Maternal Imprisonment: The Enduring Impact of Imprisonment on Mothers and their Children

Maternal imprisonment is extremely disruptive. Most mothers who experience imprisonment have already experienced prior traumas in their lives, such as intimate partner violence, poverty, childhood abuse and sexual violence. Maternal imprisonment adds an additional layer of trauma to the lives of criminalised mothers, their children and their families. This chapter, drawing on the author’s empirical research, examines the persisting, intergenerational impact of imprisonment on mothers. It highlights how this affects relationships with both children and caregivers during imprisonment and post-release. The chapter analyses the enduring and traumatic impact of imprisonment on maternal identity and role, including how this can impact mothers’ successful rehabilitation and family relationships, sometimes for decades post-release. Using a matricentric-feminist and a socio-ecological approach to understand the individual, family, community and societal factors involved, the disruption to homes, lives and relationships caused by maternal imprisonment in the UK are examined and matricentric, trauma-informed recommendations are made to mitigate these harms.