MARGINALIZACIJA DECE KAO POSLEDICA INKARCERACIJE RODITELJA
MARGINALIZATION OF CHILDREN AS CONSEQUENCE OF INCARCERACION OF PARENT

Summary/Abstract: Children whose parents are serving prison sentence are regarded to be collateral victims of crime. A parent leaving for prison sentence serving presents an enforced and potentially unexpected period of family members being separated. Current estimates indicate that there are 1.5 million children in USA whose parents are in prison, whereas the number of children whose parents have been incarcerated at some point of their lives is around 5 million. These children are often neglected and invisible to the system which is supposed to act in their best interest. The existing literature emphasizes that the children whose parents are in prison experience a series of negative consequences. For these children there is a greater chance that they will suffer from a wide specter of externalized and internalized issues. From an ethical aspect, there is a debate of whether the collateral damage of punishment is justified, especially when they impact family members and children of the one who is being punished. Currently more attention is being paid to initiatives and interventions which increase the possibility of maintaining quality contact between the parents and the children where the parents develop and improve their parenting competence. The subject of this research is consequences for the children which arise due to one or both parent serving prison sentences. The aim is to call attention to negative effect of parents being incarcerated, as well as to mechanisms which may mitigate the ill effects of incarceration.

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