Rehabilitation, Risk, and the Carceral Mother:Subjectivity and Parenting Classes in Prisons

Marilyn Brown

Published online: 27 December 2011� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract Parenting education classes are ubiquitous in the correctional system, partic-

ularly for female inmates. This approach to reforming women embodies a maternal sub-

jectivity far removed from the poverty-stricken, criminalized, largely Native Hawai‘ian

population in Hawaii’s prisons. Neoliberal governance views poor parenting as the reason

for crime, poverty, and a host of social ills. Parenting classes, while well meant and popular

among female inmates, foster a reality grounded in notions of middle-class family life.

Prisons and other disciplinary systems (such as child welfare) target women’s maternal

concerns in order to manage risk, both among female inmates and, potentially, among their

children through parenting education. Using data from 240 prison case files and 25 in-

depth interviews of mothers on parole supervision, this study finds that the white, middle-

class notions embodied by the parenting class are largely at odds with the lived experience

of parenting women who are incarcerated.

Introduction: Leilani’s Story

According to notes from her parole file, 35-year-old Sherree Leilani Akana1 left prison in

October of 1999, having served nearly 3 years in prison for stealing money from the homes

of several acquaintances to support her drug habit. Within a few months of her release,

according to the parole officer’s case notes I reviewed for this study, Leilani left the

transition program she had been paroled to and was living with her boyfriend and her

children in Honolulu. The following spring, Leilani found that she was pregnant. She and

the child’s father married and, in July, she went on maternity leave from work.

At about this point, according to the case notes, things began to go sour. Leilani’s

daughter was arrested and placed in juvenile court for arson. The Department of Human

Services notified her that she owed them several thousand dollars to reimburse them for

M. Brown (&)Sociology Department, University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, 200 W. Kawili St., Hilo, HI 96720, USAe-mail: marilyn@hawaii.edu

1 This name is a pseudonym, as are all names used in this study.

123

Crit Crim (2012) 20:359–375DOI 10.1007/s10612-011-9153-9

payments made to a relative foster-caregiver who took in her children while she was in

prison. Worse yet, at about the same time her youngest child was born, the family started

experiencing periods of homelessness. Early in the year, Leilani reported to her parole

officer that her husband had assaulted her. On this occasion, she admitted to using drugs.

Her husband, having taken their son to another island, got into trouble with the law for a

violent offence there.

The wheels really came off the wagon when Leilani moved from O’ahu to another

island without officially notifying her parole officer. It got back to him that she was living

on the beach there with other individuals who were ‘‘all using drugs,’’ according to his case

notes. Hawai‘i Paroling Authority subsequently obtained a warrant for her arrest. More-

over, when her parole officer got word that Leilani’s youngest child had been seriously

injured when left in the care of a young sibling, he notified Child Protective Services about

the situation. In response, CPS2 started an investigation into the case.

The warrant for Leilani’s arrest, issued only a few weeks before her parole term expired,

was never served. By the end of September 2001, Leilani had ‘‘maxed out’’ and was no

longer bound by the terms of her parole and agents would not pursue her. However,

Leilani’s problems with the State of Hawai‘i were by no means over. She was under

investigation by Child Protective Services. Should her children be taken away and placed

in the foster care system, Leilani faces the possible termination of her parental rights under

current child welfare and adoption laws. In any case, she is still expected to reimburse the

State for payments to the foster caregiver of her children during her incarceration. And,

finally, her apparent return to drug use was now known to law enforcement, putting her at

risk for new charges.

Leilani did well for a while on parole. But the programs she received during prison and

the close supervision of a social-work-oriented parole authority did not transform Leilani’s

life in any appreciable way. Indeed, since her release from prison, Leilani’s experience has

been a cascade of losses culminating in homelessness, familial violence, the apparent

resurgence of her drug use, and the probable loss of custody of her children.

Contemporary rehabilitation projects little imagine the harrowing post-prison worlds

inhabited by mothers like Leilani, whose parole ended so badly. Leilani’s life after prison

was not altered in any appreciable way by the suite of ‘‘skills’’ classes that are increasingly

the core of correctional programming. Skills classes focus on a range of what Duguid

(2000) refers to as social competencies or soft skills, delivered in modules aimed to affect

prisoners’ thinking and develop their problem-solving abilities. As carceral institutions

respond to the increasing number of parents behind bars, parenting classes are increasingly

among the array of such skills programming now being delivered in the nation’s jails and

prisons.

As reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, over half (53%) of individuals held in

state and federal prisons at midyear in 2007 were parents of children under age 18 (Glaze

and Maruschak 2008). This represents an increase of nearly 80% since 1991. The report

also estimates that 1,706,600 minor children (2.3% of the U.S. resident population under

18) have an incarcerated parent. The dramatic increase in the incarcerated population over

the past several decades has meant an unprecedented impact of state correctional policies

on the family, especially on those families headed by women. Between 1991 and 2007,

maternal incarceration rose 122% compared to a 77% increase in the incarceration of

fathers. While incarcerated parents of both genders are the focus of prison parenting

2 The State of Hawai‘i recently changed the name of Child Protective Services (CPS) to Child WelfareServices.

360 M. Brown

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programs, 29.7%3 of mothers compared to 12.1% of fathers who lived with their minor

children prior to prison reported taking parenting classes.

