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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — A new book by RTI International researchers based on a 10-year study sheds rich new light on the parenting and intimate relationships of justice-involved men, challenging long-standing boundaries between research on incarceration and on the well-being of low-income families.
The book, titled Holding On: Family and Fatherhood during Incarceration and Reentry, was written by Tasseli McKay, Megan Comfort, Christine Lindquist and Anupa Bir. It was published by the University of California Press this summer.
“We hope Holding On can help to illuminate the urgent research and policy issues surrounding our current system of incarceration with new insights on how imprisonment can damage relationships — and ways that damage could be prevented or mitigated,” said McKay, a social science researcher in RTI’s Division for Applied Justice Research. “We encountered many compelling stories over the course of this study that we were able to include in Holding On.”
Holding On has been well received. Sara Wakefield, coauthor of Children of the Prison Boom, called Holding On a “triumph” and “a must-read for policy makers, a gift for scholars of incarceration and the family, and an exemplar of the ambitious, multi-method, and humanizing analysis we desperately need in an era of criminal justice reform.”
Holding On can be purchased on the UC Press website in hardcover, paperback and eBook formats.
