In the United Kingdom, the family has long been the subject of policy concern. Often connected to wider issues of welfare, education and health, the family unit has previously been situated as a governable space to regulate boundaries of, and conformity to, acceptable conduct as law-abiding citizens (Simon, 2007). Within the context of crime and justice, efforts to responsibilize non-State actors have led to the dispersal of responsibility for crime control and prevention. The family has not been exempt from this trend. In this paper we address the question: Through what method(s) does the State seek to regulate families of those subjected to criminal justice and, so, control crime in the UK? Our analysis identifies several methods through which the State seeks to regulate the responsibilities expected of families, served by a host of civil orders and criminal sanctions as well as stigmas attached to the failure to police their relatives’ transgressions. These strategies reinforce precarious citizenship: a state of quasi-criminality by which the State seeks to regulate families who have ‘failed’ to prevent relatives from offending, and ‘failed’ to rehabilitate, re-integrate, and reform members to become ‘good’ citizens. We argue that, if the State is to ask families to take responsibility for matters of prevention and rehabilitation, then this must be placed within the context of aggressive retrenchment of welfare and which, more broadly, speak to an inequality of arms (by gender, race, class) in an individual’s capacity to fulfil responsibilities (King et al., 2021).

This paper, existing at the intersection of prisoners' families research, penal politics and social anthropology, draws on Garbarino's (1995) conceptualisation of familial toxicity to suggest that 'caregivers' on the margins are systematically punished by state actors on account of their relationship to criminal offenders. Adopting an understanding of 'the State' as a violent means through which the most vulnerable are deemed deserving of punishment––often on the basis of their own marginality––I contend that designated 'care workers' are rendered responsible for the crimes of their kin (O'Brien 2008).

Building on recent work by sociologist Imogen Tyler (2020), I offer a theoretical reconsideration of stigma as a political tool operated by state institutions to shame, other, and disappear those seen as threatening the social good. I further posit that, in creating folk devils out of offenders' mothers, those who perform the 'moral labour' of motherhood are rendered secondary criminals by the State itself.

Highlighting the myriad ways in which intersectional experiences of marginalisation shape vulnerable women's experiences with the carceral state, this paper considers the role of stigma in stratifying, excluding, and punishing the kin of offenders––often under the guise of state protection and paradoxical humanitarian logics.

This paper exists as part of a broader theoretical project that maps the connections between sociological, political, and criminogenic constructions of the family––ultimately relying on these disciplinary intersections to better understand the contemporary family's role in times of political transition.

Stigma is a well-documented adversity facing families and children of prisoners (e.g. Condry 2007, Kita, 2024 Hutton, 2018, Kotova, 2020) which negatively affects health and well-being and fuels social marginalisation and exclusion. This paper discusses the social stigmatisation of families who experienced paternal imprisonment. It presents data from qualitative interviews with 36 women aged between 28 to 54 years who took part in the Families and Imprisonment Research (FAIR) study, a mixed-method prospective longitudinal study in the UK which followed family experiences of paternal imprisonment over a period of seven years. Drawing on the women’s narratives it offers an intersectional perspective on stigma, illustrating how class, race and ethnicity nuance the extent to which the (threat of) stigmatisation associated with the father's imprisonment is perceived and experienced. We discuss ways in which women navigate and resist stigma from different sectors within society and the strategies they employ to protect their families.