Mass incarceration has given rise to dramatic increases in the phenomenon of carceral

families—families where an adult member is under some form of correctional control. The

state, which polices the family through its private responsibilities (Donzelot 1997), requires

parents who are prudential and circumspect. The criminalized woman with children

challenges the customary mode in which the state’s managerial function operates. Penal

regimes have adopted parenting programs as a means of managing the risk posed by the

maternal experiences of predominantly poor women of color who are under the control of

an increasingly punitive state, often in the grip of overlapping systems of child welfare and

criminal justice control.

Contemporary correctional management tools incorporate family and other relation-

ships into measures of risk (Hannah-Moffat 2007; Pollack 2007). But this risk offers

opportunity to the state in terms of leveraging women’s maternal concerns to exhort them

to self-reform. The lawlessness and incarceration of the carceral mother also raises

questions about the impact of her behavior on the children. Therefore correctional policies

grounded in the late modern risk management framework are confronted with two chal-

lenges: the risk of further offending by the woman and potential future offending by her

children. A parenting pedagogy that emphasizes negotiating choices and prudent decision-

making promises a reformed mother—and children at reduced risk of delinquency and

crime. However, this largely middle-class vision of motherhood, as proffered by the par-

enting program in the name of risk reduction, is culturally and structurally at odds with the

lived realities of these fragile families.

The Lived Experience of Incarcerated Mothers

The data for this paper were drawn from a broader study of parenting women on parole

supervision in Hawai‘i (author’s citation). The methodology included an intensive review

of the criminal justice system files of 240 formerly incarcerated women on parole super-

vision, 85% of whom were parents to one or more children. The qualitative data for this

study are from in-depth interviews of 25 parenting women on parole supervision (a sample

drawn from the 203 parenting women in the quantitative sample) who responded to mailed

fliers about the research.

The case file reviews produced data on a wide range of characteristics such as ethnicity,

children, employment, education, and substance use. The great majority of Hawaii’s

incarcerated population leaves prison on parole supervision, meaning that parolee char-

acteristics are consistent with the prison population. This review of case file data (which

includes everything in a parolee’s criminal file or ‘‘jacket’’) for the study group reveals

important insights into this group of marginalized women and their pathways to prison.

Both the case file data and the interviews reveal that paroled women in Hawai‘i tend to be

poor women of color, who lack education and connection to work. They have high rates of

addiction, often related to their long-standing problems with the law.

In Hawai‘i, Native Hawaiian men and women are both disproportionately represented in

the State’s criminal justice system; however, the disparity is greater for women (OHA

2010). Consistent with these other data on racial disparities in Hawaii’s justice system,

3 The percentage of women reported as having taken parenting classes exceeded those (27%) who reportedtaking vocational training.

Rehabilitation, Risk, and the Carceral Mother 361

123

women of Native Hawaiian ancestry are overrepresented in the study group at 52.5% as

shown in Table 1, at more than double their proportion (19%) in the population. Caucasian

women (who make up roughly 20% of Hawaii’s population) are underrepresented.

Consistent with other studies of female prisoners in the U.S., the study group has serious

deficits in education and employment (Owen and Bloom 1995; Greenfeld and Snell 1999).

At the time of sentencing, more than half (53.6%) lacked even a high school diploma or

equivalent. Fewer than 10% had a college degree as shown in Table 2.

Assessments of the women’s employment and vocational needs in the year preceding

sentencing similarly point to patterns of unemployment, unsatisfactory levels of employ-

ment, and lack of training. These data, reported in Table 3, portend serious reentry chal-

lenges for the roughly 75% of women who had little effective connection to work prior to

prison.

An analysis of the current commitment offenses for this group of women shows little

involvement in violent crimes. They are predominantly convicted for property and drug

offenses. Since the majority of women have been convicted for multiple offenses (for

which they serve concurrent sentences for the most part), the analysis below deals with the

aggregate number of offenses for which they are incarcerated. Few of these fall into the

category of the most severe felonies (‘‘A’’ and ‘‘B’’) as indicated in Table 4. Most offenses

(78.6%) are class ‘‘C’’ felonies, the least serious level.

Previous contact with the police and corrections was common for this group of women.

Over a third (36%) had a juvenile record and half had a previous conviction, with roughly

the same number having been on probation or parole supervision prior to this most recent

incarceration.

Given the profile above, it is unsurprising that drug use and dependence are common in

this population. Assessment data4 show that 80% required treatment for drug addiction, as

shown in Table 5.

The 203 mothers whose case files I reviewed were parents to some 576 children. The data in

the files were ‘‘snapshots’’ of the custody situations of children at their mother’s sentencing.

