Tools, guidance, and campaign materials to end the imprisonment of pregnant women.
Prison will never be a safe place to be pregnant. After two baby deaths in women's prisons in the last four years, it is a matter of urgency that we end the imprisonment of pregnant women.
Level Up is working in coalition with midwives, lawyers, academics and psychiatrists to lobby the Sentencing Council to introduce a new sentencing framework for pregnant women and new mothers. Read our various submissions to the Sentencing Council here — including calls for pregnancy to be a mitigating factor, and for an end to the use of custody for pregnant women and new mothers.
Sign the petition →Written by barristers Maya Sikand KC, Pippa Woodrow and Hannah Smith of Doughty Street Chambers, with Level Up co-director Janey Starling. This toolkit equips lawyers with the key arguments, resources and tools to represent pregnant women at every stage of the criminal justice process — from bail applications to sentencing.
Access Legal Toolkit →Level Up's 2024 submission to the Sentencing Council calls for pregnancy and new motherhood to be treated as significant mitigating factors at sentencing, and for custody to be used only as an absolute last resort. The submission draws on the evidence of harm — including baby deaths in prison — to argue for a binding sentencing framework that protects pregnant women and their children from the devastating consequences of incarceration.
This briefing note sets out Level Up's position on the Pre-Sentence Reports Bill and its implications for pregnant women and new mothers in the criminal justice system. It argues that pre-sentence reports must fully capture a defendant's pregnancy, recent birth, or primary carer status, and that judges must be required to consider these factors before imposing a custodial sentence — making the case for statutory change to prevent avoidable harm to mothers and babies.
An open letter signed by midwives, lawyers, academics, psychiatrists, and campaigners urging the Sentencing Council to update its guidelines to end the routine use of imprisonment for pregnant women. The letter argues that custody puts pregnant women and their unborn children at serious risk of preventable harm, and calls for pregnancy to be formally recognised as a factor that should, in all but the most exceptional circumstances, make a custodial sentence inappropriate.
Submitted to the government's independent Sentencing Review, this document makes the case for wholesale reform of how the criminal justice system treats pregnant women and primary carers. Level Up calls for community-based alternatives to custody, improved pre-sentence report standards, and a presumption against imprisonment for pregnant defendants — grounded in the evidence that prison causes severe and lasting harm to women, their babies, and their families.
Level Up's 2023 submission to the Sentencing Council builds on its coalition work with legal professionals and healthcare experts to press for concrete changes to sentencing guidelines. It presents the medical evidence on the risks of imprisonment during pregnancy, highlights failures in prison healthcare provision, and renews the call for a clear and enforceable duty on sentencers to avoid custodial sentences where a defendant is pregnant or a primary carer of young children.
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