Given the recent tragic loss of two babies in women’s prisons (see Devlin and Taylor, 2019; Taylor, 2020) maternal imprisonment has had a moment in the public eye. A small number of researchers have been focusing on mothers in prison. To this, Natalie Booth has added her sensitively researched work on the experiences of caregivers of the children of female prisoners. Booth brings family theory to criminology and offers us an engaging and at times heart-breaking account of the challenges that caregivers face when left with imprisoned women’s children to care for. Booth frames the impact of a mother’s prison sentence as a ‘family sentence’ and she shows us how these caregivers occupy a ‘disenfranchised social status’. These are powerful concepts that emphasise the lack of support for and the stigma around taking on the care of prisoners’ children. While these families’ experiences may sound familiar to anyone working or researching in this area, the power in this work lies in the detailed quotations, together with a thoughtful use of theory, that offers the reader a nuanced and comprehensive view of the experience. Booth’s focus on the caregivers helps to de-individualise the narrative around crime and punishment so that we recognise the wider social implications of imprisoning mothers. Using Morgan’s (2011) theory of family practices, we can see how a traditional focus solely on imprisoned mothers and their children obscures the impact on the caregivers, their own children and their wider family and friends. The level of disruption to caregivers’ lives is extensive and, using her participants’ words, Booth details the difficulties they face from the moment the mother is sentenced. The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice

中文翻译：

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书评：产妇监禁与家庭生活

鉴于最近女子监狱中有两名婴儿不幸丧生（见 Devlin 和 Taylor，2019 年；Taylor，2020 年），孕产妇监禁曾一度成为公众关注的焦点。少数研究人员一直关注监狱中的母亲。除此之外，娜塔莉·布斯 (Natalie Booth) 还添加了她对女性囚犯子女照料者经历的敏感研究工作。布斯将家庭理论带入犯罪学，并为我们提供了一个引人入胜、有时令人心碎的描述，描述了照顾者在照顾被监禁的妇女儿童时所面临的挑战。布斯将母亲被判入狱的影响描述为“家庭判决”，她向我们展示了这些看护人如何占据“被剥夺权利的社会地位”。这些都是强有力的概念，强调了对照顾囚犯子女的缺乏支持和耻辱感。虽然这些家庭的经历对于在该领域工作或研究的任何人来说可能听起来很熟悉，但这项工作的力量在于详细的引述以及对理论的深思熟虑，为读者提供了对经历的细致入微和全面的看法。布斯对照顾者的关注有助于使围绕犯罪和惩罚的叙述去个体化，以便我们认识到监禁母亲的更广泛的社会影响。使用 Morgan (2011) 的家庭实践理论，我们可以看到传统上只关注被监禁的母亲及其子女如何掩盖对照顾者、他们自己的孩子以及更广泛的家庭和朋友的影响。看护人的生活受到的干扰程度很大，布斯用她的参与者的话详细说明了他们从母亲被判刑那一刻起面临的困难。