Key issues for mums

MOTHER-of-three Mary (not her real name) was sentenced to nine months in prison in March this year for obtaining property by deception.

She knew she'd done wrong, but this was her first offence. A pre-sentence report had recommended a probation order and community service, but as a precaution she had spent the previous evening arranging care for her three children - two girls and a boy - then aged nine, five and two. As she kissed them all a tearful, fearful goodbye, the two eldest were inconsolable - they knew Mummy may not be coming back. "I didn't know for certain when I was going to see them again. I had it in my head I might go to jail, as that way I wouldn't feel so bad if that was what happened, but I clung to the hope I would be home to see them after school.

"The eldest went to stay with my sister, the middle one was with her father and my then-husband came back home to look after the little one, even though he hadn't had anything to do with him for two years."

Mary, 30, was sent to Eastwood Park Prison in Gloucestershire. She served three months behind bars, before being electronically tagged and allowed home. She spent two months under curfew, unable to leave the house after 7.15pm, even to put the bin out, and is now on licence until December.

"The kids would come up every two or three weeks to visit me and that was hard. I didn't know what to do for the best. I tried to block them out, especially at first, but I couldn't. Every time they came they would be in tears when it was time to leave and officers had to prise them off me. It was just awful." For all that, Mary is pleased she can see an end to her sentence. Now back in her Dorset home, she says her prison experience has made her a more confident person, more able to stand up for herself, and she doesn't think she would make the same mistake again.

"I was brought up a Jehovah's Witness and never had birthday or Christmas presents. What I did was mainly to make sure my kids had everything they wanted. I knew it was wrong, but it was worth it at the time just to see their little faces. I don't think like that now ... prison has shown me it's not worth it."

Inside, Mary took a job as a gardener for £10 a week (her little boy was told Mummy was looking after Her Majesty's garden) and she counted the days leading up to her release. "We never had any courses or anything like that, but the other prisoners were really supportive of each other. You'd see mothers going back to their cells in tears and you felt for them. There were all sorts inside - one woman had been done for smuggling drugs inside a dead baby, but she didn't look the type, you know?

"When I first got there, I just cried. You just want to get out and all sorts of things went through my mind, including trying to kill myself. But even if you go to hospital you still have to come back, so it's best just to get your head down and get it over with."

Now reunited with her children, Mary claims the experience has straightened her out. "I'm not going back there, no way," she says. "It was hard on the children. The middle one was bullied quite a bit at school, nasty teasing and that. The little one's dad tried to take him back off me but I got out before it came to court and he's staying with me.

Claire (not her real name) looks like being another success story, having said goodbye to her four-year-old son last summer on the morning she thought she was going to jail.

After previously being bound over for her first offence, possession of drugs and stealing, she had been found guilty of forgery and told to expect a six-month prison term.

"The day I went to court for sentencing I had to say to my son that Mummy might not be coming back home for a few months," says the 24-year-old, who is also from Dorset. "We had kisses and cuddles, and I think he sort of understood, but I dread to think what it would have been like if I had been taken down. I had to set it up for him to stay with my family and everything like that."

Instead, Claire was placed under a probation order, a condition of which was that she had to attend the Women's Programme at Poole."If you ask why I did what I did the answer is the usual one - I was desperate. But what this course teaches you is different ways of looking at things. It's hard being a mother on your own, and my son is hyperactive as well, so the stresses are massive. I'd also been having problems with his father, who was violent, but he's gone now.

"What I've learned there is to break stuff down and know why I do what I do. Most crime is committed spontaneously, you know what you're doing, but you're on a kind of roll." The work Claire did on the course was a revelation, she says. She believes she would have benefited from it earlier, at school.

For much of her childhood Claire's father was away with the Army. Her sister has also been in trouble and earlier this year completed a prison sentence for drugs offences.

Through the group and one-to-one sessions Claire has developed a plan for the future: "I've got to hurry up now, 24 is getting late to start a career." She rediscovered her love of science and is gathering information on college courses with a view to starting a career in laboratory work.

"I feel a lot of guilt for what I did. It was a selfish act, but it wasn't planned out like that. I can deal with the truth and consequences now, and I'm much happier, or I will be when I've sorted this course out."

Bournemouth probation officer Diane Reynolds said: "Sometimes it's easier, particularly for women, to talk with someone who is not intimate with their family and won't judge them."

Problem-solving is at the core of the Women's Programme run by Poole probation service. Designed for offenders, like Claire, who are at risk of a custodial sentence, over its 21 sessions women discuss and write about their crimes and how they can break the cycle of offending.

As with any element of a probation order, enforcement is rigid. On the second failure to keep an appointment without a verified excuse, an offender is returned to court.

"Probation is definitely not a soft option, it's a serious restriction of liberty," said Margaret Sinclair, who runs the Women's Programme. The courts are primarily concerned with the seriousness of an offence and its impact on the victim, then with the circumstances of an offender. However, probation officers compile pre-sentence reports in which, among other things, they detail the likely consequences of a prison sentence on an offender's family circumstances.

"We cannot discriminate for parents. We help them find child-care and the probation service reimburses the cost of it, so there is no reason why a parent cannot complete a probation order or use their children to be excused from attending."

"We often hear, 'I had no choice', when we ask why people commit offences. What we aim to do is show them they always have choices. Ultimately, of course, they make the choice whether to re-offend or not."