Who cares?: The burdens of care borne by the loved ones of incarcerated men

Abstract

The labor and associated challenges of providing informal care have been characterized as constituting a burden of care (BoC). Despite the analytical value this concept has demonstrated in studies of nursing, psychiatry, and health administration, researchers have overlooked this phenomenon in the context of incarceration. Using 181 longitudinal interviews conducted between April 2020 and January 2021 with 29 loved ones of men incarcerated across Canada, we examine the experiences of caregivers trying to meet the outstanding needs of incarcerated people. We find that the BoC arose when caregivers compensated for the correctional system's (real or perceived) failed responsibility to fulfill the basic needs of incarcerated people relating to rehabilitation and release planning, as well as their legal advocacy requirements. We position the BoC as a component of secondary prisonization and use the framework to accentuate the roles caregivers played in reducing the care deficit incarcerated people experienced and, by extension, augmenting the functionality of the prison system. We suggest ways to promote less onerous carceral and reintegrative terms by reducing the unmet needs of incarcerated people and, by extension, the BoC that caregivers bore.

Introduction

Informal caregivers regularly attend to the needs of loved ones with health concerns or disabilities (CDC, 2022), often experiencing challenges and strains affecting their well-being and relationships (Figley, 1995; Hoenig and Hamilton, 1966, 1969). Such “burdens of care” (BoC) have been studied extensively in nursing, psychiatry, and health administration. However, criminologists have generally overlooked this phenomenon as it applies to loved ones providing informal care to incarcerated people, including social, financial, mental health, release planning, and legal support (Comfort et al., 2017; Kjellstrand et al., 2022).

To better understand the burdens borne by those who provide informal care to incarcerated people (hereafter caregivers), we conducted longitudinal research between April 2020 and January 2021 with 29 loved ones of men incarcerated in provincial or federal institutions across Canada. In this context, the BoC refers to the responsibility caregivers absorbed in compensating for the correctional system's real or perceived failures to meet the basic needs of incarcerated people (Sufrin, 2019, p. 51). Here, the BoC had objective components associated with caregiving tasks, such as rehabilitation and release planning, that exacerbated its subjective components, which involve the degree to which caregivers perceived a burden associated with those caregiving responsibilities. Such tasks perpetuated caregivers’ feelings of exhaustion and psychological strain (Hoenig and Hamilton, 1966, 1969) related to their efforts to provide rehabilitative support, release planning, and advocacy.

The BoC can be understood as a component of secondary prisonization. It encompasses the psychological and social impacts on loved ones who have distant but ongoing interactions with the correctional system (Comfort, 2003) and whose unpaid care work becomes systematically woven into their lives. For the participants in our study, the BoC arose from their dealings with a prison bureaucracy that they perceived as tacitly relying on their labor to fulfill otherwise unmet (or poorly addressed) carceral needs (hereafter ‘unmet needs’), further entangling them in the prison system. Whether or not these responsibilities fell within Correction's official mandate, our participants believed the prison system was responsible for (but often fell short of) addressing needs related to rehabilitation, release planning, and advocacy. We demonstrate that the BoC significantly shaped how caregivers experienced their encounters with the prison bureaucracy, where the nature and extent of such burdens were related to personal, interpersonal, and institutional factors.

Our findings broaden the concept of carceral burdens (Dolovich, 2011) and nuance the BoC framework by highlighting how caregivers adopted the unmet needs of incarcerated people. The BoC produced in these interactions was the result of systemic strains arising from the carceral system's real or perceived failings rather than negative actions or symptoms of incarcerated people (Hoenig and Hamilton, 1966). We also expand on the needs of incarcerated people that Dolovich (2011) identifies (i.e., “basic needs”) and foreground additional needs, including those related to rehabilitation, reintegration, and advocacy. Broadening the concept of carceral burdens uncovers the (often invisible) value of caregivers’ unpaid care work in the context of incarceration.

Finally, we complicate Hoenig and Hamilton's (1966) conceptualization of the BoC framework as comprising two siloed components—objective and subjective burdens. Our findings highlight the intersections between these two forms of burdens and foreground how, for our participants, the former exacerbated the latter. The interplay between objective and subjective BoC shaped participants’ interactions with the prison administration and relationships with their loved ones, often fostering a deep resentment toward the prison system. Feeling obliged to address needs they believed were better provided by the system itself, participants were resolved to offer the best care possible for their incarcerated kin. Still, they were often exhausted by and disillusioned with the process and consequently became disinclined to collaborate with a system they perceived as callous, ineffectual, and disinterested. In these interactions, we emphasize how systems of punishment permeate beyond prison walls and into the lives of caregivers.

Our concluding discussion uses the BoC framework to accentuate the invaluable role caregivers play for incarcerated people and, by extension, how their efforts contribute to the functioning of the prison system. We suggest ways to promote less onerous carceral and reintegrative terms by reducing the unmet needs of incarcerated people and, by extension, the BoC caregivers experience.

