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ABSTRACT
The number of U.S. prisoners with minor children has increased dramatically in recent decades. Although the quality of inmate-child communication is positively associated with individual and familial outcomes, innovative programming for incarcerated parents is limited. This mixed methods study explored the initial delivery to incarcerated fathers of a letter-writing intervention developed for and previously used with incarcerated mothers. Pre- to post-intervention measures of parental stress, communication, and relationships with caregivers were tested with the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test. Focus groups were conducted post-intervention to explore perceptions of parental challenges and the intervention. Participants experienced significant improvements in communication and caregiver relations, but not in parental stress. Themes from qualitative analysis highlighted important barriers to communication, positive attributes of the intervention—including structured prompts, outside facilitators and peer support—and improved emotional responses and parental identity among participants. The discussion explores ways to build on this successful delivery to incarcerated fathers.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Although we refer to the 20 individuals who did not complete the posttest as non-completers, this is not entirely accurate. Some of these individuals completed the intervention but failed to return to a follow-up session during which the posttests were administered. Of those who did not complete the program, some withdrew while still incarcerated and others were actively participating at the time of their release to the community. Unfortunately, we are unable to distinguish between these groups. For the purposes of the evaluation, we treat them as a group.