Children of parents who commit crimes and are incarcerated are at an elevated risk for adverse societal and health-related outcomes. Children of prisoners is an expanding group, but it remains unclear whether parental incarceration (PI) causally affects children. This proposal utilizes family-based and within-individual research designs in longitudinal nationwide register data from Sweden and Finland to study associations between PI and psychiatric disorders, self-harm, violence victimization, school performance and educational attainment, and violent and non-violent criminality in offspring while taking into account unmeasured confounds clustered in families. Children of prisoners are at elevated risk of ill health and social marginalization. Knowledge on whether PI has effects, negative or positive, on the health, safety, and development of children is important for the criminal justice system and helps to direct support services to this societally vulnerable group.

2021

2025