'The invisible barrier': mental illness as a mediator of mothers' participation in the Victorian criminal justice system

In line with international trends, women represent Australia’s fastest growing prison population. They also represent a resource intensive population as women who enter the criminal justice system come with a wide variety of interlinked individual, social, and systemic challenges, most notably high rates of mental illness. Furthermore, a large number of imprisoned women will also be mothers to dependent children. Despite the growing body of knowledge surrounding imprisoned mothers and women who have a mental illness, knowledge about women who straddle this divide appears to be missing. They are relatively invisible in terms criminal justice policy, and practice as well as research. In order to address this gap, this study examines the experiences of mothers with a mental illness, as they navigate Victoria’s criminal justice system, to plan the care of their children. This study focuses on mothers’ experiences at the critical care planning decision-making points of pre-prison, arrest, sentencing, and imprisonment. An exploratory embedded mixed methods approach was used, gathering both quantitative and qualitative data from mothers using a structured interview schedule. Data gathered from 21 imprisoned mothers with a mental illness was triangulated with data gathered from 19 imprisoned mothers without a mental illness. Interviews took place at Victoria’s two female prisons, the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre and Tarrengower Prison, and within the community. The quantitative data was analysed using descriptive, non-parametric statistics, and Chi-square tests. The qualitative data was analysed using thematic and content analysis in order to develop themes and map the women’s experiences. The findings show that mothers with a mental illness, especially those who have severe mental health issues, have lower levels of involvement in planning their children’s care, compared to mothers who do not have a mental illness. This is due to the individual issues experienced by these mothers intersecting with a criminal justice system that typically does not acknowledge or respond to them in any significant way. This group of women are therefore disadvantaged by both their gender and their mental health status. With mothers typically remanded into custody, this represents a crisis for the family unit; there is no time to plan, and significant others have to step in to make the care decisions. The majority of children have no care plans in place at the time of their mother’s imprisonment. Arrangements that are made often become unstable over time. This study shows that mental illness has a significant impact on this group of mothers’ engagement with and participation in the criminal justice system to plan their children’s care. This study has important implications for criminal justice policy and procedure. It highlights the importance of responding to complexity within correctional populations, and provides evidence for the need to incorporate gender-responsive practice at the stages of arrest and sentencing. This study represents the first Australian study to examine the experiences of mothers with a mental illness as they intersect with and move though the criminal justice system.