Shame and blame: Secondary stigma among families of convicted sex offenders

Abstract

The detriment of incarceration experienced by the formerly incarcerated has been increasingly explored in the literature on reentry. A tangential but equally concerning issue that has recently received more research attention is the effect on family members of the incarcerated. The stigma of a criminal conviction is most apparent among families of convicted sex offenders, who experience consequences parallel to those of their convicted relative. Drawing from interviews with 30 individuals with a family member incarcerated for a sex offence in the United States, this study explores manifestations of stigma due to familial association. The findings suggest that families face negative treatment from social networks and criminal justice officials, engage in self-blame and that the media’s control over the narrative exacerbates family members’ experiences. Given the pervasiveness of criminal justice system contact, the rapid growth of the sex offender registry in the United States, and the millions of family members peripherally affected by one or both, justice system reforms are needed to ensure that family members are shielded from the harms of incarceration and registration.

Keywords

Criminal justice contact family members incarceration secondary stigma sex offender

Introduction

Certain features and actions of individuals are so denigrated that others beyond the stigmatised individual experience the repercussions of their action. Goffman (1963) theorised ‘courtesy stigma’ as an association with a stigmatised person that leads mainstream society to treat the associate(s) as an extension of the stigmatised. Significant others of those criminally stigmatised are blamed for their kinship and continued support of a wrongdoer (Condry, 2007; Lickel et al., 2003). Not only does the public blame families of offenders for perceived flaws in genetics or parenting practices, the legal system can hold parents accountable for their adolescent’s problem behaviour. Goffman coined this ‘courtesy stigma’, but this study uses ‘secondary stigma’ (Condry, 2007: Furst and Evans, 2015) to remove the implication of politeness and denote the predominantly negative consequences of stigma by association. Secondary stigma due to criminal justice system involvement can contaminate families and intimate others, particularly when it accompanies a sex offence conviction, altering their identities to become, as found in the current study, parents or partners of a sex offender. Stigma by association can extend to those who have a meaningful relationship to, voluntarily associate with, or are in close proximity to a stigmatised person (Pryor et al., 2012).

As the literature on secondary stigma from criminal justice system contact develops, cross-cultural discussion of its manifestations across different countries becomes more paramount. Considering how differences in formal legal punishments across countries influence the vicarious experiences of families following a member’s criminal involvement will enhance the understanding of the broader consequences of the systematic application of the criminal label. The current study, conducted in the United States, focuses on the family members of convicted sex offenders, arguably the most stigmatised sect in American society (Evans, 2012). Although several countries maintain registries of convicted sex offenders, the United States is the only country to release this information to the public. This state-sanctioned public shaming augments the stigmatic experience of registrants and their families, particularly those who share a registered address. This study drew from interviews with family members of persons currently or formerly incarcerated for sex offences to explore how families and significant others are affected by their loved one’s conviction and/or incarceration for a sex offence. Condry’s (2007) work on secondary stigmatisation of families of serious offenders in the United Kingdom provides a foundation. While the lives of many of her respondents were upended following the conviction and incarceration of their kin, strict US policies targeting convicted sex offenders may produce even more severe collateral consequences for family members.

Impact of the criminal justice system on families

Victims and offenders tend to be the focus of post-crime interventions, leaving family members largely on the periphery. While support generally is available for crime victims and various treatment programmes exist for offenders, families, especially those of convicted sexual offenders, are mostly left to deal with any ensuing trauma on their own (Loucks and Loureiro, 2018). Even in research, although families have long been the subject of theories attempting to explain the transmission of criminal behaviour, investigation of the informal penalties that family members of incarcerated persons¹ are subjected to has only recently gained traction (Christian and Kennedy, 2011; Condry and Smith, 2018). The social consequences of incarceration reflect the stigma associated with the criminal label, and criminal stigma that persons criminally convicted endure creates a spillover effect for family members and significant others. They may face an even more severe form of stigma, if only because they are exposed to repeated disdain from members of their own communities during their loved one’s incarceration (Braman, 2004).