The place of social support networks in the lives of incarcerated people

Social support networks help bridge the gap between prison and the community. They can sustain people's health and well-being while incarcerated (Comfort, 2003, 2009), contribute to successful release planning (Comfort et al., 2017), and assist in reintegration (Fahmy, 2021). The availability of social support networks during imprisonment also predicts supportive relationships post-release, making them vital for people who interact with the criminal justice system (CJS) (Mowen et al., 2019). Upon release, nearly 90% of formerly incarcerated people rely on social support networks to provide socio-emotional support and financial assistance and to organize critical resources like housing, transportation, employment, and healthcare (Kjellstrand et al., 2022). Having such resources available can reduce recidivism (Mowen et al., 2019).

While some social networks are associated with criminogenic risk factors (Codd, 2007), there is near consensus on the importance of positive support in facilitating less burdensome prison and reintegration experiences (Comfort, 2009). The effectiveness of such support is contingent on its nature, frequency, and the mechanisms involved (Kjellstrand et al., 2022), all of which differ by the race, gender, age, and criminal history of the provider (Pettus-Davis et al., 2018).

We conceptualize loved ones who adopt unmet needs as “caregivers” to foreground the value of their labor in the lives of incarcerated people and to highlight how that labor helps supplement the functionality of the prison system. We find that care work in the carceral context produces considerable burdens as caregivers try to compensate for the system's characteristic care deficits. This burden, in turn, affects caregivers’ well-being and interpersonal relationships and shapes their interactions with carceral institutions.

Caregivers’ interactions with the criminal justice system

Caregivers’ social, emotional, and financial situations are often transformed by their encounters with the CJS (Mowen et al., 2019). They report struggling with the time and costs of communicating with incarcerated loved ones, purchasing canteen essentials, and traveling long distances for brief visits (Johnna, 2005). In doing so, caregivers spend time, money, and energy trying to navigate an ever-changing, unfamiliar, and often indifferent prison bureaucracy (McDonald et al., 2023).

Such burdens extend beyond release as caregivers continue to support the emotional, financial, and social needs of formerly incarcerated people (Wakefield, 2022). Caregivers often organize and subsidize housing, food, transportation, legal fees, debt, and childcare for recently released individuals—regularly bearing the temporal and financial burdens formerly incarcerated people face while struggling to find safe, adequate, and stable employment (Comfort et al., 2017).

Caregivers also endure secondary prisonization in their interactions with a carceral system that curtails their rights and makes them feel dehumanized (Comfort, 2003). These interactions are destabilizing and can damage caregivers’ sense of self, well-being, and relationships with incarcerated people (McDonald et al., 2023). In examining caregiving in the penal context, we position the BoC as a distinct form of secondary prisonization where caregivers’ interactions with the system diminished their sense of well-being and strained their relationships with incarcerated people. We found the BoC to be one repercussion of the prison system's systemic reliance on the unpaid labor of caregivers to meet the needs of incarcerated people. Consequently, such burdens were woven into the carceral experiences of caregivers, drawing them deeper into persistent encounters with the system and producing deep resentment.

Burden of care

The BoC is a multi-dimensional phenomenon encompassing a spectrum of perceived strains and negative responses experienced by caregivers (e.g., stress, dissatisfaction, work-family conflict, and loss of leisure activities) (Kim and Lee, 2022). These burdens arise with a breakdown of reciprocal relationships between institutions and caregivers, resulting in an actual or perceived unequal distribution of caregiving responsibilities (Fadden et al., 1987, p. 285).

According to Hoenig and Hamilton (1966, 1969), the BoC is experienced objectively and subjectively. The objective component involves negative experiences arising from caregiving tasks (e.g., financial strain, diminished health and well-being, disruptions to daily life) or caregiver strain arising from unexpected negative actions or symptoms displayed by the “patient” (e.g., restlessness, uncooperativeness, self-harming) (Hoenig and Hamilton, 1966, p. 167). These objective burdens are experienced to differing subjective degrees and impact the perceived strain of the caregiving role (Hoenig and Hamilton, 1966). The subjective dimension, in contrast, refers to the degree to which individuals perceive their caregiving tasks as constituting a burden.

Most BoC literature focuses on people who care for those with mental and/or physical illnesses within hospitals (Fadden et al., 1987) and the home (Parks, 2003). Studies examine a wide range of factors, including the degree of experienced burden and burdensome symptoms (Hoenig and Hamilton, 1966, 1969), the impact of burdens on social relationships and mental health (Zhong et al., 2016), burdens among those experiencing financial precarity (O'Shea and Monaghan, 2017), perceptions of and attitudes towards illness (Zawadzki et al., 2011), and the effectiveness of community-based care models for reducing the BoC (O'Shea and Monaghan, 2017). While some prison research implicitly acknowledges activities that can involve a BoC, it does so within the context of formal caregiving by correctional officers and concentrates on emotional labor (Johnston and Ricciardelli, 2022) or discusses how loved ones cope with stressors associated with caregiving (Christian et al., 2015). These works do not address how informal caregivers understand and navigate care work in the context of incarceration or how caregiving is shaped by their distant but ongoing interactions with the prison system.

