A review of seven studies published in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia between the late 1920's and 1976 notes that inmates' families frequently experienced problems involving finances, loneliness, caring for children, sexual frustration, emotional disturbance, and illness. Researchers also concluded that parole success was strongly associated with good family relationships. As a conceptual framework for counselors, the psychosocial approach focuses on the family's strengths and abilities to use available formal and informal support systems, with particular attention to the effects of stigmatization and prisonization. Social systems theory views the family's primary task as protection and socialization, with considerable emphasis on boundary management. Thus, as families reorganize their external boundaries to cope with embarrassment and anger, their abilities to adjust to normal developmental processes may be impaired. This paper contends that an inmate's family can only accomplish its protective and socializing functions by seeing itself as the primary force for its own survival and realizing that the external environment is not necessarily organized for the best interests of the prisoner's family. The mental health professional should encourage viable relationships between prisoners and their families through increased visiting privileges and transportation services and counsel familes in adjusting to the loss of a member. Public education and advocacy efforts are also required to promote prison reforms and alter attitudes toward ex-offenders. The article contains 1 table and 28 footnotes.