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1.INTRODUCTION: FEMALE OFFENDERS ARE A GROWING POPULATION
Historically, females have accounted for a small amount of criminal offending in Canada and research consistently demonstrates that women are far less likely to commit crimes than men. Most female offenders are accused of property crimes and the involvement of women in serious violent crime is highly infrequent. When women are charged with criminal offences, their cases are more frequently stayed or withdrawn in comparison to males and women are less frequently found guilty.2
Despite this data, the number of women serving sentences in federal prisons in Canada has increased by more than 50%in the last decade3 and these women are more likely to be younger, single and Aboriginal.4 Furthermore, two thirds of these women are mothers and are the primary or sole caregivers for their children,5 which results in an estimated 20,000 Canadian children each year who are affected by the imprisonment of their mothers.6
It is these kinds of demographics among federally sentenced women and their children that prompted the development of Correctional Service Canada's (CSC) Mother-Child Program (MCP). This program allows women to apply to have their young children live with them in prison while they serve their sentence.
Mother-child units and programs that allow incarcerated women to keep their new-born babies in prison with them are "considered normal practice in most countries in the world", including Australia, Brazil, Chile, Denmark, Egypt, England, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, some U.S. states, and Wales.7 By developing mother-child programs, at both the federal and some provincial levels, Canadian corrections joined "the majority of nations in the world"8 by allowing incarcerated women and their children to stay together as a family.
The purpose of this article is to explore CSC's Mother Child Program in order to demonstrate that the program has the potential to positively impact Aboriginal families in ways that accord with the bests interests of the child but that the program is particularly difficult for Aboriginal women to access. I will first outline the effects of separation on children and mothers. Next, the history and development of the MCP will be discussed, followed by an examination of the criteria and goals of the program. Then,...