Birth Companions submission to the Sentencing Council consultation 2024

Today, Birth Companions shares its response to the Sentencing Council's consultation on proposed changes to guidelines around the imposition of community and custodial sentences, drawing on 28 years of experience supporting perinatal women in prison, and campaigning for the end of the use of imprisonment for pregnant women and mothers of infants. 

Birth Companions’ submission can be downloaded here. 

This submission addresses the consultation questions, particularly focusing on the issues relating to women facing sentencing during pregnancy or the postnatal period (two years after birth). It has been developed with input from women with relevant lived experience, and our frontline staff who work with women in prisons and under probation supervision after leaving custody. Our response includes proposed revisions to the draft guideline, and comments shared by members of our Lived Experience Team.

Overall, Birth Companions strongly supports the Council’s proposed changes to the Imposition guideline, though we believe elements of it need to be strengthened in order to ensure the specific needs and challenges faced by pregnant women, mothers of infants, and their babies are fully taken into account in sentencing decisions.

Throughout this submission, we recommend that references to pregnancy and birth are extended to include the postnatal period; and that the postnatal period be specified as covering the 24 months after birth. These changes will align the Sentencing Council’s guidance with the critical ‘first 1001 days’ from conception to a child’s second birthday, recognised by government as laying the foundations for long term development.[1]

[1] HM Govt. (2021). The best start for life: A vision for the 1,001 critical days.