Mother–Child Contact during Incarceration: A Study Based on a National Survey of Women Prisoners

Abstract

Based on quantitative data from a national survey of female inmates in Norway, the present article describes the self-reported frequency and type of mother–child contact before and during imprisonment and investigates to what extent this is influenced by mothers’ sociodemographic background as well as their drug abuse and previous criminal history. A total of 141 female inmates participated in the study, representing 75% of the total female inmate population. The findings indicated that 6 in 10 female inmates had children, most of them minors. Half of the mothers had an immigrant background. The mothers presented with serious problems in several welfare domains. Multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that preimprisonment contact remained an important contributor to mother–child contact during imprisonment after the other variables included in the study were controlled.

KEYWORDS:

• prison
• female inmate
• self-report
• quantitative
• caregiver

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Thanks are due to nurses Liv Heian Loos and Åse-Bente Rustad, who both served as interviewers in this project.