133  2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0192-3234/2008/0037-0002$10.00 Joseph Murray and David P. Farrington The Effects of Parental Imprisonment on Children ABSTRACT The number of children experiencing parental imprisonment is increasing in Western industrialized countries. Parental imprisonment is a risk factor for child antisocial behavior, offending, mental health problems, drug abuse, school failure, and unemployment. However, very little is known about whether parental imprisonment causes these problems. Parental im- prisonment might cause adverse child outcomes because of the trauma of parent-child separation, stigma, or social and economic strain. Children may have worse reactions to parental imprisonment if their mother is im- prisoned or if parents are imprisoned for longer periods of time or in more punitive social contexts. Children should be protected from harmful effects of parental imprisonment by using family-friendly prison practices, financial assistance, parenting programs, and sentences that are less stig- matizing for offenders and their families. Children of prisoners have been called the “forgotten victims” of crime (Matthews 1983), the “orphans of justice” (Shaw 1992a), the “hidden victims of imprisonment” (Cunningham and Baker 2003), “the Cin- derella of penology” (Shaw 1987, p. 3), and the “unseen victims of the prison boom” (Petersilia 2005, p. 34). Given the strong evidence that crime runs in families (Farrington, Barnes, and Lambert 1996; Far- rington et al. 2001), the long interest in “broken homes” and crime (Bowlby 1946; McCord, McCord, and Thurber 1962; Juby and Far- rington 2001), and the large increase in rates of imprisonment in West- Joseph Murray is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Crim- inology and research fellow, Darwin College, University of Cambridge. David P. Farrington is professor of psychological criminology at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. We thank Terrie Moffitt, Friedrich Lo ¨sel, Christopher Wildeman, Martin Killias, Christopher Mumola, Marc Mauer, Holly Foster, and Michael Tonry for helpful comments, and Henara Costa for help producing the essay.