Hoenig and Hamilton (1966) contend that the BoC is tied to the context of the caregiving role, not the demographic characteristics of the caregiver—a heavily debated point, particularly regarding the gendered nature of caregiving (Del-Pino-Casado et al., 2018; Kim and Lee, 2022). Some studies find women are more likely to adopt caregiving roles because of a socialized propensity toward nurturing tasks (Codd, 2007; Fadden et al., 1987). Others argue that, despite a lack of comprehensive research on male caregivers, the quality and duration of caregiving and its subsequent stressors do not differ based on gender (Kim and Lee, 2022). Instead, gender-based differences in the BoC may be moderated by interactional factors like the kinship status of the recipient, age, socioeconomic status, sense of mastery, self-esteem, the cultural background and ethnicity of the caregiver, and type of care required (e.g., mental, physical, palliative) (Del-Pino-Casado et al., 2018; Kim and Lee, 2022).

To decrease the BoC, some have suggested increasing hospitalization and outpatient psychiatric services (Hoenig and Hamilton, 1966). Others agree that enhanced institutional care reduces the need for informal caregiving to subsidize formal services (Lee et al., 2014). In theory, such improved services would reduce the state's reliance on women's unpaid labor and foster civic engagement and economic mobility (Lee et al., 2014). Others have called for alternative formal care arrangements to reduce the burdens experienced by informal caregivers (Parks, 2003).

We broaden the study of BoC by examining informal caregiving in the context of incarceration. By positioning it as a unique branch of secondary prisonization, we nuance the BoC framework by outlining how caregivers assume responsibilities for meeting the needs of incarcerated people and the myriad of burdens produced in their attempts to counter the carceral care deficit. We further challenge Hoenig and Hamilton's (1966) siloed conceptualization by highlighting how objective BoC exacerbate its subjective components. We also position the BoC as arising from systemic harms of the carceral system rather than negative actions or symptoms displayed by the incarcerated person. Such harms manifest individually and distinctively in caregivers’ relationships with their incarcerated loved ones and their interactions with formal institutions. This consequently shapes how caregivers and incarcerated people experience and navigate imprisonment.

Methods

In March 2020, COVID-19 halted our in-person prison research. At that time, two community-based support groups for loved ones of incarcerated men reached out to ask if we would undertake a study of how the pandemic might affect them and their incarcerated kin. Our team pursued this suggestion and conducted longitudinal interviews to explore how participants were experiencing the evolving pandemic. ¹ Participants gave direct and ancillary insights into their caregiver roles in these conversations. They spoke of the joys of caring for their incarcerated loved ones and the burdens that accompanied their interactions with a prison system that curtailed their efforts. While we conducted our study during COVID-19, it was clear that participants’ struggles were systemic and predated the pandemic.

We used snowball sampling to recruit 32 individuals whose loved ones were currently incarcerated, relying primarily on referrals from people who belonged to the support groups who initially contacted us. Three individuals withdrew from the study, leaving 29 participants as the basis of analysis. Of this, three incarcerated men received early release/parole or completed their sentences during the study. All participants discussed some form of caring for their incarcerated loved one.

Participants received a $35 food-related gift card (e.g., grocery store, Starbucks, etc.) for their initial interview. They were compensated with a $50 gift card for each set of three follow-up interviews, which was prorated based on the number of interviews completed. On average, participants completed five follow-up interviews. Although there were no geographic restrictions on the location of participants, most resided in the western province of Alberta. All participants’ loved ones were serving sentences in federal or provincial prisons across Canada that ranged from eight months to life. In Canada, federal prisons detain people sentenced to two years or more, and provincial/remand facilities hold those awaiting sentencing or those sentenced to less than two years. The federal prison system in Canada is responsible for prisoner reintegration. Provinces, however, do not have such a mandate. While our sample consists of 20 loved ones with kin in federal prisons, 8 in provincial institutions, and 1 in immigration detention (a provincial institution), we draw exclusively on those whose loved ones are held in federal detention to highlight the unmet burdens they carry. Ninety percent of our sample identified as female and were the girlfriends, friends, spouses, ex-spouses, and mothers of their incarcerated loved ones. All participants’ incarcerated loved ones were identified as male.

Given COVID-19 restrictions, interviews were conducted by phone, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams. Baseline interviews commenced in April 2020, one month after the COVID-19 lockdowns began, and our team of 15 researchers interviewed the same participants every two to four weeks for the next ten months (until January 2021) to capture the rapidly changing nature of carceral relations. All participants provided oral consent before participating in the interviews. We completed 181 interviews—an average of six per participant. Baseline interviews ranged from one to two hours, and follow-ups from 15 min to one hour. We recorded all interviews and transcribed them verbatim. While participants mainly discussed personal experiences, some described second or third-hand incidents that occurred in prison or that were recounted by other caregivers. We cannot confirm the accuracy of these accounts, though we recognize the importance of all such narratives in shaping participants’ perceptions of their situation (Presser and Sandberg, 2015).