Despite research on the familial experience of incarceration being more than 50 years old, the topic did not receive considerable scholarly attention until recent decades. Morris’ (1965) study of wives of incarcerated men in the United Kingdom provided the foundation for this research, but the topic remained underexplored for much of the following three decades. It was not until massive growth in the US prison population during the 1990s that a more integrated body of studies of familial consequences emerged. In the past two decades, hundreds of studies on families of the incarcerated have been published (Condry and Smith, 2018). More recent scholarship has explored the ‘parallel sentence’ and trauma that family members of incarcerated persons experience, including negative impacts on their physical and mental health, finances, parental identities and social reactions (Comfort, 2007; Granja, 2016). While this research is not far removed from its infancy, particularly among Black families in the United States (Western and Wildeman, 2009), a growing cross-cultural and interdisciplinary literature has examined challenges that families navigate following a loved one’s incarceration. Cross-cultural comparison is relevant, according to Condry (2018), because there are ample commonalities in the effects of incarceration on families across geographic locations. A disproportionate amount of this research has focused on children of incarcerated persons (Arditti, 2012; Christian, 2009; Condry and Smith, 2018; Gordon, 2018; Luther, 2016; Murray and Farrington, 2008; Phillips and Gates, 2011), with some describing child experiences from the perspective of parents or carers (Jones et al., 2013). Fewer studies have examined how mothers and fathers are affected by incarceration of their children (Condry, 2007). Parents face formal and informal consequences of their children’s offending, depending on the nature and severity of the offence.

Formal punishments for criminal acts can extend to significant others. The legal system can hold parents responsible for severe wrongdoing of their kin (Arthur, 2005; Brank and Lane, 2008; DiFonzo, 2001; Gueta, 2017). Legal punishment for parents of children who commit offences is an extreme formal consequence of a child’s criminal behaviour, but families may be affected in other ways. Housing access in the United States is contingent on the criminal history of all occupants. Individuals with a drug or sex offence conviction are banned from residing in subsidised housing (Silva, 2015). Even if they do not live in government housing, families that house a convicted sex offender subject to registration are required to have their home addresses listed on a publicly accessible sex offender registry. In addition, parole officers can enter the homes of clients under their supervision and conduct searches, even against the wishes of uninvolved family members. Formal punishments of criminally convicted persons can directly affect their live-in families.

In addition to formal punishment, the informal penalties resulting from a family member’s criminal involvement can be pervasive. The lives of significant others change as early as their loved one is arrested. An arrest can be troubling for adults who witness it and confusing or traumatic for children witnesses (Phillips and Zhao, 2010). If convicted of a serious offence, the challenges expand during the individual’s incarceration and reentry. Families are inextricably tied up in the criminal justice process as their loved one navigates it, on a fence between victim and offender, experiencing the consequences of both (Condry, 2013). They deal with financial difficulties that compound as the remaining family members have to compensate for the lost income (Clear et al., 2001). In addition to the high costs of maintaining phone contact with an incarcerated loved one (Christian et al., 2006), family members who seek prison visits are treated as inferior to ‘official’ visitors. Familial visitors encounter discrimination from facility staff that is rooted in institutional policies demanding invasive search procedures and higher levels of scrutiny (Hutton, 2018). The negative treatment is not limited to encounters in the criminal justice system, and its intensity appears to be greater when the offence is sexual.

The familial effects of incarceration for a sex offence conviction reflect the nadir of secondary criminal stigma. Sex crimes are the most stigmatised of all offences, punishable by incarceration and post-release registration. This is notable in the United States, where individuals convicted of a sex offence are required to submit their pictures and personal information to a publicly accessible online registry managed by law enforcement.² Many registered sex offenders (RSOs) are required to register for life. This can create problems for families of RSOs, who experience the effects of arrest, incarceration and reentry, but more publicly and shamefully than family members of other convicted offenders (Farkas and Miller, 2007). Studies that have explored the consequences for families of RSOs have found that some experience housing disruption due to residency restriction policies (Levenson and Tewksbury, 2009). In addition, family members face troubled familial relationships, social isolation and the possibility of threats, harassment and violent victimisation due to their association with an RSO, which can cause considerable stress or impel family members to distance themselves from the RSO (Kilmer and Leon, 2017; Levenson and Tewksbury, 2009). The stigma of sex offending is so pronounced that family members of RSOs have faced backlash simply because a relative was accused of having committed a sexual offence (Cubellis, Evans and Fera, 2019; Mercado et al., 2008). Having a relative who is an RSO alters the social lives of families irrecoverably.

The vast majority of studies addressing the familial effects of incarceration have explored criminal offences broadly and how criminal justice system involvement can devastate familial dynamics and relationships. Female relatives of serious offenders described physical illness or grief analogous to bereavement, fresh conflict between other family members, and intra-familial child custody changes as a result of their family members’ incarceration (Condry, 2013). Navigating domestic obligations throughout a family member’s incarceration can be highly stressful. Due to the challenges of maintaining relationships with incarcerated loved ones and the drastic changes following their incarceration, familial identity often dissipates, and parents in particular have their identities disrupted from unpleasant social reactions to the criminal event (Clear et al., 2001; Gueta, 2017). The stress of coping with a loved one’s incarceration can have tangible effects on physical and emotional health. Females with an incarcerated family member tend to have significantly more health problems than men, including obesity, lower self-reported health and higher risk of heart attack (Lee et al., 2014). The emotional damage inflicted by incarceration may be so deep that familial relationships never fully recover (Richie, 2009). Familial bonds are indefinitely dishevelled following the loss of one member to incarceration.

