Failed Mothers, Risky Children: Carceral Protectionism and the Social Work Gaze

Developmental Outcomes among Children within the Context of Maternal Incarceration: Findings from a Study of Family Inequality

“…The movement of people of different races and ethnicities into inner cities where unemployment and animosity between different groups may be high can contribute to increases in crime. However, what is often lost in the discourse is that those families are marginalized by wider society, which reinforces barriers and dislocations and can further criminalize many mothers through greater arrests and separation from children [26]. Scholars have persuasively argued that mothering in the context of criminalization is often shaped by poverty, structural racism, inadequate housing, and lack of childcare, and other economic barriers [26].…”

“…However, what is often lost in the discourse is that those families are marginalized by wider society, which reinforces barriers and dislocations and can further criminalize many mothers through greater arrests and separation from children [26]. Scholars have persuasively argued that mothering in the context of criminalization is often shaped by poverty, structural racism, inadequate housing, and lack of childcare, and other economic barriers [26]. Mothers, in turn, are criminalized women who are further stigmatized as inadequate with children who are destined for problematic life trajectories.…”

“…Their focus reminds us that social and material realities shape outcomes for children, since many of these families are destitute prior to the mother's incarceration and that such a handicap is likely to shape one's entrance into the criminal justice system. While confinement exacerbates disadvantages, they posit that the legislative and financial dynamics shape the lives of children and youth in even greater ways [26].…”