We analyzed all data thematically using an inductive grounded theory approach and hand coded additional subthemes derived from a closed coding system (Emerson et al. 2011). This provided a more nuanced understanding of how caregivers experienced the BoC in the context of incarceration. Participants described many instances where they assumed unmet needs, most prominently in arrangements related to (1) rehabilitation, (2) release planning, and (3) advocacy.

Findings

Rehabilitation

One prominent issue raised by caregivers was a lack of rehabilitative services in prison, which they saw as unproductive and detrimental to their loved ones’ well-being and prospects upon release. To address these shortcomings, caregivers undertook various rehabilitative tasks to the best of their abilities, which they admitted were often limited. They did their best while managing daily stressors on top of their caregiving roles. For example, Elle, ² whose husband was incarcerated and struggled with PTSD and addiction, indicated the lack of available prison programming weighed heavily on her. When asked if her loved one had support in prison, she responded

Oh no, in there it's absolutely ridiculous. It's hard. I’ve come a long way with him. I’ve been working with him very hard for the last four years, trying to be very patient. I mean, I offer as much support as I can and I was visiting five days a week, trying to pull him out of the negative environment to give him a normal person to associate with. It's helping him, definitely. But, right now, we can’t see him at all [due to the pandemic]. […] Before, I was spending about 20 hours a week with him. I was able to work with him, teach him right from wrong and what a normal person is and how to deal with things on a day-to-day basis. But yeah, he doesn’t have any support. Not in there. For anything. Even his addictions.

Elle elaborated on how managing her husband's mental health meant she had to maintain a positive mindset, even when she was struggling:

Right now, his mental health is pretty good. We talk a lot. I try not to stress him out. I try not to show that I'm upset or that I'm missing him too much. I try to keep positive when we talk so that the conversations are good and it keeps him in a good mood.

Elle was already carrying personal burdens before COVID-19, including responsibilities related to childcare and her mental health. She was laid off early in the pandemic and was struggling financially. Correctional Services Canada's (CSC) suspension of in-person visitation during the pandemic exacerbated her existing concerns about her husband's mental health. It spawned new fears that their progress would be undermined. Despite her efforts to bridge the gap between services and needs, Elle worried she would continue to be saddled with managing her husband's healthcare as corrections officials ignored his needs. She tried to suppress these worries, on top of her own struggles and put on a brave face to ensure her husband remained positive—a sacrifice that amplified the BoC she experienced.

Even when rehabilitative services existed, participants described them as largely inaccessible. Caregivers could face extensive systemic barriers in attempting to fill this service gap and bore considerable burdens to ensure their loved ones' needs were adequately assessed and managed. For example, Aria, who was a psychologist, advocated for nearly a decade to have her husband formally diagnosed with bipolar disorder and to receive proper care in prison. She described her role in his diagnosis, stating

It was only after a long, long time of being with him and noticing that his moods changed on a dime […] that I thought, “Okay, I’m just going to read him the criteria for bipolar disorder and see if it fits for him.” And I did, and he went, “That's me!” [laughter]. And it was like a lightbulb went on, right? And then it took us a good seven to eight years before we got a diagnosis for him because we had to fight all the way, all the way, all the way.

Aria went on

I even went to see outside psychiatrists to see if I could get him diagnosed, but they thought they would lose their license if they interfered with CSC. So, they didn’t. I think you could pay a psychologist for a diagnostic assessment, and we talked about that, but […] it could cost up to $10,000. I don’t have that kind of money [laughter]. And, so, we never did it, and I never won the lottery [laughter].

Aria was in a unique position to assist with her husband's diagnosis but still recounted prolonged struggles with a maze of red tape that prevented her from caring for him. Caregivers recounted trying to remedy such situations by spending considerable time, money, and emotional labor lobbying prison officials or organizing external rehabilitative services, often to no avail. Participants’ attempts at shouldering their loved ones’ needs while facing resistance from CSC only exacerbated their stresses and frustrations. They reported having to persistently fight corrections officials to take their loved ones’ well-being seriously.

Caregivers also explained how they had to dig for information about rehabilitative services, which made them feel like a nuisance despite the system leaving these problems for them to solve. Elle, for example, explained she had to hunt for opportunities for programming because the prison had not provided any resources to help prepare her husband for his impending release. She vented, saying

CSC doesn’t share any information. […] I gotta go dig. I gotta be like a cop. I don’t like to do that. I don’t like to ruffle any feathers. I just like to do my husband's time with him. I’m not here to cause problems. I’m here to love him. I don’t wanna make their jobs harder or be that wife that's like, “Me, me, me.” They don’t like those wives. Those wives drive them nuts.

Caregivers tried to help their incarcerated loved ones access services while navigating a system they did not have the resources to manage. They worried that prison staff would consequently view them as an irritation. While they did not want to ‘ruffle corrections' feathers,’ they felt they had no other choice.