The collateral stigmatisation of families of offenders is revealed in their relationships with and reactions of others in their social networks over time. Many families of serious offenders lose relationships with friends, neighbours and acquaintances avoid them, they receive verbal or written threats and some are forced into social exile (Condry, 2007). Mothers of offenders experience an excessive degree of blame, particularly when their child’s offence was violent. Mothers of youth involved in high-profile school shootings have been blamed for acts of their children and called failures, while fathers of these children received almost no blame (Melendez et al., 2016). This could reflect gender discrimination as well as the perceived importance of the mother’s role in child rearing. Whether they perceive it from others or project their own sense of guilt, many family members feel assailed by others for their relative’s crime (Condry, 2007). Such feelings, compounded by ostracism, make relationships in their social networks difficult for families of the criminally stigmatised.

The informal ramifications for families and significant others due to criminal involvement of a loved one vary widely depending on offence details, the community in which a family lives and the public’s awareness of the offence due to media publicity. Audit studies of the effect of criminal records on employment outcomes indicate that misdemeanours are less stigmatised than felony records (Pager, 2008; Uggen et al., 2014), and sex offenders tend to be the most disgraced of all offenders (Condry, 2007; Evans, 2012). Offence type and severity clearly mediate the consequences that families experience. Location is also important because although the criminal identity is shamed among many populations, in smaller, tighter knit communities, family members of serious offenders face less social disruption, if any, following their loved one’s exposure for criminal wrongdoing (Condry, 2007). Media publicity can exacerbate the stigma that family members cope with depending on the frequency, nature, and reach of the coverage. News stories with sensationalised details can be especially harmful to family members who have no control over the sharing of information on their relative’s crime (Condry, 2007). The combination of an appalling offence, a blame-centred community and a news media that overdramatises to increase viewership is one in which families could experience severe public backlash as a result of their family member’s offence.

The current study explores the experiences, sentiments and perspectives of family members and loved ones of persons convicted or incarcerated for sex offences. It builds on research addressing the challenges that significant others of serious offenders encounter following incarceration of their relative (Condry, 2007). The focus on sexual offence convictions in the United States, which is intended to enhance understanding of the secondary stigma confronted by families` of the most severely stigmatised offender group in the United States.

Data and method

Participants and procedure

Data for the current study came from a purposive sample of 30 participants in the United States. The authors contacted various support organisations in New York and Texas that serve family members and intimate partners of incarcerated persons. We were ultimately in contact with loved ones of incarcerated persons in various states across the United States, but we relied on relationships we had developed in our respective home states to make initial contacts. Reference to the ‘criminal justice system’ throughout this article is thus not tied to any locale. We solicited participation from anyone with an immediate family member or intimate partner previously or currently incarcerated for a sex offence. The only immediate family members not included in the study were children of incarcerated persons because of the relatively well-developed empirical and theoretical record on the effects of a family member’s incarceration on children (Martin, 2017; Turney, 2018). We were interested in the experiences of other family members and intimate partners of persons convicted of sex offences. To maintain rapport with participants, we did not ask about their loved ones’ convictions. One of our first contacts suggested this, and it proved to be key. Although sex offences encompass a wide variety of behaviours, anecdotal accounts of our data that were volunteered by participants suggest that the sample is overwhelmingly represented by direct sexual contact with minors and offences involving Internet child pornography. It may be that cases involving child victims were more likely to lead loved ones of the accused to seek and participate in support groups.

Among the participants were 23 parents, 3 siblings, 3 intimate partners, 1 grandparent and 5 wives of incarcerated persons. The sample included a disproportionately large number of White participants, possibly suggesting that Whites may be more likely to seek out and participate in support groups. Open-ended and close-ended questions inquired about the participants’ experiences since their loved ones’ incarceration. We did not ask participants about details of offences for which their loved ones were convicted. Some volunteered this information and shared details, indicating that some of the participants’ loved ones were convicted of possessing child pornography and crimes against children, but there was no way to determine whether the sample is over-representative of certain types of sex crimes. The average length of interviews was 96 minutes. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. Table 1 provides the basic descriptive statistics of participants.

Table 1.

Sample characteristics (n = 30).

	F	M	Range
Age	—	55	23–71
Race
Black	2	–	–
Hispanic	2	–	–
White	26	–	–
Education
High school	6	–	–
Some college	16	–	–
College	6	–	–
Post-graduate	2	–	–
Perceived Social class
Lower	3	–	–
Lower middle	5	–	–
Middle	15	–	–
Upper middle	6	–	–
No answer	1	–	–
Length of incarceration^a	–	6.5 years	6 months–31 years
Time since release^a (n = 16)	–	3.9 years	1 month–15 years
Time left on sentence^a (n = 14)	–	10.8 years	3 years–31 years

For their loved ones at the time of the interview.

