Price: $39.95
Page Count: 300
Publication Date: July 2026
ISBN: 978-1-77258-622-0
"Correctional work is often presented in data and statistics. However, between the numbers and formal structures embedded within the justice system are nuanced layers of people, identities, and collateral consequences. The number of incarcerated women is growing globally, and many among them are mothers. This necessary and timely collection weaves together stories of mothers, families, and communities. It highlights the complex interplay of incarceration and motherhood, taking the reader through a powerful journey exploring the role of society, media, culture, and systemic inequities in shaping the lives of prisoned (m)others. It brings to the forefront what is often unheard, unnoticed, and unseen and lets us experience what it means to be a mother and ‘other’ through first-hand reflections, creative expression, archival research, media analysis, case studies and policy reviews. The stories in this collection humanize the correctional experience of mothers and serve as a poignant and urgent reminder that we must do better to support families impacted by incarceration."
- Karla Dhungana Sainju, Ph.D. ,
Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Science and Humanities
Ontario Tech University
INTRODUCTION
Olga Marques and Michelle Hughes Miller
SECTION 1. Others Storying (M)others: The Stories We Have Been Told
• Framing Prison Moms: Decolonizing Narratives of Carceral Motherhood
(Olga Marques, and Neha Anna Thomas)
• Even Before Dobbs, The State of Pregnancy and Abortion Access Inside America’s Carceral System was Miserable: A Case Study
(Margaret T. Wood)
• Incarcerated Mothers and Deportation: A Call for Compassionate Reform
(Salomon Zavala)
• Pregnancy in the Penitentiary: A Review of How Bodies Carrying Babies are Treated Behind Bars
(Raissa Rohbock, Mallory Darais, and McKenzie Wood)
SECTION 2. Prison (M)others Storying Themselves: Retelling the Stories Themselves
• Black Motherhood Freestyle
(Wanda Sabir)
• Motherwork Under Confinement: Navigating Incarceration and Maternal Identities in Michoacan’s Centres for Social Reintegration
(Veronica Valencia Gonzalez)
• Me (a mother) v. Space, Time, and Silence
(Carla Simmons)
SECTION 3. Storying Together with (M)others
• “Dear Mother”: Letters of Longing from the Early 20th Century New York State Training School for Girls
(Tobi Jacobi)
• “We Need Each Other”: Experiences of Maternal Incarceration from the Mothers and Their Children
(Janet Garcia-Hallet, and Melissa Noel)
• Buffering Toxic Stress Through the Creation of an Interactive Colouring and Activity Book for Incarcerated Mothers and their Children
(April N. Terry, Karrie Simpson Voth, Thomas Giebler, Sarah Broman Miller, and Dani Essman)
Olga Marques, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor (Criminology and Justice) at Ontario Tech University. Her research interests include the construction, policing, and regulation of gendered, sexed, and raced bodies, and the inter-relationships between gendered social norms, social control, and resistance. She also writes on the impacts and experiences of prisoning, critical re-articulations of “crime”, anti-narratives, as well as Indigenous experiences of criminal (in)injustice. She is co-editor of Thug Criminology. A Call to Action (2023, University of Toronto Press).
Michelle Hughes Miller is Professor and Chair in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at the University of South Florida. She analyzes constructions of mothers and “bad mothers” in law, policy, and media. She previously edited Criminalizing Motherhood and Reproduction (2024) and co-edited Bad Mothers: Regulations, Representations and Resistance (2017). Her own research has been published in The Routledge Companion to Motherhood and Writing Mothers, along with multiple. Her career goal is to integrate motherhood studies into feminist criminology.