Release planning

While the public might assume that correctional staff prepare incarcerated people for reintegration (whether mandated or not), participants with loved ones in both federal and provincial prisons described having to take on release planning responsibilities. This was especially pronounced among the former group. Leading up to and during release, caregivers organized a myriad of resources and prepared documentation for parole. They tried to connect incarcerated loved ones with resources and services in the community, including housing, employment, social support, and healthcare. As Nora, whose son was serving a six-year sentence in federal prison and struggled with PTSD, told us

It's all the same kind of themes when everybody gets released. There’re just not proper things in place for [incarcerated people], and [CSC] doesn’t really do a lot for them in there either. It's not like what everybody seems to think that, “Oh, you do your programs, and you can do this and that.” There's always like […] a lot of crap that goes in there that folks just don’t know about.

This experience is not unique to Nora but a systemic deficiency within Canadian corrections. The system releases people without adequate support, relying on caregivers, among others, to help meet the assorted needs of released individuals. This situation exacerbated the weight of the BoC, leaving many participants describing how they felt unsupported by the formal bodies they believed were better positioned to provide such care and, in federal jurisdictions, were mandated to do so. These situations were isolating for caregivers, who expressed trying their best while feeling like nobody understood their struggle.

Assuming carceral burdens was particularly challenging for caregivers with little experience navigating the complexities of reintegration. Participants discussed being frustrated having to obtain reintegrative resources despite being unsure of what their loved ones needed and inadequately connected to appropriate services. For example, Alexa's partner was awaiting a Faint Hope Clause hearing, which allows a person who has served at least 15 years of a life sentence to apply to have their parole inadmissibility data reviewed. As her partner's sole support, she outlined her struggles trying to connect him with reintegrative resources to ensure he would qualify for release. She accentuated how illogical it was for the prison system to rely on caregivers to connect incarcerated individuals to resources, given that they had few or none of the connections necessary for this task. She explained

You’ve got all these guys cutting off all their families and all their friends to try and, like, you know, reform themselves, but then…“Hey, have your wife run around like a chicken with her head cut off, and find all these new contacts, so that you can get positioned [on the outside], so that [CSC] can release you. Even though you’ve been inside for X amount of years.” Like, where is the logic?

She continued

I don’t even know where the fuck to start at this point. The social work, the justice, the reform, the… reintegration. There is no reintegrating around here. It's just, “Okay, you’ve completed your programs inside? Here you go out on the street.” Yeah, they’ve got their halfway houses. Halfway houses get full, you’re kind of fucked. They’ll hold you until one opens, if they want to. And if not, you’re out on the street if you can’t find a place. They don’t help you look for work, they don’t… ugh… which is fine by me, cuz him and I have already talked. (emphasis in original)

Caregivers described being frustrated and concerned about taking on the roles and responsibilities related to reintegration with little support from corrections or external service providers. Most believed that release planning was the responsibility of the prison system but came to view said system as inadequate. If their loved one were to have any chance at reintegrating, participants felt it was on them to take on the tasks associated with release planning. This burden was perpetuated as caregivers attempted to meet needs while toiling the barriers the prison system put in their way—a situation that was both infuriating and discouraging.

Advocacy

Caregivers often adopted unmet needs related to managing their incarcerated loved one's legal cases and advocating for prison reform. Frequently, as the sole support for their loved ones, they regularly had extensive encounters with the prison bureaucracy. For some, this had evolved into advocating for justice reform. The case of Mina, an Indigenous woman whose husband is serving a life sentence, perhaps best exemplifies these legal advocacy burdens. Despite being a single mother of five young children, she tirelessly championed her husband's innocence, ultimately guiding his case to Canada's Supreme Court. The case was appealed and received a motion to stay, but later dismissed. Mina talked about her role in his ongoing legal battle, observing

He's claiming his innocence and, you know, I do believe that to be true. Having gone through it with him, you know, especially being his only support network, reaching out to people such as his lawyer, you know. Also being the one to link conversations between him and his lawyer. So, I heard a lot [about his case] along the way.

A layperson pressing a case to the Supreme Court takes immense time, energy, and determination, and Mina detailed enduring every step of the legal process with her husband. In our interviews, she discussed the complex procedures for filing motions and affidavits on his behalf, acting as the primary contact for his legal team, organizing documents to prove his innocence, and advocating for the Innocence Project to champion his case. At the time of the study, she was spearheading his application for a Faint Hope Clause. While Mina's case was extreme, it was common for caregivers to become key players in managing their loved ones’ legal situations.

Mina's role in managing her husband's legal case inspired her to fight the systemic racism that Indigenous people and their families face in the CJS. The more she heard about and experienced systemic racism, the more she felt obligated to intervene. She noted

In my case, I really brought forward [to CSC] the issues that need to be worked on, such as systemic racism and the way us families are being treated, you know, and how we’re struggling with it. Because it's propelled on us. Like we, as First Nations families, have to go above and beyond to get support for these men. [CSC] throws up barriers, and we have to fight harder. Essentially, that's what it's about.

