Motherhood In and After Prison

Lucy Baldwin

Description

Motherhood In and After Prison is based on first-hand accounts by imprisoned mothers/grandmothers of their incarceration. A feminist, matricentric tour de force, it deeply probes their multi-layered challenges and presents extensive new findings and recommendations.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Offenders

Informations

• Publié par: Waterside Press
• Date de parution: 05 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781914603211
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Motherhood In and After Prison
The Impact of Maternal Incarceration
Lucy Baldwin
With a Foreword by Lady Edwina Grosvenor
Copyright and publication details
Motherhood In and After Prison
The Impact of Maternal Incarceration
Lucy Baldwin
ISBN 978-1-914603-20-4 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-914603-21-1 (Epub ebook)
ISBN 978-1-914603-22-8 (Adobe ebook)
Copyright © 2022 This work is the copyright of Lucy Baldwin. All intellectual property and associated rights are hereby asserted and reserved by her in full compliance with UK, European and international law. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, or in any language, including in hard copy or via the internet, without the prior written permission of the publishers to whom all such rights have been assigned worldwide. The Foreword is the copyright of Lady Edwina Grosvenor.
Cover design © 2022 Waterside Press.
Main UK distributor Gardners Books, 1 Whittle Drive, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN23 6QH . Tel: [phone]; [e-mail] ; www.gardners.com
North American distribution Ingram Book Company, One Ingram Blvd, La Vergne, TN 37086, USA. Tel: [phone]; [e-mail]
Cataloguing-In-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
Printed by Severn, Gloucestershire.
Ebook Motherhood In and After Prison is available as an ebook and also to subscribers via library models.
Published 2022 by
Waterside Press
Sherfield Gables
Sherfield-on-Loddon
Hook, Hampshire
United Kingdom RG27 0JG
Telephone [phone]
E-mail [e-mail]
Online catalogue WatersidePress.co.uk
Contents
About the Author vii
Acknowledgements viii
Dedication ix
The author of the Foreword x
Foreword by Lady Edwina Grosvenor xi
Preface xiii
List of abbreviations xvi
Part 1: Overview 17
1 Introduction 19
Reflecting Motherhood 21
My own maternal identity 22
‘Good motherhood’ and positive role models 25
The researcher/researched relationship 26
Being ‘there’ as a mother 29
2 Gendered Criminal Justice 33
Contemporary Context and Landscape in the UK 36
The Need for a Gendered Response 41
Mothers and Prison — What Did We Already Know? 46
Mothering from prison — Maternal identity and role 46
Challenges concerning maternal contact 48
Post-release motherhood and maternal supervision 51
Re-entry, renegotiation and repair 53
Summary of Chapter 2 56
3 The Making of Motherhood 59
Foundations of Motherhood Ideology 60
Motherhood and Feminism 61
‘Intensive Mothering’ and Beyond 64
Matricentric feminism 67
Maternal identity 70
Maternal emotion 75
Summary of Chapter 3 81
4 The Mothers 83
Pen Portraits of the Mothers 84
Backgrounds of the Letter Writing Mothers 93
More About the Interviewed Mothers 94
Part 2: Findings 97
5 Pre-Prison Experiences 99
Poverty and Mental Health 99
Abuse, Trauma and Addiction 103
Mothers Not Mothered 109
Summary of Chapter 5 113
6 Entering the Prison Space and Early Days 115
Reception and early days — ‘it just hit me’ 116
Importation of ‘Traditional Motherhood’ Values and Beliefs 121
Summary of Chapter 6 131
7 Distant Mothering and Grandmothering 133
Reflective, Active and Invisible Mothering 134
Contact 139
Phone calls and letters 147
Caregivers, Tension, Gatekeeping and Control 151
Summary of Chapter 7 158
8 Regimes, Rules and Relationships 161
Open/Closed Conditions and Maternal Relations 161
Care or Uncare? Rules and Staff Relationships 167
Grandmothering Behind Bars: Reproducing Motherhood 178
Summary of Chapter 8 186
9 Renegotiating Motherhood 189
Spoiled Maternal Identity 190
‘It’s Just Different’ 196
Prolonged Separation 199
Penance and Making-up 203
‘It’s a Bit Rich … ’ 205
Shame and Blame 207
Layers of shame — Grandmothering post-prison 210
Summary of Chapter 9 214
10 Trust and Surveillance 217
State Surveillance: Social Services 218
Untrustworthy Motherhood 218
Invisible Motherhood 223
Family Eyes 228
Supervision and ‘Support’ 230
Summary of Chapter 10 240
11 Trauma and Pain 241
‘It’s Like PTSD’ 242
Pain of Separation 244
Pain of Memories 247
Pain of Fearful Anticipation 250
Pain of ‘Ifs and Maybes’ 252
Wounded Healing 255
Summary of Chapter 11 260
Part 3: Conclusions and Recommendations 263
12 Drawing Together the Evidence 265
The Mothers’ experiences 269
Maternal identity 270
Maternal role 272
Enduring Harm 274
‘Factoring’ Motherhood Into Sentence Plans and Supervision 276
Recommendations for Policy, Practice and Research 282
A Few Closing Thoughts 289
References and Bibliography 293
Index 315
About the Author