Instrument

Prior research on children of incarcerated parents and informal conversations between the authors and family members of incarcerated persons informed development of the interview schedule. Several broad categories provided the starting point for creating questions, including family dynamics before, during and following incarceration; psychological and emotional repercussions; experiences with prison visits; financial burdens; and changes since reentry. Seven research assistants piloted interview questions with respondents who had or have an incarcerated family member prior to finalising the interview guide. Transcripts of interviews were analysed using a six-phase thematic content analysis model developed by Braun and Clarke (2006), as described below.

Thematic content analysis

The current study was designed to generate a better understanding of secondary stigma that loved ones of persons incarcerated for sex offences confront. The six-phase model of thematic analysis was designed specifically for identifying common characteristics in narrative data (Braun and Clarke, 2006). The first phase was familiarising oneself with the data. Interviews were collected over the phone or in person. We made notes about secondary stigma referenced during interviews, read each interview transcript and noted prominent characteristics of secondary stigma in participants’ narratives. These notes provided a foundation for subsequent phases of analysis.

Phase 2 began the coding process. We first extracted all references to secondary stigma from the interview transcripts. Using these references, we began to code for certain characteristics of secondary stigma – for example, sources of the stigma, effects of different types of stigma on the participants and how participants dealt with stigma. Phase 3 involved reviewing the coded data and identifying themes in the participants’ talk about secondary stigma. The coded narratives were carefully reviewed several times until a preliminary set of themes was identified. Phase 4 required reviewing the accuracy and reliability of identified themes. Two criteria are commonly used in thematic content analysis to ensure patterns are accurate and themes are reliable – internal homogeneity and external heterogeneity (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Patton, 1990). The former indicates that data collated within each theme should cohere in a meaningful way. External heterogeneity refers to the relationship between themes. There should be clear and identifiable differences across themes. In this sense, then, phase 4 essentially involved testing the developed themes for construct validity. The data in each theme were read and reread until it was clear that they formed a coherent pattern.

Phase 5 required defining and labelling the themes. The definitions and labels should capture its meaning and establish what is unique about each theme. In the current study, the label and definition of each theme was based on its semantic content regarding what it described about participants’ experiences with secondary stigma. Phase 6 involved generating the report. The premise was to maintain the organisation of themes in the report and convey the results in a way that accurately represented the data. Quotes from interview transcripts were selected that best illustrated each theme.

Results

All 30 participants discussed experiencing secondary stigmatisation because of their loved ones’ conviction and incarceration for sex offences. The results of the thematic analysis show four major themes, each of which has several subthemes. The four major themes, which relate to sources of stigma, include ‘social networks’, ‘media’, ‘the system’ and ‘guilt/self-blame’. Social networks refer to stigma from participants’ families and friends. Media refers to stigma deriving from public reports of loved ones’ alleged offences, arrests and/or convictions. The system describes secondary stigma participants encountered through interactions with officials during the criminal justice process. Guilt/self-blame refers to feelings of self-blame among participants’ for their loved ones’ incarceration. Each theme comprises several subthemes. Figure 1 provides a thematic map of these results.

Figure 1.

Thematic map of secondary stigma themes and subthemes.

Each theme and its constituent subthemes are described in further detail, and quotes from participants illustrate findings. The age, race and relationship to the convicted are provided for each quote.

Social networks

Participants encountered secondary stigma from families and friends. They described family and friends as being supportive, but when they were not, it was damaging. A key feature of this theme was narratives surrounding their loved one’s alleged offence and incarceration. Participants insisted that their families and friends did not know the entire story. If they did know the whole story, participants believed that their family and friends would understand and be sympathetic. Instead, they felt judged, blamed and ostracised by social networks that made conclusions about them and their loved ones based on partial and biased story fragments.

