According to the Howard’s League for Penal Reform, 66% of women sent to prison are mothers of dependent children. Most are sentenced for non-violent crimes with short jail time. But any separation of mother and child can have serious long-term consequences not only for the parent but for the child too.

 

“It’s sentencing the whole family,” says Carlotta Allum, founder of Stretch, a charity delivering art projects to former prisoners. The Prison Reform Trust shows only 5% of children from imprisoned mothers will remain in their own homes and schools. The Women in Prison Report highlights 9% are cared for by their father, and 12% are taken into care. The change of living can result in huge disruption on the child’s life.

 

Children of imprisoned parents are much more likely “to suffer psychological harm, educational harm, financial hardship and emotional harm,” says Lucy Baldwin, Criminology professor at De Montfort University, whose work focuses on mothers in prisons.

 

It’s not just the change of location that affects these children — they’ve also lost their mothers. “Women are usually the primary carers for their children, so the effect on them is far more significant,” says Jenny Earle, Reducing Women’s Imprisonment Director at the Prison Reform Trust.

 

Baldwin explains that due to financial struggles and distance, children see their mothers little or not at all while they are in prison. If they do get the chance to go visits are often stressful. Children, like any other visitors, have to be searched to enter the prison and often aren’t allowed to hug their mother or sit on their knee.

 

According to a 2007 US study, children of mothers who are imprisoned are 2.5 times more likely to end up in prison in the future. Addressing this issue protects not only the children but the penal system itself.

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Read more about how the criminal justice system impacts women in our first issue, out now.