Mina explained that she took on a more prominent advocacy role because

I’m getting sick and tired of it. And I’m just learning more as I go. And the more I learn, the more I’m hurt by it and the more I feel like, if I’m silent and if I don’t say something, if I don’t set aside my comforts and I don’t step out and do something, it's just gonna continue, you know. Like, what's to stop me? This is my family, you know.

As caregivers like Mina adopted assorted burdens related to their loved ones’ lives and legal cases, they often identified many limitations and failures of the Canadian prison system—especially among individuals who were multiply marginalized. These systemic inequalities exacerbated the burdens caregivers bore and left them feeling “sick and tired” of the additional hurdles they had to jump to get the prison system to support their loved ones. While most caregivers had not started with an activist orientation, they often felt that if they did not take on such work, these issues would be ignored or displaced onto ill-prepared and overworked others.

As participants worked to address their loved ones’ legal issues, they could experience a form of role confusion. The focus and commitment required to advance their loved ones’ legal cases could create tension between their role as a loved one and an advocate, which added to the weight of the BoC. For example, Lorraine clarified how, as a “prison wife,” she felt obliged to advocate for her husband's well-being. Doing so, however, required a complicated effort to separate two aspects of her life. She explained

This whole thing has made me…I kind of don’t know which hat to wear and when to wear it. Like, I admit I’ve told him [her incarcerated husband] this a few times. It stresses me out sometimes because I feel bad that I can’t really be the person that's, like, the spousal support for him because I’m more so being an advocate support.

While caregivers felt impelled or obligated to advocate for prison reform, role confusion increased the weight of the BoC as they felt pulled in multiple directions. Such tensions and the associated temporal, organizational, and emotional burdens of each responsibility left some worrying about whether they adequately fulfilled either role.

Caregivers’ perceptions of the prison system

The collection of burdens related to rehabilitation, release planning, and advocacy perpetuated caregivers’ intense distrust and resentment towards the prison system. They emphasized feeling criminalized and ostracized by a system they were trying to work with to shoulder the needs of incarcerated people. Many explained that their resentment towards the prison system grew as they experienced how the CJS treated incarcerated people and their loved ones. For example, Cora, an Indigenous woman whose common-law spouse had served 14 years of an indeterminant sentence, indicated that she was often vilified simply for trying to support him. She told us

When you get into this system, it's like you’re being treated like you are the criminal because you’re going to see your loved one. […] It was a huge adjustment, and then when you see how people are treated – not only families but your loved one – it's like, wow, I have no faith in the system whatsoever. Whether it's courts, the prison system… I have no faith in it. Because they’ve put us through so much. How do you trust them when they put you through so much, and they’ve treated you like you’re a bad person because you love somebody who's in prison? (emphasis added).

She continued

It starts to feel after a while like it's…You don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. It's like you’re going through that tunnel, and you just keep going and going, but you never see the light. And it gets very frustrating. It gets very [loud exhale] just overwhelming and stressful, and [pause] there's nothing you can do about it. I feel helpless. He feels helpless. And [CSC] has all the right to do whatever they want, apparently. But they don’t do things when they’re supposed to. They don’t, they just don’t. And CSC is the most awful place in the world. But, I mean, there's nothing I can do about it. And it's sad for us, as a family, and it's sad for him as a person. But we just deal with it every day (emphasis added).

Cora struggled with the weight of secondary prisonization in her interactions with corrections (Comfort, 2003). These interactions fostered a considerable distrust of the prison system that eventually developed into resentment towards the CJS, which caregivers saw as overlooking the needs of incarcerated people and blocking their efforts to augment this care. Caregivers often felt powerless and sometimes hopeless as they were undermined by what they saw as the system's illogical and unjustifiable whims. This situation culminated in them narrowing their focus, as they saw no option but to cope with an unending series of daily challenges. Lacking control over or meaningful input into their loved ones’ situations produced stress and a sense of despondency about their limited ability to fulfill their caregiving roles—and, with it, an intense resentment of the prison system.

Participants described experiencing a roller-coaster of emotions as they tried to cope with the sadness, anger, and resentment they felt toward the prison system. Their disdain was only exacerbated by prolonged COVID-19 lockdowns that prison officials claimed would reduce contamination risks. Remaining hopeful was difficult amidst the uncertainty of the pandemic and the additional barriers to the provision of care it raised. As Elle explained

I’m missing him [her incarcerated husband] a lot. Some days are harder than others, but I have days where I’m a miserable mess, and I’m crying, and I’m sad, and I’m angry, and I wanna drive over to CSC head office and give them a piece of my mind. But, you know, I can’t. I get over it. I do feel defeated, like, “Am I ever going to get to touch my husband again and kiss my husband?” Our marriage and our relationship is already so strained being in prison, right? And all the barriers that I have to deal with – with prison, with the guards and whatever games they wanna play with us, and now COVID and lockdown and whatever. So, all the barriers, and it's like…ugh.

