Report Issue

Please complete the required fields.

Your Name

Email

Reason (required)
This post contains broken linksPost has incorrect informationPost has spamCopyright IssueOther

Description

Submit

Level Up’s campaign for an end to imprisonment of pregnant women and mothers is rooted in a vision of prison abolition. We believe in bodily autonomy for all and a feminist world where everyone is loved and liberated from systems of violence. The prison system is inherently violent and the imprisonment of pregnant women and mothers exemplifies some of the worst state violence in the UK.

Prison will never be a safe place to be pregnant. It will never be a safe place for anyone. The acute risk that pregnant women face is exemplified by the horrific deaths of three babies in prisons in the last five years. In 2019, baby Aisha Cleary died at HMP Bronzefield after her mother Rianna Cleary was left to give birth alone in her prison cell, her calls for help ignored. In 2020, baby Brooke Powell died at HMP Styal after Louise Powell’s calls for help during labour were also ignored. In 2023, a third baby was reported to have died at a third prison – an investigation is still ongoing.

Pregnant women in prison are seven times more likely to suffer a stillbirth and twice as likely to give birth prematurely, increasing risk to both mother and baby. Being in the prison system also increases women’s likelihood of being separated from their baby, either temporarily or permanently, which has lifelong devastating effects for both a mother’s mental health and a child’s emotional and social development.

What is prison abolition?

“Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings” – Angela Davis.

While prison reform usually seeks to improve the practices and conditions inside prison, prison abolition recognises that imprisonment is inherently unsafe and an unhelpful response to social problems. 

Prison abolition, which is grounded and driven by Black feminist vision and tradition, challenges the assumption that prisons keep society safe – it also recognises that prisons cause more harm than they set out to solve. In the words of Dorothy Roberts: “we can imagine and build a more humane and democratic society that no longer relies on caging people to meet human needs and solve social problems.”

This humane and democratic society, one which holistically prevents social problems rather than punishes individuals, won’t magically appear overnight. As Ruth Wilson Gilmore explains, “abolition is about abolishing the conditions under which prison became the solution to problems, rather than abolishing the buildings we call prisons.” 

Abolition requires significant restructuring of our welfare safety net, a dismantling of the logic of punishment, incarceration and exclusion as a ‘solution’ to social problems, and a functional housing and healthcare system. While this feels overwhelming, the roadmap to getting there is in fighting for what’s termed ‘non-reformist reforms’ to the existing system.

Level Up’s campaign to end the imprisonment of pregnant women is an example of such a ‘non-reformist reform’.

What is a non-reformist reform?

As described by Dr Sarah Lamble, non-reformist reforms are ‘strategies which work to undermine or shrink a harmful system, rather than strengthen or normalise it.’ Lamble identifies them as “changes that reduce the size, scope and power of prisons.”

Our campaign to end the imprisonment of pregnant women is an example of a non-reformist reform: it seeks to remove pregnant women and mothers from prison, challenges the logic of imprisonment, and calls for the Ministry of Justice to redirect resources away from prisons and towards community-based alternatives.

A reformist campaign would be to call for more policies that improve access to healthcare inside prisons, but as Rianna Cleary has said herself: “When it comes to prison, what’s written on a piece of paper is never what happens in practice. The way prisons are run is all about power and control. They will never be caring places.”

The only way to keep pregnant women and babies safe is to keep them out of prison altogether. Removing pregnant women and mothers from prisons reduces the scale and scope of prisons, ensures resources are diverted away from prisons and into communities, and in the meantime, opens up a broader public conversation about the horrors that all women experience in prison – and the alternatives we need to invest in.

Five tests for a non-reformist reform

Prisons are in the headlines a lot at the moment, with new Labour Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood announcing that she intends to radically reduce the number of women in prison and set up a women’s justice board to help guide this work. While this sounds promising, and a welcome pitch shift from the previous government, the ultimate test of these measures is: where will the resources go? 

Additional specialist mental health or maternity staff inside prisons, and any further investment to “improve” the prison system or build more types of mini-prison where women are deprived of their liberty will not help in the long-run. Prisons are inherently traumatic, violent places – there is simply no way to deprive someone of their freedom in a ‘trauma-informed’ way. When it comes to pregnant women in prison, the risks are acute. All women need to stay within their communities and receive the holistic support that they need, long before they even come into contact with the justice system. In fact, what we really need, are fully resourced public services and women’s centres that can meet women’s needs before they are swept up into the criminal justice system.

As we see new criminal justice policies announced, we will be keeping our eyes on the money. Assisted by the abolitionist thinkers and dreamers, whose works we reference below, we will be asking these questions:

1. Does it challenge the assumptions that underpin and sustain the system?

2. Does it legitimise or expand a system we are trying to dismantle?

3. Does it provide material relief?

4. Does it mobilise the people most affected for an ongoing struggle?

5. Does it allocate more funding to the existing system, instead of building alternatives?

We will also be critically assessing the use of any narratives that imply some women deserve prison and some don’t. Or that prisons aren’t suitable for women, but men should be there. We’ve noticed that the public conversation on women’s imprisonment tries to divide women between women who commit non-violent offences and women who commit violent offences. We would encourage everyone to remain curious about this distinction.

Firstly, because what people think of as a ‘violent crime’ may not be what it seems: the pregnant woman’s sentence who we helped overturn earlier this year was for firearms possession – categorised as a ‘violent’ crime. The full context had been that her boyfriend had coerced her into storing his gun. Secondly, there is an assumption that prisons are still a legitimate and helpful response to a violent crime. We contest this; the social drivers of women’s violent crime are much more complicated, and deserve equal if not more careful support, consideration and most importantly, prevention, than the prison system offers. We keep our sights fixed on the violence the prison system itself produces and will stay creative and courageous in our calls for a more loving, liberated world that genuinely keeps us all safe. Prisons do not solve our social problems.

While victim-based narratives of deservingness are a quick (and dirty) route to engage public sympathy, feminists should be cautious of where such arguments take us in the long run.

References

We do this til we free us – Mariame Kaba 

Are prisons obsolete? – Angela Y. Davis

Abolition. Feminism. Now – Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, Beth E. Richie

Abolition Geography – Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Practising Everyday Abolition – Sarah Lamble