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9781779400079 Academic Inspection Copy

Prison Born

Incarceration and Motherhood in the Colonial Shadow
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A scathing critique of the colonial legal system's denial of children's rights One afternoon in 2016, law professor Robin Hansen receives a call. On the other end of the line is "Jacquie"-a pregnant Indigenous woman, nine weeks from her due date and terrified for the welfare of her unborn son. Jacquie has been sentenced to a custodial prison sentence and her son will be automatically separated from her immediately after his birth. As Hansen works to help Jacquie with her appeal, she uncovers the legal system's inherent discrimination against mothers in custody and the children born to them. Using Access to Information requests along with extensive research, Hansen examines the legal rights of these women-the majority of whom are Indigenous-and finds that Jacquie and her son are by no means alone: automatic mother-infant separation without due process remains the norm in most jurisdictions in Canada. Prison Born calls attention to the colonial and gendered assumptions that continue to underpin the legal system-assumptions that so frequently lead to the violation of the rights and denial of personhood for children and their mothers.
Robin F. Hansen teaches law at the University of Saskatchewan. Her work has been published in journals, including the Modern Law Review, Global Jurist, and the Journal of Legal Education. She lives in Saskatoon.
List of Tables Introduction PART I. OBSERVATIONS 1. Sentencing the Newborn 2. Automatic Separation in Canada PART II. THEORY 3. A Systems View of the Legal System 4. The Colonial Lens: Seeing the "Savage" and the "Dying" 5. Case Study: The Stanley Acquittal PART III. ANALYSIS: SPATIAL DEFINITIONS IN COLONIAL IDEOLOGY 6. The Instrumentalized Stereotype of the Unfit Indigenous Mother 7. Courts as the Gateway to Indigenous Over-Incarceration 8. Prison Wastelands and the Removal of Children PART IV. ANALYSIS: OTHER ASPECTS OF THE SYSTEM 9. Law through the Androcentric Lens 10. Factors that Buffer the Legal System from Change PART V. SOLUTIONS 11. The Illegality of Shackling a Pregnant Person in Labour 12. How the Law Protects a Newborn from Automatic Separation from Their Mother 195 Conclusion Acknowledgements Appendix A. Canadian Federal/Provincial/Territorial Ministers of Justice (2023) Bibliography Notes Index
"A penetrating critique of judicial insensitivity towards the concerns surrounding Indigenous incarceration." -David Milward, author of Aboriginal Justice and the Charter
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