Many girls who’re incarcerated have been simply attempting to make ends meet for his or her households. Here a picture from a rally to demand the discharge of individuals held in jails, outdoors the Riverside Correctional Facility in Philadelphia, May 2020. Joe Piette/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA
Mother’s Day is only a few days away. It is usually a sophisticated day. For some, it may imply a bouquet of flowers or a breakfast in mattress. For others, it may well imply mourning the lack of a beloved one or coping with a haunted previous. And nonetheless — for others — just like the 66 per cent of incarcerated girls in jail who’re moms, it may well imply one thing else solely.
Despite a discount in crime within the final 20 years in Canada, many ladies making an attempt to make ends meet for his or her households find yourself colliding with the jail system.
In Canada, girls’s prisons are filling up. In reality, the fastest-growing jail inhabitants in Canada is racialized girls. More than one in three girls in federal custody are Indigenous. And the proportion of South Asian girls and African Canadian girls in custody can be disproportionately excessive.
One of the explanations the ladies’s jail inhabitants is rising, consultants say, is poverty.
Amidst a monetary downturn and ballooning financial inequality, criminalizing makes an attempt at survival is staggering. And the consequences on households is devastating.
Adding to that is the complexity that 87 p.c of all girls in federal prisons in Canada have skilled bodily or sexual abuse and lots of additionally stay with psychological well being points.
On this episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, we’re joined by Rai Reece, a sociologist at Toronto Metropolitan University who researches prisons and feminist criminology. Lorraine Pinnock additionally joins us. She is the Ontario Coordinator for the Walls to Bridges program which helps girls with training when transitioning out of the system. It’s a transition she has made herself. In 2011, Lorraine was incarcerated on the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ont. She has two youngsters.
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The Grand Valley Institution for Women in Waterloo, Ont.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Geoff Robins
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Resources
Carceral Redlining: White Supremacy is a Weapon of Mass Incarceration for Indigenous and Black Peoples in Canada (Policy Brief: Yellowhead Institute Report) by Rai Reece
What Is Abolition Feminism and Why Do We Need It Now? (Nonprofit Quarterly)
Patricia Hill Collins: Reconceiving Motherhood by Kaila Adia Story
“Wholistic and Ethical: Social Inclusion with Indigenous Peoples” by Kathleen Absolon
“University-prison partnership brings hope to incarcerated learners” by Bruno Vompean (University Affairs)
Update on the Costs of Incarceration – The Parliamentary Budget Office, 2018
Advocates’ views on the Canadian jail mom baby program (Qualitative Research in Health)
From the archives – in The Conversation
Read extra:
We have to reclaim the unique intent of Mother’s Day
Read extra:
Women want well being and dental care to remain out of jail
Read extra:
Prisons will not be the reply to stopping crime