Two subthemes were derived from discussions of stigma from social networks. First, participants described a sense of loss and feeling alone because of stigmatisation from friends and family. They already felt that they lost their loved ones, and now they were losing other important people in their lives:

Our church kind of turned their back. I thought that they would be there the most and when my son needed our pastor more than anything. There’s one or two couples that are still good friends but, on a whole, we were just treated very differently. (49, White, father)

You can sure tell who your real friends are when things go wrong. So, that was kind of devastating. And of course they tell their own version of it when they repeat it to someone else. So, there’s a stigma of being a mother of a sex offender, especially without the whole story. I was all alone. (54, White, mother)

Second, several participants attempted to hide their loved one’s arrest and incarceration from people in their social network because of anticipated judgement and blame. They described persistent fear that friends or extended family might discover their secret and often went to great lengths to conceal it:

He was missing for a big chunk. To explain that to everybody, ‘he doesn’t like to be in pictures, blah, blah, blah’. So, then I had to start talking about him so people would not notice that I wasn’t talking about him. You know what I mean? ‘Well [son’s name] this and [son’s name] that’. Always a lie. They’d always mention not seeing him. (51, Hispanic, mother)

I just moved [from one state to another] and I haven’t told anyone here and I’m terrified and I’m paralysed. I don’t want to be the neighbour whose son is in prison. I feel like I can’t breathe sometimes and people ask me ‘oh, where is your son?’ I’ll tell them the state he’s living in and that’s about it. I don’t really want anyone to know. I’m afraid someone is going to treat me differently. (56, White, mother)

These quotes allude to the compound stigma that family members face due to incarceration for a sexual offence conviction. The loss of their loved one to incarceration alone is emotionally challenging and makes families vulnerable to stigma by association. If the incarceration is revealed, the sexual offence conviction is more susceptible to exposure. The potential for dual stigmatisation creates a need for families to manage two related shames. First, when engaging with friends, neighbours, and acquaintances, they have to manage explanations for their family member’s persistent absence due to incarceration. Then, if the incarceration is exposed, or following their loved one’s release, family members face the daunting task of managing their loved one’s publicly accessible status on the sex offender registry. Because sex offender registration can last a lifetime, families perpetually endure the burden of stigma by association.

Stigmatisation from social networks was particularly devastating because participants felt they could rely on these people while they and their loved ones traversed the criminal justice system. While participants often expected negative labelling from criminal justice actors or the media, they expected support from friends and family. The ‘social network’ theme links to the next theme, ‘media’, because the incomplete story that is the basis of stigmatisation from family and friends often comes from sensationalised, biased media reporting.

Media

Participants discussed media reports as a source of secondary stigma. Many felt media reports about their loved ones were inflammatory, biased and emotionally damaging. Media reports reduced their loved ones’ personhood to the crimes they were accused of committing. Participants craved context that the media ignored in its in portraying their loved ones as remorseless, less-than-human predators. Sensationalised media stories caused participants embarrassment, as if they were being blamed.

The thematic analysis shows three subthemes related to secondary stigma from media. First, participants commonly derided the narrative contained in media reports. The media described their loved ones’ alleged offences in exaggerated, emotionally laden imagery and language. Participants felt the media dramatised the alleged crimes and their loved ones in a defamatory manner:

They sensationalised it and they called him a name which was ugly and horrible and they did not know the whole story. I was able to read the whole story in the police report. [The media] came to conclusions. I still shudder. I won’t even look. I can’t. It’s horrible. (34, White, sister)

Second, Internet reports, particularly the sex offender registry and social media, exacerbated stigmatisation. Stories about their loved ones on the Internet are permanent and available to everyone, everywhere. Several participants explained that media reports on the Internet, more than anything else, permanently changed their lives:

I didn’t really appreciate that [my friend] did this but she went online and saw it all and called me and said ‘oh my god, oh my god, I’m so sorry, this is horrible’ and I said ‘yeah, it’s really bad’. I knew then my life would never be the same because I knew at their fingertip anyone could find out what happened. (56, White, mother)

Participants described encountering terrible comments from social media users, blogs and comments to web reports about their loved ones: ‘Social media was just evolving. there were some blogs out there that said some pretty horrible things, and, uh, I just couldn’t look at it. They said that my husband deserved to die’ (51, White, wife).

The third subtheme is retribution, which refers to descriptions of fear among participants that inflammatory reports of their loved one’s alleged crime and incarceration would lead to real consequences. Some participants feared vigilantism:

There are enough crazy people out there that want to be vigilantes; want to be vindictive who don’t know him, don’t know the particulars of the case, don’t know the reasons why he’s out but will come to, um, want to do their own justices . . . I do worry about that. (49, White, mother)

Other participants expressed fear that biased media reports damaged their chances at a fair trial:

The news reporters are knocking on the door and so we just refused to answer it. I think that’s kind of the emotion of the news reporters but I think what it does, and that’s one of the reasons he took the plea bargain, is because he knew there was no way that he would have a fair trial. (56, White, mother)

Participants perceived media portrayals as uniquely damaging. The media spread biased reports that participants believed caused them disdain and affected their loved ones’ trial outcomes. Incomplete media stories in part influence stigmatisation among their social networks.

