Just Mothers: criminal justice, care ethics and “disabled” offenders

Abstract

Research with prisoners’ families is limited in the context of learning difficulties/disabilities (LD) and autism spectrum. Life-story interviews with mothers reveal an extended period of emotional and practical care labour, as the continuous engagement with their son’s education and experiences of physical and emotional abuse are explored. Prior to their son’s 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. Not their failure, but that 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 to extended mothering, the external forces of disabilism and destructive systems, lead to proposing a rehumanising of care practices within for example, education and the criminal justice system.