Motherhood In and After Prison

Description

Motherhood In and After Prison focuses on how imprisonment impacts incarcerated mothers’ maternal identity, emotions and role. It explores both the short and longer-term consequences of sending mothers to prison. It reveals the devastating and often underestimated impact of maternal imprisonment on mothers themselves, on their children, and on their families and their place in society.

Based on special access to mothers and grandmothers who were either still in prison or contributing post-release, this new book will be of considerable interest to policymakers, educators, practitioners, researchers, feminists and women’s support groups. It follows the author’s acclaimed Mothering Justice. It contains imprisoned mothers’ thoughts gained via first-hand interviews and letters. The book concludes with recommendations for positive change and improved, informed responses to criminalised and imprisoned mothers, relating to their lives before prison, in prison, and after prison — including when ‘renegotiating’ motherhood in the ‘doubly/triply/quadruply deviant’ context of a convicted mother.

Packed with information, data, analysis and the women’s own words the book will be of great interest to both a national and international audience. Based on first-hand accounts by imprisoned mothers/grandmothers of their incarceration. Deeply probes their multi-layered challenges. A feminist, matricentric tour de force. With extensive new findings and recommendations.

Reviews

‘This timely book beautifully educates without judgement and is a must read for policymakers and practitioners alike, driving home a most critical message about the colossal and devastating impact of imprisoning mothers’– Lady Edwina Grosvenor — From the Foreword.

Extract

‘I don’t have much contact with my daughter, my ex has her whilst I’m in here and he don’t want me to have contact with her, it’s just an excuse to punish me and control me like he always does. He don’t care that it punishes her too. God knows what he’s saying to her about me.’ (Melanie)

About the author

Dr Lucy Baldwin is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at De Montfort University. Her career has encompassed working with Social Services, the Probation Service and Prisons, which led her to research the entire spectrum of maternal imprisonment and become a campaigner for the better treatment of women by the justice system. She is the author of the acclaimed Mothering Justice: Working With Mothers in Criminal and Social Justice Settings (Waterside Press, 2015), the first whole book in the UK to take motherhood and criminal justice as its focus.