Criminal Justice Responses to Maternal Filicide: Judging the failed mother

Abstract

was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her research is interdisciplinary, focussing on criminal law and criminal justice responses to newborn child killing and foetal harm. The wider context of her work is social controls and regulations of all women, notably in relation to pregnancy, sex, and motherhood. She co-authored Sex and Crime (SAGE, 2020) and co-edited Women and the Criminal Justice System: Failing Victims and Offenders? (Palgrave, 2018).

Guest editorial: Care not criminalisation; reform of British abortion law is long overdue

“…This offence, which originally applied only to unmarried women, aimed to address a problem of significant concern to Jacobean Britain: that 'many lewd women that have been delivered of bastard children, to avoid their shame, and to escape punishment, do secretly bury or conceal the death of their children'. 14 While still prosecuted today, 15 the retention of a provision explicitly concerned with the policing of female sexuality and illegitimacy 16 is impossible to justify. The Act's original intention-to facilitate the prosecution of women where unlawful procurement of miscarriage or murder of a newborn child was suspected but could not be proven-is impossible to square with a modern presumption of innocence.…”

Australian news media portrayals of filicide: depictions of mental health and the flawed mother trope

“…Wilcyzynski (1997, p. 426) contends that the categorising of filicidal women as mentally disturbed enables the community to accommodate the cultural ideal and expectation of women as natural born mothers. When women kill their children, community responses, associated discourse and prosecutorial focus can amplify a perceived 'lack of womanhood' and underlying deviance, in addition to the alleged criminal act of homicide (Berrington & Honkatukia, 2002;Milne, 2021). Milne (2021, p. 2) notes that there is an inherent desire to criminalise maternal offenders and 'sanction them for their failure as mothers.'…”

“…No act challenges the good mother narrative more than filicide (Goc, 2009;McCluskey, 2019). Mothers who murder their children are typically perceived, by the news media, criminal justice system and the wider community, as psychologically disturbed, unwell, and/or lacking in cardinal traits of femininity and womanhood (Berrington & Honkatukia, 2002;Collosso & Buchanan, 2018;Goc, 2009;Milne, 2021;Rapaport, 2006;Saavedra & de Oliveira, 2017). Gender role norms are encapsulated within social expectations founded upon, and reinforced by, stereotypical feminine and masculine ideals (Pulerwitz & Barker, 2008;Wiest & Duffy, 2013).…”