Global Prisoners' Families seeks to draw together academics from across the world to better understand how the imprisonment of a family member is experienced by the rest of the family.

Furthermore, the network aims to highlight research exploring the varied ways in which criminal legal processes stigmatise, punish and disrupt the lives of justice-involved families on the local and global scale.

Global Prisoners' Families is based in Oxford. It originated when a small group of scholars, whose work centred on the families of prisoners, were brought together for a two day symposium in Oxford in 2016. From that symposium the book 'Prisons, Punishment and the Family: Towards a new sociology of punishment'  (OUP) was produced in 2018. Since then, the group has developed a network which includes more than 50 scholars worldwide active in prisoners' families research. The network ultimately seeks to work towards the production, exchange and dissemination of research on justice-involved families.

In this burgeoning field, much work has focused on the UK, United States, Australia and Europe. As such, the network intentionally seeks to raise the profile of research taking place in the Global South. 

Global Prisoners' Families welcomes scholarship across a range of disciplines and topics, as well as relevant blog postings to be highlighted on this page. The network also regularly organises panels at a series of academic conferences across the world each year.

Please reach out to adam.kluge@crim.ox.ac.uk if you are interested in getting involved!