Elle, like many others, was angry and resentful. Lockdowns exacerbated the physical separation characteristic of imprisonment. They also layered additional challenges onto caregivers’ efforts to bear the onus of unmet needs related to rehabilitation, release planning, and advocacy while being effectively hindered from exercising such care.

The burden of care in the context of incarceration

Attending to the dynamics of the BoC experienced by those with incarcerated loved ones expands the concept of carceral burdens beyond its traditional focus on “basic” physiological needs (Dolovich, 2011) to recognize rehabilitation, release planning, and advocacy as necessities in the lives of incarcerated people. Our focus on the care deficit helps explain how unmet needs and the BoC shape the variability in care experienced by incarcerated people and highlights the challenges caregivers face in attempting to meet such needs. In doing so, we explored how caregivers understand and navigate care in the context of incarceration and how this role is shaped by caregivers’ ongoing interactions with the prison system.

Our participants highlight the failure of corrections to meet the needs of their incarcerated loved ones. This is especially pronounced for those whose loved ones are incarcerated in federal prisons where, in theory, the responsibility for caring for incarcerated people is shared between the prison system and social service agencies (Dolovich, 2011; Sufrin, 2019). However, the shortcomings of these systems result in a series of unmet needs that caregivers are left to address. These issues are also evident for those whose loved ones are serving time in provincial institutions, many of whom believed (albeit incorrectly) that the correctional system is responsible for facilitating reintegration. This did not change the burden they felt. In fact, we believe it is indicative of how little support loved ones have across both these jurisdictions because, whether mandated or not, they are waiting for support that will never materialize. By foregrounding the additional needs caregivers take on, we uncover the (often) invisible roles caregivers play in the lives of incarcerated people and the value of their unpaid care work in supporting the functionality of the prison system.

Hoenig and Hamilton (1966) suggested that the BoC can take objective and subjective forms. Objective BoC stems from caregiving tasks or caregiver strain arising from unexpected negative actions or symptoms displayed by the “patient.” Subjective BoC is the degree to which caregivers perceive a burden associated with caregiving tasks. Our findings complicate the latter by highlighting how the BoC may also stem from systemic unmet needs rather than the negative actions or symptoms of incarcerated people. Participants did not feel burdened by their incarcerated kin but by the strain caused by real or perceived system-related shortcomings.

We further complicate Hoenig and Hamilton's (1966) siloed conceptualization by highlighting the intersections of objective and subjective BoC. For our participants, the stress, frustration, loneliness, and role confusion stemming from unmet needs added to the weight of the BoC—influencing their ability to effectively rebalance the existing care deficit. Such experiences consequently shaped participants’ interactions with the prison administration and their relationship with their loved ones, often fostering and deepening their resentment towards the carceral system. Highlighting the intersections of objective and subjective BoC allows us to better understand the impact of care work on caregivers’ social, emotional, and financial well-being. By examining the BoC in the context of incarceration, we further complicate how care burdens shape caregivers’ interpersonal relationships and their perceptions of the prison system.

Among caregivers’ top concerns was a lack of rehabilitative programming in prison, especially services related to mental health and addictions. When such services were available, participants described extensive barriers to accessing them. They often tried to outsource care to external service providers, which was time-consuming, laborious, and/or financially prohibitive.

Caregivers also took on burdens associated with release planning, including communicating with parole officers, organizing documents for parole board hearings, and trying to secure housing, employment, and healthcare for those approaching release. They emphasized how these tasks appeared straightforward in theory but were complex in practice. Alexa also succinctly summarizes how loved ones might not be in the best emotional state to connect their incarcerated family member or friend to external resources. They are often struggling to rebuild their own relationship with their incarcerated kin, so being responsible for building connections is an additional and unwelcome burden.

The reality of this situation meant caregivers were left attempting to consolidate resources they were unfamiliar with and tackle arduous and exhausting responsibilities they saw as firmly within the jurisdiction of the prison system. When they sought help from prison officials, they reported being ignored or treated with indifference or hostility. The prison bureaucracy made them feel like a nuisance as they were forced to become de facto detectives constantly chasing vital information and navigating red tape. Instead of absorbing BoC, prison staff perpetuated it (Johnston and Ricciardelli, 2022).

Finally, caregivers discussed trying to meet needs related to their loved ones’ legal cases. For some, like Mina, such efforts had evolved into advocating for prison reform and speaking out against systemic racism they saw in the penal system. However, advocacy took a toll on caregivers’ well-being as they struggled to balance time commitments and their roles and responsibilities as loved ones and advocates (Figley, 1995). The shifting weight of these roles left them stressed and conflicted, intensifying the BoC they experienced.

