‘Lockdown's changed everything’: Mothering adult children in prison in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/02645505211050855 |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
‘Lockdown’s changed
everything’: Mothering
adult children in prison
in the UK during the
COVID-19 pandemic
Kelly Lockwood
School of Health & Society, University of Salford, UK
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic occurred at a time when families of prisoners were gaining
visibility in both academia and policy. Research exploring the experiences of families
of prison residents has tended to focus on intimate partners and children, despite par-
ents of those in prison being more likely than partners or children to maintain contact.
The small body of work focusing on parents has identified their continued care for
their children and highlights the burden of providing this care. With the ethics of
care posing an ideological expectation on women to provide familial care, the
care for adult children in custody is likely to fall to mothers. However, with restricted
prison regimes, the pandemic has significantly impeded mothers’ability to provide
this ‘care’. Adopting a qualitative methodology, this paper explores the accounts of
mothers to adult children in custody during the pandemic across two UK prison sys-
tems, England and Wales, and Scotland; exploring the negotiation of mothering in
the context of imprisonment and the pandemic and highlighting important lessons
for policy and practice.
Keywords
Mothering, prison, families of prisoners, lockdown, COVID-19
Corresponding Author:
Kelly Lockwood, School of Health & Society, University of Salford, Room 510, Allerton Building, Salford
M54WT, UK.
Email: k.a.lockwood@salford.ac.uk
Article The Journal of Communit
y
and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
2021, Vol. 68(4) 458–475
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/02645505211050855
journals.sagepub.com/home/prb
Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic had a global impact on prisons and prisoners
(Blogg et al., 2021; Lemasters, McCauley, Nowotny and Brinkley-Rubinstein,
2020; Testa and Fahmy, 2021). Often overcrowded environments, characterised
by congregate living, with limited health care provision, disease can spread
easily (Lemasters et al., 2020; Mehay et al., 2020). With those residing in prison
being from some of the most marginalised groups in society, they are also at
greater risk of suffering more significantly from COVID-19 (Lemasters et al.,
2020; Mehay et al., 2020).
The pandemic broke at a time when the needs and experiences of families of
those in prison were gaining more visibility in both academia and policy (Booth,
2020; Woodall and Kinsella, 2017). In England and Wales, the Farmer Review
(2017) concluded that prisoners’families were the ‘golden thread’to effective reset-
tlement. The review noted the importance of visits for maintaining and/or develop-
ing family ties (Farmer, 2017). However, during the pandemic face-to-face visits
were suspended in most jurisdictions, impeding the maintenance of familial relation-
ships (Testa and Fahmy, 2021). Equally, the increased risk of COVID to those in
prison has resulted in families experiencing extreme anxieties (Testa and Fahmy,
2021). With families of prisoners across the globe equally more likely to have
complex health needs themselves (Lockwood et al., 2021; Raikes et al., 2019;
Woodall and Kinsella, 2017), the distress experienced is likely compounded by
concerns for their own health and well-being during the pandemic.
Despite the growing awareness of the needs and experiences of families of pris-
oners, academic focus tends be on intimate partners or children (Hutton, 2019).
Whilst this is an important body of work, there is a dearth of knowledge in relation
to the needs and experiences of parents of those in prison (Hutton, 2019). This gap
in knowledge is significant as international research identifies that over half of
parents in custody receive no visits from their children (Lockwood et al., 2021;
Poehlmann-Tynan, 2015), and intimate partner relationship breakdown is
common (Hutton, 2019); with parents more likely to maintain contact (Murray,
2003). The ‘ethics of care’, in which women are considered more likely to foster
and maintain interpersonal relationships, poses an ideological expectation on
women to provide familial care (Souza et al., 2019); the ‘care’for adult children
in custody is therefore more likely to fall to mothers. However, the pandemic has
inevitably impeded mothers’ability to provide this ‘care’. This paper adopts a qua-
litative methodology, bringing the accounts of mothers to adult children in custody in
two different UK prison systems, England and Wales, and Scotland, during the
COVID-19 pandemic to the centre of discussion.
COVID and the prison
Globally, prisons witnessed consistently higher COVID-19 infection and death rates
than within the general population (Pagano et al., 2020; Vest et al., 2021). Those in
prison are disproportionately from economically marginalised communities, and
Lockwood 459
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