Book Review: This is our freedom: Motherhood in the shadow of the American prison system by Geniece Crawford Mondé

This is our freedom: Motherhood in the shadow of the American prison system by Geniece Crawford Mondé offers a critical feminist analysis of how identity, marginalisation, and agency exist and play out with women’s intertwining experiences of incarceration and motherhood. Delving into the complexity, nuances, and challenges of their experiences, Mondé eloquently illustrates aspects of women’s pasts, presents, and futures. The book is timely, guided by a conceptual framework of duality at the margins and life course theory that builds on conceptualisations of marginality and agency. This research is situated in the context of transitional organisations, which lead Mondé to raise provocative questions about rehabilitation and the carceral gaze. Overall, this book is grounded in individual women’s lives and experiences, but it also highlights the influence of broader social factors that promote punitiveness over rehabilitation. Mondé offers valuable insight into the often-overlooked lived experiences of women who have the socially conflicting identities of both criminality and motherhood. Mondé divides her book into five chapters, holistically describing women’s experiences with marginalisation and criminalisation. Chapter 1 focuses on childhood experiences, social bonds, and traumatic histories to highlight how events in childhood shape adult experiences of criminality. Chapter 2 discusses pregnancy, in differentiation to motherhood, and challenges the assumption that it is a positive life event by illustrating how it can be a stressor that further marginalises some women and can be a catalyst for offending. Chapter 3 discusses experiences of crime and how some women utilise them to enact agency. In Chapters 4 and 5, Mondé draws the themes together to discuss the duality of marginalised motherhood and the role of rehabilitation in extending the carceral gaze. In this context, duality represents the metaphorical split and balancing of identities to be accepted within the mainstream while remaining true to oneself. The research presented throughout the book is drawn from an interview-based shortterm ethnography that Mondé conducted throughout 2010. Mondé interviewed 70 women who had experienced incarceration and motherhood in three transitional organisations operating in the American northeast: Helping Hands, Mothers Love, and Restoration House. Mondé presents the raw and real stories expressed by these women, letting these experiences guide the research and analysis. Book Review

Mondé employs the conceptual framework of duality at the margins. This is an essential concept as most of these women had marginalised identities before incarceration and were further marginalised by incarceration. When women are mothers, their status as ex-offenders takes precedence and excludes them from access to the ideals of motherhood. Women's responses to this exclusionary status reiterated the assertion: this is our freedom. Their statement is a manifestation of how women respond to their outsider and ex-offender statuses. Mondé's women actively fight for their freedom, which was taken away, and remain oppressed as a result of incarceration.
The marginalised identities experienced by these women, before and after incarceration, shape how the world treats them and how they interact with it while reclaiming agency. This conceptualisation builds on Du Bois's (1909) conceptualisation of double consciousness which focuses on the internal conflict that occurs when one is denied inclusion in a space where they have a legitimate claim. Mondé uses duality at the margins to extend the focus to include the agency and acquiescence that occurs when one challenges social norms. Mondé shows how women who are both mothers and previously incarcerated, reframe and split their identities to be accepted by society while retaining their sense of self, thereby providing a framework for understanding the complexity of marginalised women's lives. The conceptual framework of duality at the margins can be used to understand the various complex and contradictory responses people have to the pressures of social exclusion and marginalised status. This framework goes beyond ridged dichotomous framing of marginalised identities and interactions by capturing the importance of context in shaping experiences and responses.
A framework of duality at the margins centres intersectional experiences and can ground further theoretical analysis. Therefore, Mondé skilfully uses duality at the margins to strengthen and complement the life course theory this book employs. As Mondé notes, life course theory considers how the interactions between individual development, psychology, and the social environment shape life trajectories and turning points into and out of crime. In this context, turning points embody a significant moment where a particular decision alters the life path. Mondé offers a unique insight into the role that motherhood plays by challenging assumptions about its overly positive role in the life course.
By using a gendered lens to discuss life course theory, Mondé examines theoretical implications concerning agency and turning points. In terms of agency, Mondé illustrates how the prescribed identities of mother and criminal create an identity fraught with tension as they are viewed as morally incompatible in the eyes of society. In response, women embody agency. For some, crime was a mechanism to achieve this, although women knew the risk of imprisonment. However, Mondé highlights that these women's stories show that there is no single evolution into crime and specific risk factors, or lack of, are not predictive of crime. Although not explicitly discussed by Mondé, this illustrates the influence of noise.
