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The prison sentence often affects the convict’s family circle? Non-issue or real question? Frédéric Mégret informs us on the theoretical works that could explain this phenomenon. The invisibility of families questions the criminal rationality: if we affect, do we punish? Families can be seen as an active component of crime, as a passive victim of punishment or as a vehicle for their punishment. The fact of considering the impact of the sentence on families could form the basis of a potential reform, particularly when sentencing, or implementing the execution of the sentence. Families could represent the missing piece of this complex puzzle, a hyphen to better understand how the individual and the social are intertwined. The issue of the convicts’ families is an open invitation to rethink the criminal justice systems.