On 8th January 2025, Birth Companions responded to the Government's 2024-2025 Sentencing Review call for evidence, focussing on the sentencing of pregnant women and mothers of infants.
Our key priority in responding to the call for evidence was to foreground the specific risks and concerns relating to women’s contact with the CJS in the 1001 days from conception to their child’s second birthday, in order to ensure these women are kept out of prison wherever possible.
While our submission focused on needs specific to pregnancy and early motherhood, we also expressed our support for wider submissions on the sentencing of women as a whole, as set out by our partners in the National Women’s Justice Coalition, Women in Prison, the Centre for Women’s Justice and others; and supported calls from others on the needs of racialised communities and those whose experience of gender-based violence lead to their criminalisation.
Read our full submission here
For more information on our work in this area, please contact Birth Companions’ Head of Policy Kirsty Kitchen at [email protected].
