“It's nice to go home to your family, but… to do what?”: The possibilities and challenges of maintaining and constructing family in women’s open prisons

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

Abstract

Open prisons in England & Wales state that ‘maintaining family ties’ is one of their primary aims. This is mainly facilitated through Release on Temporary Licence (ROTL), but also through in-prison services. Likely, this aim is especially valuable to incarcerated women, for whom loss of contact with loved ones—especially children—is one of the main ‘pains of imprisonment’. However, little is known about how women held in open prisons actually experience and perceive the aim of ‘maintaining family ties’. Drawing on 6 months of ethnographic observation and interviews with incarcerated women in two women’s open prisons in England, this paper explores the role of ‘family’ in women’s narratives and experiences of open imprisonment. One of the main motivations that women expressed for progressing to an open prison was to spend more and better-quality time with loved ones. Yet, upon arrival, many women encountered obstacles and delays that continued to restrict their family contact. Once they began accessing ROTL, women identified ‘being able to rebuild relationships that have broken down and spend time with family’ as the best aspect. At the same time, they described a number of practical, emotional, and existential challenges associated with the institutional demands and restrictions of ROTL, particularly in terms relationships with loved ones and motherhood. Ultimately, this paper foregrounds the perspectives of women incarcerated in English open prisons to illuminate and problematise both the possibilities for ‘doing family’ in this context, and the ‘hard edges’ of penal power that bound and disrupt these efforts.

Author

• Daria Przybylska, University of Cambridge