Relatively few women (7.3%) had children placed in foster care, but 24% had been under

Table 1 Ethnicities of femaleparolees in study (n = 238)

Data missing in two cases

Ethnicity Frequency Percentage

Hawaiian and part Hawaiian 125 52.5

Caucasian 38 16.0

Asian/other Pacific Islander 35 14.7

Other 40 16.8

Total 238 100.0

Table 2 Educational attainmentprior to incarceration: highestgrade completed (n = 233)

Data missing in 7 cases

Education level Frequency Percentage

Grade school 14 6.0

Some high school 111 47.6

High school/GED 86 36.9

College degree/some college 22 9.4

4 Missing data were not that unusual in the case files, particularly for assessments that may not have evenbeen conducted. Substance abuse treatment and related services are underfunded in Hawaii’s prisons.

362 M. Brown

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investigation by Child Protective Services prior to sentencing. In addition, 17% of the mothers

in the study had had their parental rights terminated for one or more children.

Clearly, the case file data are limited with respect to the quality of women’s parenting

experiences. However, the data indicate a clear pattern of educational deficits, lack of

employment and, presumably, economic dependence. In many cases, these women have

had long-standing problems with the law going back to adolescence as well as considerable

involvement in the adult justice system. The prevalence of drug dependence and addiction

is largely consistent with the women’s current convictions for property and drug offenses.

On the whole, the data paint a portrait of parenting in a context fraught with troubles. I

refer to this pattern as ‘‘carceral motherhood,’’ a term which points to the convergence of

criminal justice controls and maternal concerns. The parenting programming, steeped in a

middle-class context, talks past the lived experiences of this group of women who will

negotiate a very different maternal subjectivity when they emerge from prison.

Subjectivity, Risk Management, and Self-Reform

This study began with a concern about women like Leilani and their children, for whom the

experience of incarceration represents yet another in a series of catastrophes. I was

Table 3 Employment and vocational needs indicators in the year preceding sentencing

Indicator Frequency Percentage

Satisfactory or secure employment 53 24.8

Unsatisfactory or unemployed (but has job skills) 123 57.4

Virtually unemployable (needs job training) 38 17.8

Data were missing in 26 cases (10.6% of sample)

Table 4 Total current commitment offenses

Offense Violent Property Drug Other Total

N % N % N % N % N %

Felony A 11 1.4 16 2.1 0 0 0 0 27 3.5

Felony B 21 2.8 50 6.6 60 7.9 4 0.5 135 17.8

Felony C 11 1.4 300 39.3 279 36.6 10 1.3 600 78.6

Total 43 5.6 366 48 339 44.5 14 1.8 762 a

a Does not add up to 100% due to rounding

Table 5 Inmate need for treatment: drug usage

Assessment Frequency Percentage

No interference with functioning 17 7.9

Occasional abuse with some disruption of functioning 26 12.1

Frequent abuse with serious disruption, needs treatment 172 80.0

Total 215a 100.0

a Data missing in 25 cases

Rehabilitation, Risk, and the Carceral Mother 363

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motivated by a theoretical interest in how penal regimes and institutions like courts,

prosecutors, and parole govern women in ways that are effectively gendered, racialized,

and classed. What struck me about the parole officer’s account of Leilani’s post-release

problems was the concurrent focus on her parenting as well as her criminal violations. Not

surprisingly, the motherhood of criminalized women was a common refrain among the

many officers of the court, prison staff, and parole staff I interviewed for this project.

A family court judge I interviewed during the course of this research told me, ‘‘Mother-

hood, you can under use it—but you can over use it, too.’’ This comment, in the context of

a conversation about the power of maternal feeling to bring misbehaving women around,

exemplifies cultural assumptions about feminine subjectivity as perceived by the law’s

agents and its potential as a site of regulation.

My examination of women on parole in Hawai‘i took place in a correctional context that

typifies what O’Malley (1999) calls a ‘hybrid’ approach to governance, one that combines

risk management with older forms of penology such as rehabilitation (see also Hannah-

Moffat 2005). As Garland (2001) suggests, these mixed strategies are linked to diminished

confidence in penal welfarism and the triumphalism of actuarial systems of risk man-

agement (Feeley and Simon 1992, 1994; Garland 2001). Rehabilitation has been revisited

as a means of augmenting risk management in penal regimes where self-reform is a central

theme (Bosworth 2007; Haney 2004; Hannah-Moffat 2005). Within the framework of risk

management, rehabilitation has become a matter of individual responsibility, deployed

through moral and educational campaigns that feature tropes of agency and empowerment.

These initiatives ‘‘invite’’ inmates to join the project of self-transformation and to become

‘willing actors’ and self-regulating participants in a globalized consumer marketplace

(Kemshall 2002: 69). This mode of governance represents a transformation of what was

formerly called treatment to what is now framed as teaching subjects how to responsibilize

themselves (Hannah-Moffat 2005). Children remain a central concern of incarcerated

mothers (Baunach 1985; Bloom and Steinhart 1993), thus providing the state with a

powerful leverage point to induce women to participate in reform. And, in learning how to

govern their children, it is hoped that women learn how to govern themselves (Hannah-

Moffat 2007).

