All research and evidence on NICCO is reviewed using a Quality Assessment Tool (QAT) developed by the University of Huddersfield and Barnardo's.
Research and evidence is assessed in four key areas: Methodological Quality, Child-Centredness, Relevance to Policy and Strategy, and Relevance to Practice with offender's children. This ensures that items on the NICCO website are as useful as possible to academics, practitioners, commissioners and other professionals. For more information about the development of the QAT or to review research in order to list it on NICCO, please see the QAT webpage where you can download the Tool, Guidebook and a short step-by-step 'How To' document. Please contact us to submit quality assessed research on to NICCO.
Click on the icons to see a full list of items which have been awarded a standard icon or icon+ (for items which have scored particularly highly) in each key area:
Results 1 - 6 of 8
This is a report of the outcomes and recommendations of a number of projects run as part of a bid won from National Offender Management Service (NOMS) by the West Midlands.
The pilot projects were run in prisons and later within wider communities across the area. The aim of the project was to provide evidence about the longer term impact of improved contact with children and families on rehabilitation, crime reduction and safer communities. The project also aimed to provide a partnership structure and environment for future collaborative multi/interagency work. The areas of focus and improvement were visits (the need for efficient data capturing, visitor facilities and family information), education (the need for consistency, accreditation and family involvement in parenting programmes) and community partnerships (the need for raised awareness of the "hidden sentence" and training around this, building partnerships, working with prisons, school policy and outreach).
See Families Do Matter below:
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This report looks at and aims to raise awareness of the realities of having a parent in prison.
In-depth interviews were conducted with Mothers and Children with a Father in prison. The findings are analysed within the five Every Child Matters outcomes which include economic achievement, enjoying and achieving, being healthy, staying safe and making positive contributions. Challenges around maintaining family ties are also found and discussed here. The report holds many quotes from the Mothers and Children interviewed. Implications for policy and practice are highlighted, such as the recording of children of offenders and the courts' responsibility to take children's wellbeing into consideration when sentencing.
See Every Night You Cry below:
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This report looks at the development of policy and practice with regards to women offenders, six years after the Corston Report was first published.
The report makes a series of recommendations about the government's review of the female custodial estate, including a proposal for the review to examine support for the development and sustainability of family ties. The report comments on how far a 'whole system approach' has been developed for women offenders, and points out the impact that supporting offenders' children can have on intergenerational offending. Recommendations include; the impact of a parent's imprisonment on children should be considered both at the sentencing stage and after imprisonment; and the Troubled Families programme should explicitly direct support to children with parents involved in the criminal justice system.
See Women offenders: after the Corston Report below:
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This research was conducted in light of the fact that charities help facilitate contact and visits to family members inside, who are 39% less likely to re-offend as a result, but measuring the difference charities make can be difficult due to poor recording and lack of available funds for evaluation purposes.
Think NPC worked with 6 charities (Action for Prisoners' Families, Kids VIP, pact, POPS, Safe Ground and Storybook Dads) to identify common frameworks of understanding and key areas of measurement including; changes in family relationships and experience of those visiting. Think NPC devised 2 questionnaires. The findings reveal which programmes worked for the families. Recommendations are around the government improving measurement, developing the measurement tools such as the one designed as part of the research and developing a shared approach to measurement e.g. flexibility.
Read about this shared measurement approach below:
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This study investigates whether the caring responsibilities of a defendant mother are treated as personal mitigation to reduce sentence length in England and Wales.
The peer-reviewed research uses a combination of textual analysis of secondary data (transcripts of Crown Court sentencing remarks) and interview data. The research found that there is inconsistency in the application of personal mitigation to sentencing due to the exercise of judicial discretion. Judges with a greater understanding of the impact of prison on women are more likely to order pre-sentence reports, and if a judge has a pre-sentence report the defendant's motherhood has a greater likelihood of mitigating the sentence.
For open access to the article see Mitigating Motherhood below:
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This chapter of Crime and Justice: a Review of Research written by top researchers in the field starts on the premise that there is little known about whether parental imprisonment causes problems (known as risk factors) such as anti-social behaviour, offending, mental health problems, drug abuse, school failure and unemployment.
This peer-reviewed research looks at parental imprisonment being the cause of these poor outcomes because of the strain of parent/child separation, stigma etc and also the differences between children's reactions based on parents sentence length, which parent is imprisoned and the social context. Various studies looking at parental imprisonment are discussed and summarised. The researchers conclude that children of prisoners have about three times the risk for antisocial behavior compared to their peers, and twice the risk of mental health problems. Furthermore, the researchers state that whilst few studies investigate the relationship between parental imprisonment and child drinking, drug, education, and employment outcomes (and those that do are based on unrepresentative samples, meaning that results should be treated with caution) - studies to date suggest that parental imprisonment is a risk factor for school failure, drug abuse and unemployment. However, parental imprisonment was not consistently associated with drinking problems. The research recommends children's protection from harmful effects of parental imprisonment by the use of family friendly prison practices, financial assistance, parenting programmes and sentences which are less stigmatising given social context.
Please download the effects of parental imprisonment on children below:
