Background to the Research

• Whilst much research has been carried out into the impact of the Troubles on families in Northern Ireland, little is known about the experiences of prisoners' families. This article explores the effects of imprisonment on the partners and children of politically motivated prisoners and explores some of the issues relating to the release and reintegration of ex-prisoners into the community.
  

Research Approach

• Indigenous field-workers (former Republican/Loyalist prisoners involved with paramilitary prisoners welfare groups) were used to access and distribute questionnaires to the families of politically motivated prisoners with children. 239 questionnaires were returned - 200 (84%) from the partners of Republican prisoners and 39 (16%) from the partners of Loyalist prisoners.
  

Main Findings

Profile of the Sample

• Of the 239 partners, 63% were currently visiting/had visited their husband, 27% their common law husband, 8% their boyfriend and 2% their wife. Some 74% of the sample were the partners of sentenced prisoners and 26% were on remand.
• The majority of prisoners were serving long sentences, 33% serving life, 35% more than 10 years and 22% 6-10 years.

Visiting by Partners

• Of the 237 partners who answered the question, 88% visited at least once a week. Of the 56 prisoners on remand 88% were visited more than once a week with the rest visited weekly. Only 6% of the 159 sentenced prisoners were visited more than once a week, with 77% visited weekly and the remainder visited fortnightly or less often.
• While 95% of visits to remand prisoners were for less than 30 minutes (prison rules state all visits are for 30 minutes only), over 85% of visits to sentenced prisoners in HMP Maghaberry, HMP Maze and HMP Magilligan were for an hour or more.

Feelings of Partners Concerning Visits

• Feelings were divided into positive feelings (happy, relieved, good, excited) and negative feelings (sick/tired, loss of appetite, restlessness, nervous). Of 237 partners, 79% reported negative feeling before a visit and 76% after a visit, although only 26% reported negative feeling during a visit. Only 13% reported positive feelings before a visit and 14% after a visit, with 41% reporting positive feelings during a visit.
• A common experience among partners was the stress of withholding information about the domestic situation or the children. Partners also referred to the physical conditions during visits - the lack of privacy and comfort.

Correspondence

• Eighty-eight per cent of partners kept in contact through letters, only 9% reported that they did not write. Almost half of partners wrote once a week or more and 52% wrote either fortnightly or monthly. Visiting and correspondence were complementary rather than alternative ways of keeping up contact with prisoners. For example, 59% of those who visited once a week or more also wrote once a week or more.

Children and Visits

• Fifty-seven per cent of respondents visited with their children at least fortnightly, 31% monthly and 13% less than once a month. Of the 219 who responded to the question, 50% stated that they 'liked' to bring their children on visits, while 35% said they did not (the remainder reported that they liked to bring their children 'sometimes'). Thirty per cent cited the children's behaviour as a reason for not bringing them on a visit, while 22% stated a desire for a visit without them as the reason.

Problems of Prisoners Partners

• Of the 237 who responded, 201 (84%) said they had difficulty coping, only 29 (12%) said they experienced no difficulty. Nearly two-thirds of respondents stated that they would like help with a problem they faced, the most pressing problems were financial, followed by concerns about the children.

Sources of Help

• The majority of partners had sought and received help from family and friends. Few sought help from the statutory/voluntary sector specifically designed to help them.

Children and Arrest

• Of the 93 (39%) respondent's partners who were arrested at home, 84% stated that some of the children had been present and 80% reported their children subsequently had emotional problems after the event (including nightmares, bed wetting, difficulty sleeping and crying).

Children's Knowledge of the Imprisonment

• Seventy-five per cent of participants reported that their children were aware that their father/mother was in prison, while 17% said they were not. Ninety per cent of sentenced prisoners' partners said that some/all of the children knew their parent was in prison compared with 59% of the remand prisoners children.

Prisoner Release

• Of the 216 who responded to these questions, 50% did not know when their partner would be released, 14% were due for release within 2 years, 10% within 2-4 years, 13% within 4-6 years and 13% within more than 6 years.
• Over 90% of partners reported being concerned about harassment from the security forces or victimisation by statutory agencies (HE or DHSS), after their partner was released. Eighty-four per cent were worried about the prisoner's difficulty in getting a job, 77% cited financial concerns, while only 18% were concerned about the prisoner re-offending.

Conclusions

• There was little evidence of differences in the experiences of the families of Loyalist and Republican prisoners. Many of the difficulties such as coping alone and financial worries are similar to those of the families of 'ordinary' prisoners, however the problems faced by the families in the sample were even more pronounced.
• Cleavage to ideology does not protect families from the practical, emotional and financial consequences of imprisonment, at times it acts as a barrier to the accessing and delivery of services from statutory/voluntary agencies.
• The fears of the families of politically motivated prisoners with regard to possible harassment by the security forces and/or victimisation by other statutory agencies needs to be addressed if re-integration is to be successful. Alongside this the families are unlikely to use professional and voluntary organisation that do not take account of their status and political ideology.