In the name of reforming women, correctional authorities and the state in general have

long appropriated women’s maternal concerns in order to regulate female lawbreakers and

other recalcitrant women into compliance. ‘Mothercraft’—especially the array of domestic

skills associated with middle-class experience—was viewed as a means of rolling back

infant mortality in nineteenth century England (Hunt et al. 1989) while disciplining

working-class women living in poverty. Historically, reformers considered criminal

women to possess greater ‘‘malleability’’ compared to men (Britton 2005: xii). And

motherhood was often the lever that might potentially reform the criminal woman. In

American reformatories, reinforcing the identities of mother and spouse was the chief

means of regulating female inmates (Bosworth 1996; Carlen 1983; Hannah-Moffat 2001).

Of course, as Rafter (1990) points out, correctional reform for women meant rehabilitative

institutions (when they existed at all) for white women and non-reforming custodial

facilities for women of color.

Mothers who go to prison not only face cultural condemnation by intimates and the

community, but their motherhood becomes the object of official interest and commentary

within penal regimes—and even a locus of risk management. Motherhood has been

described as a set of resources, a ‘‘central cultural motif’’ that symbolically organizes adult

womanhood (McMahon 1995: 25). Motherhood, as McMahon notes, provides a lens

through which others view feminine identity—and through which a woman views herself.

364 M. Brown

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Being convicted of a crime and sent to prison effectively destroys maternal rectitude,

regardless of the quality of a woman’s maternal care. This motif was certainly central to all

of my conversations with parenting women on parole who were the basis of this research,

as well as judicial and correctional personnel whom I interviewed for this study. I argue, as

Hannah-Moffat (2007) does, that the norms of motherhood reflected in parenting classes

reflect a white, middle-class set of hegemonic principles. Building on this theoretical

framework, I examine issues of resistance and compliance among women whose back-

grounds diverge from the middle-class experience that most parenting programs assume to

be normative.

Pedagogy of Maternal Reform

Correctional regimes were always quick to appropriate women’s maternal roles as a

centerpiece of gendered rehabilitation dating back to the reformatory era. In her recent

examination of parenting classes, Hannah-Moffat (2007) notes that contemporary reha-

bilitative services construct women’s maternal responsibilities in ways that constitute a

gendered governance of risk. Moreover, these risk management practices need to be

unpacked in ways that reveal their gendered, racialized, and classed impacts and

assumptions.

Parenting classes, in keeping with neoliberal exhortations to self-reform (Lynch 2000),

take up the tropes of good parenting—but parenting grounded in the ‘psy’ framework,

especially the psychology of child development. Parenting instruction through formalized

curricula is now a commonplace within penal institutions—for both men and women

(Loper and Tuerk 2006). While authors have examined the dominance of cognitive skills

instruction in prisons and its relation to neoliberal policies of individual responsibility and

remoralization (Kendall 2000, 2002; Kendall and Pollack 2003; Duguid 2000), parenting

classes in prisons have only just begun to be critically analyzed on par with these other

modalities. (See Gillies 2005, for an examination of parenting instruction and social

exclusion in Britain in non-penal settings.)

Examined critically, parenting education, like cognitive skills programs (see Kendall

2002), is divorced from the lived experiences of the largely poor, marginalized individuals

who make up carceral populations. As Hannah-Moffat (2007) points out:

The gendered emphasis on maternal identity and responsibility reinforces a norma-

tive femininity and idealized motherhood that is inconsistent with the lived experi-

ences of criminalized women, yet used to identify and govern women’s risk (2007:

234).

Drawn from a ‘‘culturally preferred model of bourgeois motherhood’’ (McMahon 1995:

29), parenting instruction attempts to reconfigure the experience of the largely unprivileged

women who make up an ever-expanding prison population. Nevertheless, imprisoned

mothers may well look to parenting education as a means of restoring legitimate identities

and to help them negotiate motherhood upon leaving prison.

Parenting Class as Multi-Generational Risk Management

The law speaks to women in a variety of forums about their motherhood, ranging from

custody proceedings in divorce cases to the actions of child protective services to broader

Rehabilitation, Risk, and the Carceral Mother 365

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messages about mothering implicit in welfare reform. For example, marriage incentives

held out to poor women in order to qualify for better welfare benefits provide a clear

message about what the structure of family life should be (Mink 2001). Through parenting

classes, which may be mandatory for mothers under penal supervision or those being

investigated by child protective services, penal and other disciplinary regimes make pro-

nouncements about the nature of parenting.

The content of these classes, always stressing choice and rational decision-making,

provides a model of what effective parenting is about and how to do it. Parenting classes,

which are sometimes presented as a stand-alone program and at other times as part of a

more comprehensive treatment program, are given as a corrective to the faulty governance

of children by parents. These approaches, consistent with the production of more

responsible, rational selves, are ubiquitous across both criminal justice and other disci-

plinary systems that deal with criminal or other misbehaving populations. Spurred on by a

growing interest in the children of incarcerated parents, parenting programs for both

women and men are growing increasingly important in correctional systems (Loper and

Tuerk 2006). The curricula draw on many of the same tropes of cognitive skills inter-

ventions in their emphasis on reflection, communication, and altering inappropriate

thinking. Parenting classes encourage reflective dialogue with children, promoting a more

relational self who interacts in ways that result in close bonds between parent and child.

