Modelling criminal justice processes and pathways for incarcerated mothers

Incarcerated mothers typically interact with multiple government agencies on their journey into and out of prison. Each agency has its own rationale, processes, and terminology, which can lead to confusion and conflicting requirements being placed on the mother. Yet effective system navigation is the key to accessing support and services crucial to addressing the deep history of victimisation and vulnerability that many mothers in prison and their children have experienced. A knowledge of mothers’ criminal justice pathways is also important for agency staff, with many struggling to understand system complexities outside their own organisation. Improving system navigation, coordination, and integration can reduce the stress and trauma of criminal justice contacts and contribute to better outcomes for mothers and families. A threshold issue in achieving better integration is understanding how organisations are connected at a system level, rather than as a collection of stand-alone agencies. System-level approaches consider the dependencies and connections between organisations, and how they operate collectively to influence outcomes for individuals. This approach is not often applied to criminal justice agencies, despite their common designation as a “criminal justice system.” This article uses stock-and-flow modelling to capture the complexity of that system in one Australian jurisdiction. We do this by mapping how mothers move through different criminal justice agencies, and how each agency can affect mothers’ future pathways either detrimentally or beneficially. In particular, we examine the impact of different pathways on the likely connectedness between mothers and their children. By highlighting how actions and decisions taken by one agency can impact the subsequent pathways of mothers and children, we aim to better understand system complexity and how this affects individuals. Ultimately, this can lead to better coordinated responses for mothers and children, and the overcoming of system silos, complexity and fragmentation.