connectedness to prevent intergenerational offending and incarceration and facilitate desistance. By framing mass incarceration as a social disaster, a multifaceted, comprehensive approach takes on new urgency so as to reduce the prevalence of intergenerational offending and incarceration among millions of families in the United States.
View less >
Journal Title
American Behavioral Scientist
Volume
62
Issue
11
Copyright Statement
Michael E. Roettger, Susan Dennison, Interrupting Intergenerational Offending in the Context of America's Social Disaster of Mass Imprisonment, American Behavioral Scientist, Vol 62, Issue 11, page(s): 1545-1561. Copyright 2018 The Authors. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.
Subject
Psychology
Cognitive Sciences