Human condition of children living with incarcerated mothers in Türkiye

This article examines how legally free children aged 0–6 become incorporated into the penal order while residing with their incarcerated mothers in Türkiye. Drawing on 15 in-depth interviews with lawyers who represented incarcerated mothers, the study analyses children's prison lives through mediated but professionally informed accounts in a context where direct research with imprisoned women and young children is severely restricted. It advances the concept of prisonization by subordination to explain a distinct form of penal incorporation. Children are not punished through conviction, nor are they merely secondary sufferers outside prison. Rather, they are governed inside the prison through their maternal dependency. The findings show that locked doors, roll calls, surveillance, restricted movement, bureaucratic permissions, and institutional discretion structure access to care, play, hygiene, healthcare, education, privacy, and social contact. Participants described developmental deprivation, inadequate nutrition and healthcare, lack of child-specific spaces, exposure to penal vocabulary, relational strain, post-release withdrawal and stigma, and unequal access to services. The article argues that best-interests discourse can coexist with, and legitimize, children's subordination to carceral power when preserving the maternal bond is pursued inside prison rather than through non-custodial alternatives. It concludes that child-centered justice requires reducing exposure to prison governance, not merely adapting prisons to children.