The programs provide knowledge about the developmental phases of childhood based on

science. Mothers are supposed to develop ‘‘skills’’ in dealing with their children, to replace

unskilled approaches such as physical discipline and angry scolding.

These interventions are organized and administered as curriculum modules which

individuals then ‘take’ as classes (Duguid 2000). Homework may well be part of the course

for the ‘students.’ Lessons come with ‘questions for review’ and require ‘journaling’ and

other modes of reflection. Successful completion of the ‘course’ means a certificate for the

participant. The didactic manner in which classes are conducted suggests a learning

environment, one that barely disguises the disciplinary context of the prison. The class-

room experience even less successfully conceals its subjectivity project. Lessons about the

nature of childhood development also offer mother an understanding of her own psy-

chological nature as well as that of her child. Sessions on children’s emotions, for example,

explain how children learn over time to manage their emotional natures by expressing

feelings appropriately and controlling negative emotions. In this way, women can appro-

priate the lessons of the parenting class for themselves as well as their children. The

‘graduates’ of these programs are imagined as emerging from prison (or from child welfare

caseloads which also feature these interventions) as responsible parents, rational choice

makers, who, based on their new knowledge of childhood development, will become

reliable, consistent, relational parents, as well as responsible citizens. Yet, the risk prin-

ciples embodied therein tend to talk past structural factors that trouble mothers’ successful

reentry, namely their marginalized race, ethnic, gender, and class positions.

Parenting classes emerge as a risk management technique holding promise both for the

production of a more responsible mother and for the production of law-abiding children as

well. To give an example, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, along with its ‘‘Character

Counts’’ curriculum (‘to develop both mental and moral character’), offers a parenting

skills program described as follows:

The goal of the Parenting Skills program is to make a sustained lasting impact on

crime prevention. This program focuses on educating current and future [sic]

incarcerated parents, grandparents, and caregivers of methods in which to raise

366 M. Brown

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healthier and more nurtured children who will be less at-risk for criminal activity

(Louisiana Department of Corrections 2007).

Managing social risk through managing families is imagined by correctional agents as

taking place in tandem with the mother’s own self-reform project. As a new, more

responsible parent emerges, she becomes the nurturing mother who inculcates her children

with self-esteem and habits of discipline, thus compensating for their disadvantage and

marginalization. As Gillies observes of parenting initiatives under Britain’s New Labour

Government, by giving disadvantaged parents the skills ‘‘to raise middle-class children’’

the cycle of crime and poverty will be addressed (2005: 838). The incarcerated mother,

through her project of self-reform (see Haney 2004), can then become a partner with the

state in molding both herself and her children.

However, as the state appropriates women’s expectations for their own transformation,

it proffers a subjectivity largely at odds with the real circumstances of incarcerated

women’s lives and the social marginalization they return to after prison. For women

emerging from prison after some years away, there are contradictions between institutional

interpretive structures of motherhood and what women themselves make of these tech-

nologies of maternal transformation (see Merry 2001) after prison.

The Lessons of the Parenting Class

Parenting classes, like other strategies of late modern penalty reflect a mode of parenting

associated with middle-class privilege. Neoliberal governance offers a critique of working-

class parenting on the assumption that family pathologies are at the root of poverty and crime

(Gillies 2005). These interventions stress talking to children, making them aware of choices and

teaching them to generalize according to abstract, internalized principles—childrearing styles

associated with middle-class parenting (Kohn 1963). More recent evidence confirms these class

differences, ones that tend to interact with race, with poor and working-class childrearing

utilizing a style that Lareau (2002: 753) refers to as ‘natural growth’ while middle-class parents

approach childrearing using ‘concerted cultivation.’ The former emphasizes the use of direc-

tives while the latter style tends to focus on reasoning. These norms of childrearing are the

precursors for the sort of cultural capital that Bourdieu argued middle-class parents want to

provide to insure their children’s success (see Willis 1977: 128). Parenting classes, intended to

rehabilitate the inmate and her family, tend to ‘‘talk past’’ the structural situations within which

these disadvantaged families operate.

Anna had spent years in prisons on the mainland, as well as doing time in Hawai‘i.5 Her

desire to resume her accustomed role in the family failed to meet her expectations. Her

sister had taken her children in while Anna was away. Here, she recounts how her absence

changed things:

I was away for five years [in prison on the mainland] and had never been off the

island, so I was pretty homesick for my kids. Coming home to them, it meant

everything to me. Every day while I was locked up, all I could think about was

coming home to them. And I was kind of scared because I knew when I was coming

home that they might not need me anymore. Because when I left the kids were still in

elementary school. When I got back home, my oldest one just graduated. When I

5 For nearly two decades, the State of Hawai‘i has eased its prison overcrowding situation by transferringprisoners to the mainland, often to private prisons.

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returned to live with them, I felt like I lost all my authority when I got locked up. In

fact, my youngest boys, you know his papers, I just look at them and you know he

goes to her [her sister] [for help].

Parenting classes (Anna was the recipient of this programming while in prison) fail to

address the enforced separation and its consequences for families, especially the expec-

tations that women have about the resumption of their roles in the home.

