Background

Families – socially recognised groupings, usually joined by blood, marriage, or adoption – provide vital emotional connections, as well as serving as a key economic unit of society. The 2017 Farmer Review of prisoner family ties concluded that good family relationships are indispensable for delivering rehabilitation. At the same time, the review cautioned against being oversentimental about family life; families are often a cause of stress, or a trigger for offending. Crime has in fact been found to be concentrated in certain families; one in twenty families accounting for half of all convictions, with a range of factors linked to the inter-generational transmission of crime.

Key statistics are as follows:

• of those children sentenced in the year ending March 2020 with a completed AssetPlus assessment, there were concerns in relation to family behaviour in 54 per cent of cases
• when looking at factors related to offending, family and wider networks was identified as factor in about one in three cases (34 per cent with a strong or moderate rating)
• conversely, when looking at factors related to desistance, family and wider networks was the joint most common factor (37 per cent).

Summary of the evidence

Links to offending behaviours

Adverse family circumstances and conditions have commonly been found to increase the likelihood of involvement in offending. More specifically, the following family factors have been identified in the literature as relevant to children coming into conflict with the law:

• parenting styles
• parental monitoring/supervision
• presence of parental conflict
• attitudes to involvement in offending
• attitudes to police/criminal justice system/state authorities
• attitudes to education
• history of family involvement in criminal justice system
• alcohol use/misuse amongst family members
• substance use/misuse amongst family members
• intra-family violence (domestic violence, child-to-parent violence)
• significant loss/bereavement in family
• level of attachment to parents
• socio-economic background (including parental employment status).

The evidence on the quality of family relationships and the impact on offending has been further summarised as follows:

• poor parenting can lead to pro-criminal associations and learning pro-criminal attitudes
• lack of parental oversight allows children to associate with antisocial associates without censure from parents and carers
• poor attachment to parents and carers leads to later deficits in sociability and the forming of constructive adult friendships and intimate relationships that protect against criminality
• divorce or separation of parents, if marked by emotional conflict, is a major risk factor
• frequent disruptions to caregivers are associated with large increases in offending. Boys who experience two or more caregivers before the age of 10 are twice as likely to be convicted of a violent crime.

Long-term research finds that boys with a father who has been to prison are twice as likely to be convicted themselves during their lives. These boys are more likely to have experienced poor parenting, encompassing inconsistent discipline, lack of monitoring, poor socialisation and weak attachment. Siblings can also have a major impact on the likelihood of offending – those with a brother or sister who has offended are twice as likely to offend – while having a non-offending sibling is a significant protective factor.

Further literature focuses upon child to parent abuse, and there is now compelling evidence that such abuse causes a wide range of harms, to the parent/carer, to the child, and to the wider family and community. There are a number of contexts in which this abuse plays out, many of which are inter-related, and it is likely to require a tailored and multi-agency response for effective intervention. Disclosure is difficult for many parents/carers, and their structural and familial context needs to be taken into account when developing screening and assessment tools. Furthermore, the age and the needs of the child should inform the extent to which it is appropriate to respond as if it is ‘domestic abuse’.

Involving the family in planning

The family can also provide a protective environment, with the research evidence identifying the following benefits to including family members in desistance planning:

• families can act as a motivator to change, and as a source of support for such change
• support in keeping to substance misuse treatment and community supervision requirements
• encouraging self-belief and hope in the possibility of change
• widening access to information and resources, especially employment and housing opportunities.

Visualising family and social networks with eco-mapping in assessment and planning can illuminate sources of family and community support. The video below provides a helpful overview of eco-mapping – which is a strengths-based, child-centred approach – explaining how it can build relationships through meaningful dialogue and working together, while also building an agreed understanding of both resources and needs

Disclaimer: an external platform has been used to host this video. Recommendations for further viewing may appear at the end of the video and are beyond our control.

Promising family interventions

The available research indicates that family interventions can lead to improvements in family relationships and support desistance. One approach is through Collaborative Family Work, which is designed to be undertaken in the family home by youth justice workers either individually or with the support of another worker. A collaborative problem-solving approach is employed with a number of strength-based activities and deliberate reinforcement of pro-social comments and actions. The approach involves working through the following six-steps:

• practitioners ask the family members to identify and agree on ground rules for the conduct of sessions
• they then help participants to identify issues of concern for them or things they would like to change
• the family members then decide which issues or problems to work on first
• they reach agreement on goals
• they explore the issues in some depth
• they develop strategies to achieve the goals.

Practitioners can use the acronym RIDGES to remind them of the six steps:

The research findings for Collaborative Family Work have so far been positive, particularly for those who successfully undertake the work at home, although there is a need for further evaluation to enable the underpinning evidence base to continue to grow.

The following interventions/approaches have also shown promise with children:

• Functional Family Therapy is aimed at families with 11 to 18-year-olds, and consists of 12-14 sessions which aim to build resilience to stress, and better management of anger and conflict
• Multisystemic Therapy (MST) is aimed at families including 12 to 17-year-olds who display chronic violence, substance misuse or at risk of being taken into care. The evidence is mixed, but appears more promising for those children with severe challenges.

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Last updated: 10 March 2023