Just mothers: criminal justice, care ethics and ‘disabled’ offenders

Abstract

Research with prisoners’ families is limited in the context of learning difficulties/disabilities and autism. Life-story interviews with mothers reveal an extended period of emotional and practical care labour, as the continuous engagement with their sons’ education and experiences of physical and emotional abuse are explored. Prior to their sons’ incarceration, mothers spoke of stigma and barriers to support throughout their childrearing, as well as limited or absent preventative/positive care practices. Subsequently, prisons and locked wards seem to feature as a progression. Mothers have experienced abuse, physical and/or emotional, as well as lives that convey accounts of failure of the systems. A care ethics model of disability assists an analysis of the narratives where care-less spaces are identified. Interrelated experiences, merging emotional responses with extended mothering, the external forces of disablism and destructive systems, lead to proposing rehumanisation of care practices within, for example, education and the criminal justice system.

Keywords:

• autism
• care ethics
• learning difficulties/disabilities
• prisoners families
• mental health
• extended mothering
• adult to parent violence
• school-to-prison pipeline

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the mothers who participated in this research, who have given their time and shared their life-stories – the author is indebted. The author would also like to thank The Leverhume Trust as without the support to carry out such research, it would have been incredibly difficult. The author would also like to express appreciation to the anonymous reviewers who were critical, engaging and supportive, but care-full.

Notes

1 I use disability/difficulty (LD) throughout, and although I understand there is a spectrum of learning associated with different conditions (e.g. attention deficit hyperactivity, autism, dyslexia), LD in this article is used despite it not being a homogeneous group. Mothers in my research experience the difficulties that come with dealing with their child’s impairment (physical) and their child’s disabling condition (social).

2 The terms families and prisoner’s families are often used, yet they conceal the gendered care labour that exists, not least of all because of the gendered nature of parenting and the ethical, practical and financial implications that persist (see also Halsey and Deegan 2015).

3 A written description that gives background narrative to the participants involved.

4 Notably, visual and creative methods ‘offer one way of enabling research participants to increase self-confidence in sharing emotions and experiences with others’ (Fitzgibbon, Graebsch, and McNeill 2017, 307).

5 For example, children with social, emotional, mental health problems but who do not have an intellectual impairment are often not captured in these figures. Neither are those who have challenging home lives and are statistically missing due to non-attendance at school.

6 This vulnerability is likely pathogenic, as a subset of situational. As these ‘include vulnerability arising from prejudice or abuse in interpersonal relationships and from social domination, oppression, or political violence. The notion of pathogenic vulnerability also helps to identify the way that some interventions designed to ameliorate inherent or situational vulnerability can have the paradoxical effect of increasing vulnerability’ (Mackenzie 2014, 39).

7 This is Trudy’s understanding and experiences.

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by Leverhume Trust [RF-2016-613\8].