The fallout of systemic burdens of care

Although taking on care burdens can lead to compassion fatigue, burnout, and role dropping (Figley, 1995)—especially in times of global precarity (Clay, 2022)—such responses were not prevalent in our sample. Most participants appeared to bear down and push through assorted challenges as best they could to meet their loved ones’ needs. In the process, their perceptions of the formal institutions they saw benefitting from their unpaid labor declined precipitously (Stephan et al., 2015). This situation bred distrust and resentment of the prison system. Similar to Comfort (2003), our participants described experiencing secondary prisonization in their encounters with a prison system that vilified and ostracized them. They resented the system that relied on their labor to try and meet the needs of incarcerated people but prevented them from effectively providing this care—often leaving them feeling hopeless and powerless against the whims of an apparatus they perceived to be omnipotent. These interactions further solidify how systems of punishment permeate beyond prison walls and into the lives of predominantly multiply-marginalized caregivers.

External challenges with finances, employment, mental health, and other caregiving responsibilities added to the weight of the BoC caregivers experienced. COVID-19 only exacerbated this situation. Many caregivers perceived the pandemic as the “last straw” in the trifecta of subsidizing unmet needs, pushing through corrections’ roadblocks, and coping with the power the prison system wielded over their lives. Nonetheless, they described continuing to work to improve the lives of their incarcerated kin as they had been doing long before the pandemic with few services, resources, and supports (McDonald et al., 2023). They knew their loved ones’ needs would likely go unmet otherwise, and they would struggle even more during their incarceration and face additional challenges upon release. The BoC associated with unmet needs was tightly woven into the fabric of their everyday lives.

Limitations and policy suggestions

Some authors have proposed increased institutionalization to reduce the BoC for family members caring for ailing loved ones in the community (Hoenig and Hamilton, 1966, 1969; Lee et al., 2014; Parks, 2003). This strategy is not viable with incarcerated individuals as they are already institutionalized. To address the BoC in the penal context, officials must instead start by formally acknowledging the role caregivers play in supporting incarcerated people (Fahmy, 2021) and take steps to reduce their secondary prisonization (Comfort, 2009). These efforts should foster more collaborative relationships between caregivers and the systems that benefit from their labor (Clay, 2022; Stephan et al., 2015).

While family members and informal support groups can help reduce burdens for some, scholars have noted the former can be a source of stigma and rejection while the latter is often a challenge for caregivers to access (Comfort, 2009; Hinck et al., 2019). We suggest corrections establish formal support systems to help caregivers manage the BoC (Stephan et al., 2015)—ensuring that they are easily accessible and calibrated to the unique challenges of incarceration, especially during transitionary stages like reintegration (Wakefield, 2022).

Perhaps most importantly, the correctional system must take greater responsibility for meeting the needs of incarcerated people, including increasing the availability and utility of rehabilitative programs and reintegrative supports. While providing reintegration support is not provincially mandated in Canada, it is in the correctional system's best interest to support caregivers across jurisdictions who play key roles in helping previously incarcerated people transition back into the community (Kjellstrand et al., 2022). Streamlining wraparound care by developing an online system for information sharing between prisons and external service providers would be a practical first step in helping to connect incarcerated people and caregivers to the resources and services they may need upon release.

One limiting aspect of our study is that participants were derived from a small network of supportive loved ones committed to their incarcerated family members' success. We do not capture the experiences of those who took on few caregiving responsibilities or those less invested in doing so. Still, we believe it is telling that such involved, supportive, and committed caregivers struggle so extensively to provide care, which raises concerns about what this means for the many incarcerated people without such support. In considering the diversity of these relationships (Fahmy, 2021; Kjellstrand et al., 2022), criminal justice officials should attempt to build strong connections with accessible, comprehensive, and culturally appropriate community-based partners to prevent relying exclusively on the labor of caregivers as “agents of resettlement” (Codd, 2007 p. 259). This will help reduce the BoC among caregivers—especially those who are multiply marginalized, overburdened, or experiencing precarity—and ensure that incarcerated people who lack informal caregivers receive the support needed to complete their sentences and reintegrate. Without a designated body or bodies whose purview includes helping previously incarcerated people navigate the challenges of reintegration, caregivers will undoubtedly continue to be overburdened by these responsibilities.

Another limitation of our study is that over 90% of participants identified as women. These women were disproportionately marginalized in terms of race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Their situations may therefore amount to what James (2016) terms the “captive maternal,” or the experiences of racialized women whose socialized roles as caregivers tie their labor to the carceral state. Here, gender, racial oppression, and the caregiving role interact to extend carceral hegemony into the lives of multiply marginalized caregivers. While participants described how caregiving tethered their labor and compassion to the prison system's control agenda, we can only speculate about the gendered nature of such experiences. However, the absence of men from our sample speaks strongly to such gendered dynamics in caregiving (Codd, 2007).

Future studies should examine the role of male caregivers in the lives of incarcerated people (including incarcerated women) to better understand the gendered nature of the BoC in this context. Such studies might also focus on the experiences of those who have declined or relinquished caregiving responsibilities and the experiences of those who primarily take on the BoC post-release. Future studies might also examine contextual factors, including the role of incarcerated people in shaping caregivers’ experiences of the BoC, that may contribute to the ebbs and flows of shouldering such burdens during incarceration and upon release.