Fatherhood in the Penal System

Many prisoners are fathers. In contrast to the USA or the UK, however, the conditions for success and hurdles for prisoners in connection with their parenthood have hardly been researched in Germany. Based on group discussions with fathers in two Berlin prisons, the construction of paternal identities in prison is being explored in the sense of user-orientated basic research (Fischer et al., 2005).

The pilot study "Fatherhood in Prison" focusses on the question of how imprisoned fathers construct the "father role" for themselves in the prison context, use it for internal and external negotiation processes and how it becomes effective in their actions. Fathers with and without contact to their children are included.

The data analysis is carried out in cooperation with prison researcher Dr. Sinem Bozkurt from Westminster University in London.