The Antisocial Behavior of the Adolescent Children of Incarcerated Parents: A Developmental Perspective

By virtue of their developmental stage, it is the adolescents of incarcerated parents who have the potential to have the greatest impact on society at large, and in this paper, we focus on the most powerful problem that they can exhibit, antisocial behavior. We overview the relationship between parental criminality and incarceration and adolescent antisocial behavior, discuss how these factors might be linked through parenting, place this link within the context of the life course development of antisocial behavior, and then discuss interventions that might make a difference in improving outcomes for the children of incarcerated parents.