Sampson and Laub (2005) describe the concept of noise as random processes, differentiated from individual psychology and environment, which shapes how individuals respond to situations differently. Noise leads to variations in responses and questions the predictive nature of risk factors presented by life course theory. As Mondé notes, there were differences, similarities, and nuances in each woman's stories, even though they had shared broad experiences. Ultimately, agency and noise shaped their decisions, alongside their early life experiences, relationships, and vulnerabilities. Challenging the assumption that motherhood is a positive turning point and a fundamental element of desistance, Mondé explains how motherhood can act as a stressor that exacerbates marginalisation, even a catalyst for offending. The effects of turning points depend on context.
Mondé also highlights how her respondents felt an extended carceral gaze from transitional organisations and the expectation to meet rehabilitative ideals associated with motherhood.
The transitional organisations embed normative representations of motherhood in rehabilitation and try to elicit corresponding turning points to demonstrate rehabilitative success. However, some women rejected the normative goals, while others modified or ascribed to the ideals, again exemplifying how this group is not monolithic, as they are often made out to be. This extends life course theory by offering a framework to examine how those who are morally excluded from society actively view and construct their own turning points. This book is timely. As Mondé notes, mass incarceration in America has shaped women's experiences with incarceration. Over the last four decades, women have been the fastest-growing prison population in the US and makeup one-third of the world's total population of incarcerated women. However, these statistics are complicated when a high number of incarcerated women are mothers and more likely to be the custodial parent. Despite the fact that motherhood and incarceration are rarely considered in relation, they deeply affect one another, as Mondé demonstrates. She also explains that in 2010, when these interviews were conducted, the discussion around criminal justice reform was only just beginning and was in a different place to the discussion in 2022. Although Mondé compellingly situates the research in today's context, the stories of these women might also have changed alongside the discourse of criminal justice. Furthermore, although grounded in America, Mondé's study offers a framework that could be extended and applied to other analogous jurisdictions. These are two possible directions for future research.
By exploring the women's lived realities, Mondé compellingly answers the book's research question and goals. However, the nature of this research came with limitations. Mondé highlights these for the reader when they arise and discusses how they were evaluated. For example, the low number and transient nature of transitional organisations for women, shaped who could be interviewed, and reinterviewed, and restrictions within organisations shaped how the women participated. In response, Mondé critically discusses the limits of transitional organisations and the influence of the rehabilitative paradox; where the relationship these organisations have with women is both transactional and personal. Furthermore, Mondé is explicit in her considerations of how her positionality may have shaped interactions and how she navigated building rapport while sustaining boundaries.
Mondé concludes by mentioning policy. These women's stories make clear that leaving prison does not end their relationship with the criminal justice system: it will continue to frame their prospects and desires for the future. Mondé argues that the experiences reveal that reforms have failed to create systemic change or to attend to the lived realities of women. By shining light on how life course theory is used empathetically with young people who offend but dismissed as an excuse when used to explain adult offending, Mondé highlights how its rejection within policy circles has produced harmful policy decisions. For Mondé, rehabilitation policies need to better understand the complexity and nuances experienced by these women. Accordingly, Mondé argues for brick-by-brick change to realise the goal of transformative justice.
Overall, Mondé offers a unique feminist critique of how motherhood and incarceration shape women's experiences and identities, shining a light on lives that are often forgotten within criminology. Through a conceptual framework of duality at the margins, she offers a compelling extension of life course theory, exploring how the fluidity and subjectivity of motherhood influence agency and turning points. Providing insight into what it means to live life on the margins, This is our freedom: Motherhood in the shadow of the American prison system shows how incarceration is not an isolated moment in time but a life experience that influences the past, present, and future. Ultimately humanising these women beyond the dominant narrative of dysfunction. Mondé presents a ripe opportunity for criminology to develop life course theory and understand the complexities that exist when motherhood becomes intertwined with experiences of incarceration and marginalisation.