Developed for a variety of settings and populations, parenting programs draw on ‘‘logic

models’’ with ‘‘outputs’’ and ‘‘effects’’ such as ‘‘behavior management, communication,

family organization, raising children in a developmentally appropriate way, handling

conflict, managing resources, and self management’’ (University of Arizona 2007). The

Corrections Corporation of America, for example, offers ‘life skills’ classes that consist of

modules addressing a range of problem areas, ‘‘teach[ing] inmates how immaturity and a

lack of social skills contributes [sic] to social failure and incarceration by teaching

important skills in areas such as parenting and family dynamics, cognitive skills, inter-

personal skills, substance abuse resistance, and employability’’ (Corrections Corporation of

America 2007).

Empowerment discourse, a common theme in neoliberal governance, can also be found

in prison parenting classes. However, self-reform may fail and subjects may resist notions

of enforced subjectivity in favor of their own notions of self and identity. Like Leilani

whose story introduces this paper, women may resist the state’s intrusion—only to find

resistance results in the resurgence of disciplinary state power (Hannah-Moffat 2000).

Maintaining one’s identity, as Bosworth (1996) notes, can become a means of resistance

to prison programming. On the other hand, women may come to embrace this knowledge

and its potential to help them with their own child management problems. The following

accounts from women I interviewed for this study offer two distinctly different versions of

what can be learned from prison parenting classes.

Momi6 is the never-married parent of six children ranging in ages from 11 to 21 at the

time of our interview. Momi grew up in an urban neighborhood of Honolulu, populated

mostly by poor and working-class local7 people and immigrants. Momi’s incarceration for

a drug offense took her to Texas and Oklahoma, putting many miles between her and her

children. Momi, who identifies herself as Native Hawai‘ian, found the messages implicit in

the parenting classes she took in prison to be ineffective and especially ludicrous given the

harsh realities of her experience: poverty and a generally troubled and even violent, inti-

mate life. She finds it impossible to employ the parenting ‘‘skills’’ she learned in prison:

Like me, I don’t know how to express too much love. I can express plenty emotion,

like crying, I can do that! [laughs]. And hate, I can do that, but love… I can’t sit

down with my kids and talk to them and ask them what’s the matter with them,

what’s going on with them, what went on with their life… without their saying

something and triggering me and I get all pissed off. I don’t know how to do that

kind of thing.

I asked her about whether the parenting classes helped her to cope with her children’s

troubles:

6 This name, like others in the paper, is a pseudonym.7 The term ‘‘local’’ generally refers to an identity constituted by descendants of immigrant plantationworkers and, to some extent, indigenous Hawaiians. See Rohrer (2010) for a discussion of local as well ashaole identity.

368 M. Brown

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[Laughs] No! Because what they [the people teaching the classes] don’t understand is

that’s the white man’s way of thinking. They don’t deal with local kids. They don’t

teach us nothing about raising local kids. I mean, all this stuff we learn is for the

haoles [colloquial for whites]. And that’s just it. That’s nothing wrong, but you

[meaning whites] send your kid to a time out or you sit down with them. Us local

people, we don’t do that! You don’t find too many Hawai‘ians who’ll do that. No, but

I stuck with the class, I have a certificate. But I just can’t do that! [what the class

taught her].

I asked Momi how the parenting class might be changed to make it more relevant to

local people:

You have a local teacher that was born and raised in Hawai‘i then, yeah! But I took it

in Oklahoma and Texas8 with the haoles. I don’t know if they have a parenting class

in Hawai‘i. I don’t know…. You just can’t bring in a haole and try teach local

people, people from Hawai‘i what they should do with their kids because, like, I

mean [they say], ‘‘You don’t spank your kids, you know, you take them to time out.’’

Hey, man, when I was growing up and you do something wrong, you lick um [spank

them]! That’s just how you do it! What is time out? You time out, you send your

local kids to time out, they don’t listen to you! They come back right out and they do

the same thing and they laugh at you. Like my daughter! I send her to the room and I

say, ‘‘You punished,’’ but she doesn’t listen to me. She’s right out of the house. You

know, I can’t beat um because I hurt so much and all the trips that I going through

right now, that if I was to hit my daughter for all of the shit she pulled, I would end

up back in prison. So I don’t touch em.’’

I asked her what she does then, how she handles it:

You do the verbal abuse, the white man’s way, you verbal abuse and that’s abuse.

But, hey, what you rather have me do, verbal abuse her, swear at her, or beat the shit

out of her? So I tell her, no you stay the fuck in your room. But she don’t listen. And

I keep telling her, one day, one day you’re going to get it. I cannot take this.

What Momi needs is a means of controlling her children without breaking the law. In

fact, her major concern is to keep them from running with gangs and getting arrested. Not

only is the ‘‘white man’s way’’ of talking it over, explaining things, getting them to

understand her and trying to understand them in return ineffective; it is not relevant to the

conditions of her life. No culture endorses the abuse of children, but cultural factors shape

what is appropriate and what is inappropriate discipline. Relentless bickering and talk that

are considered pointless and provocative are behaviors that are considered abusive and

alienating in local culture (Korbin 1990). More importantly, however, parenting classes

cannot ameliorate the realities of Momi’s life: poverty; living in a crime and drug-ridden

community, and what Momi terms the destructive effects of prison. In Momi’s words,

‘‘Prison devastated me.’’

