Caring from within prison: how women renegotiate their caring roles towards co-incarcerated family members

• In Event: Generational Sentences: Childhood, Justice, and Family Separation

Abstract

Research on the impact of imprisonment on families has astutely noted the gendered dimension of supporting an incarcerated family member. From visiting an incarcerated loved one to sending essential items in, it is typically women who ‘do’ the supporting of people in prison. Researchers have also observed that women disproportionally bear the burden of domestic labour arising from another’s imprisonment. When a father is incarcerated, mothers in the community are usually the primary caregivers for their children, while grandmothers and sisters often take on this role when a mother is imprisoned.

What happens however when these women find themselves behind bars at the same time as an incarcerated relative? Can they continue to provide support to a co-incarcerated family member between or within prison walls? Who supports them – and those they had been caring for in the community?

Drawing from on data from a mixed-methods study in English prisons, this paper seeks to address those questions. It examines how the gendered expectation, and often desire to care, is renegotiated when women are imprisoned at the same time as a family member whom they would otherwise have been supporting in the community.

Author

• Ariadne Fischer, University of Cambridge