ABSTRACT
This book has demonstrated that marginalised and criminalised girls and women experience stigmatisation, punishment and devaluation within a range of interconnected state welfare and penal institutions, during both childhood and adulthood, by virtue of their class position, material deprivation, criminalised past and, for some, their status as young mothers. It has illustrated the psychic and social effects of multidimensional and intersecting stigmas on criminalised women’s lives through a detailed longitudinal examination of the experiences of 36 women within school, children’s social care services, youth justice and probation settings, as well as in the welfare benefits system. In order to fully understand the stigmatisation and criminalisation of marginalised young women it is essential to consider the political economy of stigmatisation, and to interrogate why marginalised women come to be stigmatised and thereby experience additional punishment. This requires us to examine where stigma comes from and what purposes it serves. Women’s interactions with professionals, as well as the ways in which they are publicly represented in the media and in public discourse, occur within a specific socio-political context in which structural inequality has increased, with particular impacts along the axes of generation, class, gender and race. Stigma is rooted in structural inequality. Inequality produces stigma and stigma, in turn, entrenches inequality. A profound shift is required in the political, cultural and economic climate in the UK in order for poor women and children to cease to be stigmatised and instead treated with respect and humanity, and valued as citizens, workers, and people who matter.
