Global Prisoners’ Families is a research network dedicated to exploring and amplifying scholarship on the varied ways criminal legal systems stigmatise, punish and disrupt the lives of justice-involved families on a local and global scale.

Bringing together academics, practitioners, and advocates from across disciplines and regions, the network seeks to provide a collaborative space to share research, foster dialogue, and better understand how the imprisonment of a kin member is experienced by families. 

Global Prisoners’ Families aims to advance critical understandings of the relationship between families, criminal justice and the wider effects of punishment worldwide.

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!