Dr Lucy Baldwin is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at De Montfort University. She is also a qualified social worker and probation officer with over 35 years’ experience in social and criminal justice. Her work 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.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost I would like to thank the mothers whose bravery and resilience led them to share the lived experiences described in this book. I carry every one of you in my heart. It felt a huge responsibility to host your narratives, but I hope to have done you proud. Equally, I hope you are proud of the positive changes that are already occurring in policy and practice surrounding maternal imprisonment, changes that are informed by my research for this book, but most importantly by your voices.
I would also like to thank my family and friends for their unending support of my all-encompassing passion for all things maternal imprisonment — your tolerance is appreciated. I include here Lady Edwina Grosvenor who kindly contributed the Foreword and who is a wonderful champion of and advocate for positive change concerning women.
Thank you also to Alex Gibson for the beautiful cover, and to Bryan Gibson at Waterside Press for his patience, uniqueness and unfailing ability to surprise.
Lucy Baldwin
May 2022
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Beth and Emma, two mums who tragically died whilst I was writing it. They are not forgotten, and I would like this work to serve as a tribute not just to their memory but to that of all those who have lost their lives in or soon after prison.
The author of the Foreword

Lady Edwina Grosvenor is the Founder and Chair of One Small Thing, an organization which aims to redesign the justice system for women and their children through building Hope Street, a residential community and blueprint for change.
Foreword by Lady Edwina Grosvenor
Until the moment that the umbilical cord is cut, the unborn baby and the mother are one. They feed as one, they move as one, what the mother feels and experiences the unborn baby feels and experiences. Once the baby is born this pattern carries on. The baby and mother remain hugely dependent on one another, not just for joy and happiness but for their very survival. The feeling of being one remains long after that cord is cut.
The separation of a baby from its mother is the severance of this profound and powerful bond which equates to torture for both mother and baby. It should only be done in the most extreme of circumstances. The traumatic, predictable, lifelong consequences of such actions should not be underestimated. However, it is not only mothers of young babies who are criminalised and imprisoned. Mothers and grandmothers of children of all ages are impacted by maternal imprisonment.
The mothers in this contemporary and profoundly moving book powerfully and painfully describe the impact this ‘profound hurt’ has on them and their dependants, again a hurt that persists for many decades post-release. It puts the voice of the mother — and the role of mothering — and grandmothering — centre stage. A gift to practitioners it powerfully highlights the complexities of mothering, the different types and contexts of mothering, and the difficulties of mothering for some when they may have not been mothered well themselves. It provides an empathetic and humane framework within which policy and practice change can grow.
Lucy Baldwin illustrates why it is imperative that we action new policies to tackle the issue of separating mothers from their babies due to short prison sentences. Such actions have an astoundingly deleterious effect on not just the mother and her child, but it also wreaks havoc on family members and society as a whole for generations. The book powerfully argues that in order for the Criminal Justice System to be fully ‘trauma-informed,’ then our justice and practice responses to criminalised women must ‘factor in’ motherhood and maternal trauma. Policymakers must take heed. If they do not, then tragedies such as Beth’s story highlighted in Chapter 4 will continue to occur. Mothers will die and children will grow up motherless and be absorbed into the care system.
Fortuitously, it doesn’t need to be this way. It is possible to think differently, to build differently, to act differently. The concept of the women’s centre has proven what can be achieved. We must build on their model; we must sustain their success and the trail they have blazed. There has to be ways to capture what Lucy calls in the book the ‘missed and lost opportunities’ to support women, often in ways that could help them avoid criminalisation altogether — but most certainly to avoid imprisonment. A philosophical and architectural redesign of community justice for women is essential.
Mothers should be able to pay their dues to society, m