The BBC calls Prison, My Parents and Me a “groundbreaking” programme, and I suppose they are right about this Children in Need special. I don’t think, at any rate, I’ve seen much coverage of the devastating impact having a parent – or, more rarely, both parents – in prison has on a child, though you could argue you don’t need to sit through an hour of television to work that one out.
The statistics offered up were devastating too; a very high proportion of jailbirds who are cut off from their families tend to reoffend. About 100,000 British children have one or both parents serving time (plus a few more paying back their debts to society in the company of their children in mother-and-baby units – a more dismal start in life it is difficult to envisage).