White, middle-class ideologies of family and childrearing implicit in parenting pro-

grams are not only at odds with the lived realities of women like Momi. They represent a

post-colonial hegemonic power implicated in the loss of indigenous sovereignty which has

led to the inequalities Native Hawai‘ians like Momi experience. Rehabilitation programs

8 Momi refers to the incarceration of Hawai‘i inmates in prisons on the mainland, a practice the State beganin the mid-1990s to ease prison overcrowding.

Rehabilitation, Risk, and the Carceral Mother 369

123

are perceived by indigenous peoples as a continuation of a colonial regime that long found

their culture as deficient. In this view, the modern-day disadvantage within which native

peoples live is evidence of a pathological inability to adapt to modern life (Karasuda-

Keahiolalo 2008). In this way, the critique of Hawai‘ian family life launched by mis-

sionaries to Hawai‘i during the nineteenth century (Merry 2000), endures implicitly in state

interventions that target indigenous families in penal systems.

Vailima9’s Story

Mothers in this study did not always resist the assumptions and prescriptions of parenting

classes. As Rose (1999a, b) notes, we are not only governed by discipline and coercion, but

by our desires and aspirations as well. Some former inmates are, despite very different

cultural backgrounds, willing to adopt the guiding principles of middle-class parenting. At

the time of our interview, Vailima was living in public housing in Honolulu. She was born

and raised in a rural village in American Samoa. Her mother continually threatened and

beat her, terrorizing her. The Samoan way of life, Vailima explained to me, did not

incorporate what she called the ‘‘talking way’’ of dealing with problems. In the cultural

setting of the village, physical discipline was well within parental privilege (see Korbin

1990). Vailima, however, learned about more relational ways of dealing with her own

children during prison and believed that these methods are superior to what she learned in

her rural village. She reflected on how the child-rearing practices of American Samoa

compared to her present home in Hawai‘i:

How I was teaching them [her children] wasn’t enough. I made a mistake in telling

them to keep their mouths shut if they couldn’t win but fight if they could win. It’s

different here in Hawai‘i. They needed different tools here.

Vailima told me that she has learned to talk to her children. If she has a problem, she

communicates. ‘‘Some moms abuse the kids and the kids don’t understand what’s going

on.’’ She wants them to understand why they’re being punished. Obedience is a good thing,

she says, but she explains to her children why she does what she does. Kids need to

understand. ‘‘You need to be consistent,’’ she says. In reality, though, this transformation in

orientation and subjectivity has not altered the externalities of Vailima’s life. Nor has her

embrace of better parenting skills kept her children out of trouble. At the time of our

acquaintance, her 18 year-old daughter was incarcerated, as was her 23 year-old son.

Unemployed at the time of our interview, Vailima was being supported by her family and

hoped to return to her pre-prison job as a parking lot attendant.

Parenting classes are laden with assumptions about the nature of motherhood, framed in

terms that are constitutive of middle-class, white subjectivities. These practices prepare

women to produce children versed in the techniques of self-management and restraint—in

communities that are alienated from the mainstream institutions of middle-class experi-

ence. Some women, like Vailima, find these practices personally appealing and may

incorporate them into interactions with children. Others, like Momi, find the imposition of

these practices to be extremely alienating. In either event, as these cases show, inculcation

of skill sets and the promise of empowerment are no inoculation against the criminogenic

conditions confronting these women and their children.

9 ‘‘Vailima’’ is a pseudonym.

370 M. Brown

123

Just as cognitive behavioral programs assume that crime is the result of poor choices

(Hannah-Moffat 2005), parenting programs assume responsible parenting is what stands in

the way of juvenile delinquency and future crime. Not only are parenting skills imagined to

ease the effects of enforced separation of parents and children, but managing motherhood

properly may well extend the reach of responsibilization to prevent a new generation of

potential criminals. Parenting instruction, consistent with other commonly used therapeutic

interventions like cognitive skills, embodies a subjectivity that emphasizes a prudent, self-

governing, and responsible self. These classes are consistent with neoliberal forms of

governance in that they seek to empower rather than dominate (McGowan 2005). Such

interventions are consistent with neoliberal strategies of self-governance through creating

responsible subjectivities (see Cradock 2007).

This framework of identity and resocialization may explain why the project of maternal

transformation appeals to both individual incarcerated women and the state. The state

shares with incarcerated women a set of cultural expectations about the redemptive power

of motherhood. Women are taught to aspire to warm, affective relations with their children,

relationships that have the potential to re-moralize and transform, once the necessary social

skills have been inculcated (Kemshall 2002).