The system

The third theme shows participants confronting secondary stigma from criminal justice officials. Data in this theme refer to the criminal justice system generally and stigma from police, judges and attorneys. Consider the following quotes: ‘Our criminal justice system doesn’t just punish the offender, they punish the entire family’ (49, White, wife). ‘We must’ve had the cops at our door at 6 in the morning numerous times, banging on the door. They are very rude. You, of course, are treated as if you’re the criminal also’ (71, White, grandmother).

Although there were some statements regarding stigma from prosecutors, judges and police, the most commonly noted source of stigma in the criminal justice system was correctional officers during prison visits. Participants described officers demeaning and disrespecting them while checking into the prison for visits. They felt the officers blamed them for their loved ones’ incarceration and felt that they were treated like inmates: ‘When I would visit him, I would get extremely stressed out because the guards are not nice people. They treat people coming into the prison to visit an inmate almost as if they are inmates themselves’ (44, White, wife). ‘There was one woman who was very busy. I, joking around, said “it’s too bad they don’t give you more help,” and she said, “no, the problem is we need to have less people like your son”’ (68, White, mother).

These results portray the criminal justice system as imposing negative labels not just on people who offend but also their families. Participants often described how confronting criminal justice actors aggravated perceptions of legitimacy towards the legal system.

Self-blame

In the final major theme, participants discussed struggles with self-blame. Many routinely blamed themselves for their loved ones’ alleged offences. Much of their blame is based in regret. They wondered if they had done things differently in the past, perhaps their loved one would not be facing the current circumstances. There is recognition among participants that this self-blame is irrational, but that does not assuage their worries.

The results show three subthemes in participants’ talk of self-blame. The first subtheme was parental regret. It, of course, was unique to parents of incarcerated children, but this particular source of guilt was profound. Participants expressed regret over how they raised their children and described persistent feelings that their child’s incarceration was somehow due to choices they made while raising them:

It was all my fault. I could have done something to prevent this from happening. You know, why didn’t I make him go to church more after he turned 19? Maybe he wouldn’t have had a sexual relation with a girl. Maybe I didn’t instill good enough values in him so that’s why it happened. Maybe I’m being punished. I don’t know. I know that sounds crazy. (49, White, mother)

This regret was not always grounded in actual parenting deficiencies. It was often a generalised and abstract guilt. Even when participants knew they were good parents, there was a sense of insecurity and second-guessing if they did something wrong:

I want to know what I did wrong as a mother. I want to know what I missed. I want to know what I could have done for none of this to happen. But then I know the answer is nothing. Even my daughter, she says ‘Mom, it’s not your fault’. My son will even tell me, ‘Mom it’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong’. But, I have tremendous guilt. I have tremendous guilt over the fact that I couldn’t help my husband. I couldn’t help my son. I couldn’t help anybody! (59, White, mother)

Second, participants expressed guilt about alleged victims. This took two forms. In the first, participants who believed their loved ones were guilty often experienced a sense of responsibility for the victims’ suffering:

When my granddaughter came to me, I think she had been trying to tell me what was going on for a while but in her little child way, and I just didn’t really get it. I think if I had somehow understood her vulnerability I would have made sure that she was in close proximity to us at night. She was in another room far away from us. It’s just like you’re in disbelief. You can’t imagine that anything like that could’ve taken place. (62, White, mother)

In the second, participants who believed their loved ones were innocent often expressed guilt over their apparent role in allowing the accuser to get close to their loved one:

We raised my niece. She moved in with us when she was six. Her parents weren’t very, I mean, they didn’t need kids. They didn’t need to be taking care of kids. I look back now and I think, you know, I kind of wish we wouldn’t have gotten her. I know that sounds selfish because she needed us but then, I mean, we are hurting here. My own daughter, his daughter, can’t even have him because of her. And so, I kind of wish that, you know, we would have never taken her in and this wouldn’t have happened. (37, White, wife)

In the third subtheme, some participants described redemption. These participants overcame their sense of guilt. Some attributed their redemption to their religious faith:

Should I have seen any signs of this? Is there something I should have done? What could I have done to stop this? But I think I kind of worked through all that. I think I turned to God a lot for that one. I believe [my son] is innocent. I don’t believe that there is anything there that I should have foreseen or that I should have watched more closely. My walk with God has helped me on that one. (61, White, mother)

Other participants realised over time that the past cannot be changed and decided to focus on the future:

I can’t keep looking back with, ‘I should have done this, I could have done this’. I came to the point where I realised I can’t change the past. I still feel guilty about it, yes. But, what can I do with it? All I can do is move forward now and do what needs to be done now at this time. That’s all we can do now. That is what we are focusing on now, all of us. What can we do to help him now? What can we do to help him get a future now? The past is done. Yeah, I definitely felt guilty. (51, Hispanic, mother)

The commonality within this subtheme is that overcoming guilt takes time.

