A Typology of Family Relationships among Older Adults in Prison

• Published date: 01 March 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00328855231222442
• Author: Hila Avieli
• Date: 01 March 2024

A Typology of Family

Relationships among

Older Adults in Prison

Hila Avieli

1

Abstract

Despite the growing interest in older incarcerated persons, the issue of their

relationships with their families has been understudied. Therefore, the aim of

the present study was to explore the ways in which older adults in prison

construct, maintain, and navigate familial relationships with spouses and/or

adult children. Interpretive phenomenological analysis was utilized to analyze

interviews with 33 incarcerated older adults. Three themes emerged: (1)

Keeping in touch; (2) cutting-off, and (3) forming an alternative family.

Socioemotional selectivity theory is used to discuss the f‌indings, suggesting

that most participants wished to keep in contact with their families.

Keywords

older incarcerated adults, family relationship, qualitative study, socioemotional

selectivity theory

Introduction

Many older persons in the community report that their close support networks

consist mainly of family members (Fuller-Iglesias et al., 2015). As incarcer-

ated older adults (IOAs) are likely to be estranged from family members

(Mills & Codd, 2008), the quantity and quality of familial emotional

support may be minimal (Noujaim et al., 2019). Moreover, in general, evi-

dence shows that relationships with family are signif‌icantly worse among

1

Ariel University, Ariel, Israel

Corresponding Author:

Hila Avieli, Ariel University Department of Criminology, Ariel 40700, Israel.

Email: havieli@gmail.com

Article

The Prison Journal

2024, Vol. 104(2) 194–214

© 2024 SAGE Publications

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00328855231222442

journals.sagepub.com/home/tpj

IOAs than among younger inmates (Brunton-Smith & McCarthy, 2017). As a

result, loss of contact with family and friends, as well as age-related life

events, such as the death of a spouse or friends, may exacerbate social disen-

gagement and loneliness in this incarceree age group (Aday & Wahidin,

2016; Pageau et al., 2022), potentially leading to alienation from life (Moll,

2013). Despite the growing research interest in older incarcerated persons,

their relationships with their families have been understudied (Codd, 2013,

p. 45). Specif‌ically, the types, extent, and meaning of familial contacts for

IOAs have not been examined. Thus, the aim of the present study was to

explore how IOAs construct, maintain, and navigate familial relationships

with their spouse and/or adult children.

Inmates’Familial Relationships

Men and women in prison face substantial challenges to maintaining family

relationships (Lanskey et al., 2019). Incarceration places tremendous strains

on family members at home as well as on the incarcerated individual, and

marital relationships frequently end in divorce during a prison term

(Siennick et al., 2014). Examples of issues that pose a challenge to both fam-

ilies and incarcerated persons are: (1) shame and social stigma (Gueta, 2018);

(2) fewer f‌inancial resources (Lewis & Lockwood, 2019); (3) the impact of

parental imprisonment on children (Shaw, 2022); (4) the family’s role in

helping inmates cope with time in prison and reentry life adjustments upon

release (Mills & Codd, 2008), and (5) the role of the state and penal policies

in the lives of incarcerated people and their families (Lanskey et al., 2019).

Little research has explored the ways in which incarcerated individuals

maintain their family relationships while serving a sentence (De Claire

et al., 2020; Lanskey et al., 2019). For example, Folk et al. (2019) considered

differences between types of contact (visits, phone calls, letters) among incar-

cerated adults and concluded that more frequent contact with family during

incarceration predicted an increase in family connectedness, which in turn

predicted better mental health during the f‌irst year post-release. Similarly, a

study of 319 incarcerated individuals concluded that receiving visits or

letters during incarceration predicted more father–child involvement immedi-

ately following release, which predicted spending more hours per week at

work and less criminal activity (Visher et al., 2013). In another study,

Wallace et al. (2020) attempted to differentiate between relationship types

and reincarceration. Their f‌indings suggest that good relationships, both

marital and nonmarital, have a positive inf‌luence on reducing reincarceration.

Nickels (2020) used a relational maintenance perspective to map specif‌ic

behaviors by nonincarcerated women to maintain connectedness with an

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