Prison Born: Incarceration and Motherhood in the Colonial Shadow

Best Books of the Year, The Hill Times

An essential and gripping book about the most extraordinary collateral consequence that our sentencing courts impose: the separation of mother and infant through incarceration. It is unconscionable that our legal system has not been pressed into finding a better way. This book will help.
—Lisa Kerr, director, Criminal Law Group at Queen’s Law

Prison Born takes on the harmful state practice of infant separation in the Canadian criminal legal system, with attention to its gendered, racialized, and colonial impacts. Following the story of one woman and her child, born while she was serving her sentence, Robin F. Hansen exposes the brutality and injustice of punishment practices and asks important questions about why and how these practices are normalized.
—Debra Parkes, Chair in Feminist Legal Studies, Peter A. Allard School of Law