Thematic content analysis revealed four sources of secondary stigma among families and partners of incarcerated persons: social networks, media, the system, and self-blame. Data suggest that social networks and media, in particular, interact. Stigma from social networks derives from sensationalised reporting designed to garner public attention. It is plausible that all these sources of blame and guilt interact in complex ways. The following section discusses these and other implications.

Discussion

A conviction for a sex offence can produce such a powerful stigma for those ensnared in the system that even family members face its repercussions. An otherwise invisible stigma, media can broadcast or publish names and reenact criminal events on television, newspapers, or in police blotters that could alert family, friends and neighbours and trigger or exacerbate secondary stigma. The backlash this causes significant others of the sexual offence convicted, or even accused, could increase with frequency and sensationalising of reporting. Families may have to adjust to life-altering hindrances due to their support of someone incarcerated or registered for a sex offence.

This study indicates that families of a currently or previously incarcerated person convicted of a sex offence foremost stand to lose social networks. Some feel persistent guilt and responsibility for their family member’s wrongdoing or their incarceration and/or registration. Many change routines to avoid encounters with others so they do not have to withhold or explain their family member’s offence or absence. Others lie to so they do not risk losing relationships. Negative changes are compounded by increased child-rearing responsibilities for family on the outside and their need to modify spending habits to compensate for financial deficits and/or to provide money for phone calls and commissary for incarcerated loved ones. In an ideal criminal justice system, only those who commit crime would be punished.

The findings of this study contribute to the literature on the familial consequences of incarceration in several ways. The extant literature suggests that secondary stigma can involve self-blame, wherein family members and significant others accept responsibility for their loved ones’ actions due to a perceived sense of self-failure (Nussbaum, 2009). These results show that family members blame themselves for supposed parenting failures, for failing to protect their loved ones’ victims, and/or for failing to protect their loved ones from accusers. Notably, participants often knew their self-blame was irrational – that they did not fail their loved ones and were not actually responsible for what happened – but their guilt persisted nevertheless.

These findings indicate that those stigmatised by association to a sexual offence may refrain from telling others about their loved one’s alleged sexual offence or use selective disclosure to limit details and protect themselves. Controlling other peoples’ knowledge of their loved one’s sex offence is important. Fear that others will find out looms large. They anticipate judgement from others and when they experience it, they feel a powerful sense of loss and solitude. Family members interviewed went to great lengths to prevent friends, coworkers, and even extended family from finding out about their loved one’s sex offence. Incomplete narratives presented in media and shared among their social networks compounded their fear of judgement and self-blame.

The criminal justice system contributes to secondary stigmatisation. Given the recent number of RSOs in the United States (over 860,000 and rising; National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 2016), in addition to the amount of people with current or prior criminal justice involvement, the impact of incarceration on families and significant others could be staggering. By 2015, more than 70 million people in the United States had a criminal record (Friedman, 2015). Thousands of citizens nationwide are related to or live with an RSO and millions more are associated with someone with a criminal record, thus subject to stigma by association. That several parent respondents lost friendships because of their child’s conviction reveals the reach of sex offender stigma and the public’s general disdain of RSOs.

As society grapples with the impact of sex offender (specifically) and criminal (generally) stigma on rehabilitation, reintegration and recidivism, the question becomes, who should have access to sex offender registry information and criminal records? The media has considerable power to broadcast names and personal information of presumed offenders and details of supposed offences. In the case of wrongfully accused or convicted individuals and their families, this could unjustly punish and stigmatise them. Even if offence details are true, media sensationalising invites silent scorn, at best, and at worst could incite victimisation against RSOs or their families from private citizens. Sex offender registries in the United States, which make public the personal information of people convicted of sex offences, have resulted in documented instances of acts of vigilantism against those who were incarcerated for or merely accused of a sexual offence or associated with someone who was registered or accused (Cubellis, Evans and Fera, 2019). Although sex offender registries serve different purposes than the news media, both can put family members at risk. For family or roommates, registries create even greater risk because they make home addresses publicly available.

The familial experience of stigma in relation to a close relative’s incarceration is compounded when the conviction is of a sexual nature. Incarceration for any offence can stigmatise individuals and their families, but people convicted of sexual offences are among the most stigmatised in American society (Hlavka and Uggen, 2008; Mustaine and Tewksbury, 2011). The revulsion that sexual crimes evoke is in part due to the cultural conflict between sexual obsession sex-negativity (Evans, 2012). This manifests as adverse reactions to those convicted of sexual crimes, which can extend to families, especially when they share a residence. The sex offender registry has placed some families at higher risk because in addition to including a photograph and descriptive information of the individual, it also lists a home address. Given the unique punishment of sex offender registration that can last a lifetime and the fear and the derision that some convicted of a sexual offence believe eclipses that of people convicted of murder or terrorist acts (Evans, 2012), families of those convicted of a sexual offence appear to face some of the most severe stigma by association.