Talking Past Marginalization

Parents whose conduct has been ascertained as ‘‘maltreating’’ all too often live in poverty-

stricken, high-stress communities and experience a violence that permeates both home and

community life. Like Leilani, Momi, and Vailima whose stories are told here, these

families lack adequate housing, live in milieu where drug addiction and gangs are rampant,

and where resources like education, medical care, and employment are scarce (Murphy and

Bryant 2002). Conservative policy mandates that are increasingly punitive make their lives

harder. Federal law now restricts a range of benefits from housing to welfare payments to

those convicted of drug-related crimes (Allard 2002). Changes in child welfare policy,

specifically the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act, have converged with patterns of

mass incarceration resulting in the widespread termination of parental rights for women to

go to prison (Lee et al. 2005). Incarcerated women, who may or may not have mistreated

their children, have complex problems conditioned by their structural position. It is not

unusual for female offenders to be under the supervision of both child protective and

correction systems at the same time (Brown and Bloom 2009).

My interviews with women on parole revealed that, despite unconventional life-styles,

these mothers remain powerfully committed to their children’s welfare. However, in spite

of the new notions of selfhood penal interventions convey, the structural features of their

experience (poor education, alienation from mainstream institutions, underemployment,

racism, and little social support for child welfare) remain stubbornly in place. Data that I

collected from parole officer case notes on this group of 240 women on parole in 2001

(85% of whom were mothers) revealed that very few had the wherewithal to set up their

own places after prison. Most were paroled to live in households as hangers on with adult

relatives—while very few lived with a spouse. Small wonder that these structural con-

straints, coupled with the burdens of supervision, often lead women back to prison

(Holtfreter et al. 2004).

Women’s post-prison lives little resembled the responsibilized motherhood imagined by

parenting classes. Listening to stories about their complex problems with battling addic-

tion, following stringent conditions of parole, conflicts with others in their households, and

Rehabilitation, Risk, and the Carceral Mother 371

123

the constant struggle for economic survival, it was evident to me that the content of these

‘‘classes’’ seemed poor preparation for the range of dilemmas they faced. In the months and

years after prison, residential instability was very common with about a quarter of women

moving two to three times after their initial placement. Many times, women joined the

households of the relatives who cared for their children during the mother’s incarcera-

tion—relatives similarly strapped for housing and jobs. In this way, the economic and

social responsibility for punishment’s aftermath are placed upon non-state actors—the

relatives of the formerly incarcerated—just as the theoretical strategies of responsibiliza-

tion predict (Garland 1996; Hannah-Moffat 2000; O’Malley 1992).

Conclusion

Leilani’s case, detailed in the introduction to this paper, points to the risks and com-

plexities of the reentry process for women leaving prison—experiences for which con-

temporary approaches to rehabilitation and risk management ill-prepare them. What do

penal regimes like parenting classes in advanced capitalism accomplish? Through penal

interventions, the state turns its attention to the dysfunctional nature of women’s rela-

tionships and emotions (Pollack 2007) or interprets women’s needs for treatment or other

services as criminogenic ‘risk factors’ (Hannah-Moffat 1999). Or, as Pollack (2005) notes,

the normalizing routines of correctional discipline reframe women’s resistance to structural

oppression as symptoms of mental illness. Even more, the state can intervene at the level of

cognition, rooting out the thinking ‘‘errors’’ that stand in the way of a more rational,

responsible self (Duguid 2000). And, as this paper has shown, correctional regimes

appropriate women’s maternal concerns, attempting to remake them into ‘‘good’’ mothers.

This remoralizing project not only deals with the fault lines of feminine rectitude but also

extends risk management into subsequent generations.

The didactic nature in which parenting classes are delivered thinly disguises the nature

of their disciplinary aims. Parenting classes (and others like cognitive skills) derive their

capacity to produce subjectivities based on scientific knowledge—the ‘psy’ disciplines, as

Rose (1999a) argues. But as Merry (2001) notes, these initiatives are not simply a matter of

discursive progression—their spread is enhanced by the exigencies of the market and the

rationalities of state systems. Curricula are developed and marketed, like so much else in

the prison industrial complex, by corporations with a bottom line to meet (Schlosser 1998).

There are benefits for prison management, too. The retraction of Pell grants for inmates

helped drive the universities out of the prisons. This had the advantage of replacing

potentially subversive academic outsiders with less-trained staff who could deliver ‘‘can-

ned’’ curricula as employees under the control of the prison in keeping with bureaucratic

routines (Duguid 2000).

The tropes of parenting that purport to be classless, are drawn from middle-class notions

of childrearing that interpret parenting as grounded in ‘‘rationality and preference’’

(Duncan 2005: 59). These strategies operate through proffering an invitation to women to

become someone more consistent with culturally preferred selves that are grounded in

middle-class sensibilities. These imagined new selves assume a homogenous universe

rather than the diverse, culturally plural world of Hawai‘i with its alternative family

structures and values. Moreover, the state’s institutional interpretation of risk management,

gender, and family enables the state to regulate the conduct of the criminal mother and,

through her, produce crime-free children. Women resist and sometimes embrace these

practices as very active subjects—albeit subjects who encounter enormous obstacles and

372 M. Brown

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for whom the prison experience represents yet another in a series of losses. And, finally, the

discourse of parental responsibility diminishes the state’s own responsibility for the sep-

aration of millions of parents and children while obscuring for us all the raw disadvantages

that these families face before and after prison.

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