ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights how repeat interviews are essential in order to get a true sense of the extent of the impact of incarcerating women for short periods. Visits, telephone calls and letters have long been cited as ways children can communicate with their mothers; however, these are often inhibited because of cost, which has the potential to cause harm to both mother and child. Several of mothers said that a positive outcome from prison was that they had met new people and made friends, some had learned to deal with addictions, some had stopped offending as a direct consequence of their imprisonment, several had been housed and some had cleared debts. A way in which they could be done is through the provision of financial assistance through either a grant or low-interest loan or changes to housing benefit payments. Face-to-face, offender–victim conferencing could be extremely beneficial in reducing the number of women incarcerated for short periods for non-violent offences.
