Precarious identities: ‘Young’ motherhood, desistance and stigma

This article explores desistance from crime and experiences of stigma amongst 19 young mothers with a criminal past. Drawing on narrative interview data from a qualitative longitudinal study of women criminalised as children, I argue that young mothers with a history of lawbreaking, as well as other markers of a spoiled past, are likely to encounter intense forms of gendered surveillance, social censure and stigma across multiple domains of identity, regardless of whether or not they are currently involved in crime. Motherhood frequently motivated the women to desist from crime, most notably in order to avoid their children experiencing the scrutiny and harmful state interventions that had such a profoundly negative impact on their own young lives. However, I conclude that many ex-offending mothers continue to be stigmatized as maternally deficient long after they have left crime behind.