“It’s Heartbreaking. It’s Expensive. It’s Hard”: How the Carceral Care Economy Harms Black and Latine Mothers

Abstract

While literature on mass incarceration has focused primarily on incarcerated men, their children, and their romantic partners, this article builds on a smaller body of work that highlights the harms to mothers under the constraints of the neoliberal carceral state. In this study, I examine how mothers with incarcerated adult children have been conscripted to perform extractive caring labor. Drawing on data from 21 in-depth interviews, I find that mothers often travel long and costly distances, drain their savings, and work multiple jobs to ensure the survival of their incarcerated children. I argue that the cumulative impact of financialized policies and time-draining bureaucracy results in the extraction of precious time and money from working-class Black and Latine women on the outside. I introduce the term carceral care economy to conceptualize the neoliberal commodification of incarceration and the labor imperative it creates for mothers with children who are imprisoned.