Incarceration should be a last resort, yet this broken and brutal system punishes marginalised women, most of whom are inside for non-violent crimes
‘W
hen you imprison a woman, you imprison a family,” a young woman in Sierra Leone told me, cradling her small baby in a damp cell. My mind flashed back to being a teenager, hearing my mother sob after receiving a phone call to say that my father had been arrested in Zambia for political reasons.
I understand how children are collateral damage of imprisonment, and over 20 years as a lawyer, I know that is even more true when women – primary caregivers – are arrested.
I have witnessed the devastating impact of incarceration on hundreds of women and their children but also how their voices are ignored, even in women’s rights spaces.
