The Paths of Mental Health: The Effects of Co-Detention on Children's Development

Abstract

This article offers a descriptive analysis of the co-detention phenomenon in the Italian context. Our aim is to focus on the process of keeping children in prison with their detained parental figures and to analyse the environmental conditions in the prison context. The paper describes, in particular, contextual risk factors from the child’s psycho-social development (as well as resilience variables) which are connected to a stay in prison. This analysis is aimed at a multi-dimensional perspective of the concept of risk, related to the phenomenon of co-detention, and as a means to identify different developmental paths. Moreover, it describes certain guidelines on how to structure primary prevention programs to assess and contain the risk of psychopathology and neuropsychiatric conditions in children, as well as in adults.