If isolation, familial separation, and financial and relational hardships are understood to be the consequences of imprisonment, policies must insulate families from the collateral damage of incarceration. Patients’ medical records must remain protected. Data collected from research participants are kept confidential and private. The media should be limited in its power to stigmatise as long as the criminal justice system is responsible for rendering and administering punishment. The Council of Europe (2018) created guidelines to ensure that the media do not infringe on the families of children with incarcerated parents and ‘to avoid negative stereotyping and stigmatisation of children with imprisoned parents’ (Article VIII). In the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), Article 2 – the right to non-discrimination based on the status of one’s parent, and Article 16 – the right to protection of privacy, would protect children with an incarcerated parent (Tobin, 2019). The United States is the only country that has not ratified the UNCRC, which would hold the media in the United States to ethical guidelines regarding the privacy of names and identifying information of arrested, convicted, and incarcerated persons. If the media identify accused or convicted perpetrators, only facts of criminal cases should be presented without sensationalising. Public fascination with crime news could be minimised with more responsible reporting. Local police departments in the United States should retain records of RSOs and only share them with the public when necessary for public safety. Publicly accessible registries create unnecessary fear and do not fulfil public safety objectives (Agan, 2011).

Education and social media campaigns could be effective tools to de-stigmatise family members of incarcerated persons. Other educational and social media-based movements have demonstrated success in changing narratives of previously stigmatised, and mostly hidden, groups of people. The #MeToo movement drew widespread attention by encouraging victims of sexual harassment and assault to use the hashtag and add visibility to the prevalence of sexual victimisation (Abrams, 2017). To some extent, the movement attenuated the stigma of being a victim of a sexual offence and empowered victims to report their perpetrators. Early education should address knowing one’s rights and basic criminal justice processes and outcomes. Formerly incarcerated individuals should be encouraged to speak publicly about their experiences, much like how credible messengers influence youth in communities at high risk for violence. To address familial guilt, restorative justice could be offered to interested victims, offenders and family members of both. Comprehensive and wide-ranging policies can gradually reduce the stigma of incarceration, both for the criminally convicted and their families and loved ones. The stigma of sexual offending, however, will be more difficult to mitigate.

Conclusion

Families of those convicted of a criminal offence may experience various repercussions that depend on the nature and severity of the offence. When the offence is of a sexual nature, the negative backlash appears to be even greater, particularly in the United States where registries publicise details of individuals convicted of sexual offences. Family members at times blame themselves and face adverse treatment, either from their social networks, correctional officers during prison visits or both. The media further compounds this difficulty by broadcasting biased stories in favour of attracting viewers rather than presenting an impartial story. This study builds on research addressing the familial effects of incarceration, but with a focus on the most stigmatised criminal group in the United States. Scholarship should continue to address how families are impacted by the criminal justice system because this population is often overlooked in such discussions.

Future research should consider the experiences and perceptions of stigma at different race, gender and class intersections. It is likely that people at different demographic intersections experience stigmatisation differently. People of colour, for instance, may perceive dual stigmatisation and thus have markedly different experiences. Homeless people who were Black and male are rated as more dangerous (Markowitz and Syverson, 2019) and audit research shows that Black job applicants with a criminal record are dually stigmatised (Pager, 2008). In the United States in particular, stereotypes associate Black men with crime to such an extent that race and gender intersections may strongly influence the stigma applied to offenders and their loved ones (Van Cleve and Mayes, 2015). Future research should also gather data from more a generalisable sample of significant others of RSOs. Participants should include more diverse backgrounds and those whose loved ones were convicted of a wide range of sex offences. Increasing the external validity of results would enhance understanding of secondary stigma and, ultimately, how to remedy the damage done to loved ones. Finally, research could incorporate qualitative and quantitative data for mixed-methods analyses. This would allow researchers to identify causal relationships and provide a richer, more detailed account of family members’ and significant others’ experiences with secondary stigma.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Douglas Evans

Notes

Author biographies

Douglas Evans is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He teaches college courses at correctional facilities in New York and New Jersey. His research interests include reentry reintegration, racial bias and criminal stigma, higher education programs in prisons, and intersections of mass incarceration, public health, and family members of the currently and formerly incarcerated. He received his Ph.D. from Indiana University.

Adam Trahan is Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of North Texas. He received his PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington. His research interests focus on the familial consequences of incarceration, capital punishment, jury behavior, and intersections of race, class, and gender.

Kaleigh Laird is a doctoral student in the Criminology and Criminal Justice program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include capital punishment, jury behavior, and prisoner reentry.

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