Sentenced at Birth

The allegorical figure of Justice, with her scales and sword, was first blindfolded in the sixteenth century, and today she is seen as an embodiment of impartiality: a weighing of evidence and arguments that is unmuddied by prejudice. But some detect a much less noble reason for Justice’s covered eyes: they represent the system’s blindness to abuses right under its nose. Robin F. Hansen would likely agree. With Prison Born: Incarceration and Motherhood in the Colonial Shadow, she examines automatic mother-child separation and highlights abuses both personal and procedural. In doing so, she helps loosen the tightly tied blindfold of racial and gender bias to show that such policies have “no place in a fair legal system.”

Every year, an estimated minimum of forty-five women in federal and provincial prisons give birth to babies they must then leave behind. The mothers are escorted back to their cells and sentences, and the newborns, with obviously no say in...