Media Storm - S5E6 Pregnant in prison: The case to stop births behind bars

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Content warning: baby loss "When a court sentences a pregnant woman to prison, they sentence her to a high risk pregnancy" There are hundreds of pregnant women in UK prisons - a third of them yet to actually be convicted of a crime. Babies born to women in prison are 7x more likely to be stillborn than the norm. In recent years, two babies died when their incarcerated mothers went into labour and their calls for help were ignored. Last month, harrowing stories emerged of women at HMP Bronzefield being unlawfully handcuffed to male officers during childbirth. Media Storm asks: will prison ever be a safe place to be pregnant? And if not, does the media care? And why, when debating this issue, did one LBC presenter get fixated on lamb chops?! (19:25) Plus, Helena delves into far more detail than anybody asked for when talking about the EastEnders storyline which saw the iconic character Sonia Fowler pregnant in prison - an example of pop culture's influence on real-life issues. Joining Media Storm this week is co-director of gender justice group Level Up, Janey Starling, and 'Anna' - co-founder of the Level Up campaign No Births Behind Bars, who was first sent to prison when 6 months pregnant. The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)  The music is by @soundofsamfire Support us on Patreon! Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, Media Stormers, and welcome to your Friday Deep Dive. Before we start, we have to talk about that Trump ad. Oh my God, like, lest anybody thinks that we were advertising Trump on Media Storm. Okay, so thank you so much to Liza, a listener based in the US, who reached out to us to tell us that after our episode on sexual abuse, ironic, there was then, an advert for Trump, basically, a pro-Trub advert placed on a media storm episode. I didn't actually know what that meant. But guys, what we're talking about is literally like Trump is going to cure cancer in a few months.

Yeah, so I had to ask Liza what the nature of this advert was and she said that what she remembers is that the advert apparently listed all of Trump's accomplishments in averticomers and then ended by saying that Trump was going to cure cancer within the next few months. I freaked out. I was like, how that hell does this end up on a media storm episode? Yeah, we have blocks that. Yeah, we have blocks that we put in place with our, you know, podcast host platform.

It seemed that this one slipped through the net. So I reached out to our host platform and asked them how this happened. And it is sneaky A.F. Yeah. So they said it looks like the ad was mislabeled by the buyer. And that's why it was able to get through. And just so everyone's reassured they're doing the best to take this ad down. So this is stealth advertising.

I mean, this is potentially illegal. It's definitely sinister. I think we've found our next media storm investigation. Definitely. Okay, today's topic. We've done a couple of episodes about prisons. Back in series one, we did an episode called Does Prison Work? Where we delved into the UK's Tough on Crime Mental,

and we discussed how incarceration is used as a political battleground fought all over the world. We also spoke about the truth about luxury prisons. Prisons are frequently criticising the media for being too luxurious and too lenient. So we asked if that was really true by, of course, asking people who had been in prison what it's really like.

And after that, last series, following headlines spotlighting, prison overcrowding, we once again spoke to some of the voices missing from the mainstream, ex-prisoners themselves, to talk about how prison reform is debated in the media, if at all.

Separately to episodes about how prisons work, or don't work, we've also covered a variety of topics on women's health, pregnancy, a motherhood. And here's where today's topic intersects. Today we are talking about pregnancy in prison. How does it work? Does it work? What is it like? Should it be abolished and does the media even care?

First of, Helena, I think you should tell us how this came onto our radar, because it's via an organisation that you are now involved in. So partly for the sake of journalistic transparency, also out of general interest, tell us about Level Up. Yes, so much of the work campaigning for no births behind bars has been done by Level Up, which is an organisation campaigning for gender justice. More recently, I have been working with Level Up on a separate campaign about how to responsibly report domestic abuse in the media. So this is also a little call out to say that if you are a journalist or an editor who is listening and you work in a newsroom of any kind, please get in touch with me because we are aiming to get into as many

newsrooms as possible to deliver this training on responsible reporting on domestic abuse because it really, really does save lives. And actually, the co-director of Level Up, Janie Starling, who's coming on this week, she's been on Media Storm before talking about domestic abuse media and my god it was such a good discussion so if you are interested in that topic you can scroll down and get a sample of what helen is going to be preaching in the newsroom but yeah i mean i can understand why a lot of people would see today's topic pregnancy in prison and think it's pretty niche the thing is the latest ministry of justice figures show there were 215 pregnant women in prison in the year

23 to 24 and 50 births in prison pregnant women in prison by the way face heightened risks of complications such as preterm birth

and hypertension and a pregnant woman in prison is seven times more likely to experience a still birth than a woman who is not incarcerated

and these births behind bars have severe consequences In 2019 and 2020, two babies died when their mothers went into labour inside prison. In both cases, the women went into labour without medical assistance and the babies did not survive. And just last month, harrowing stories emerged of women at HMP Bronzefield being unlawfully handcuffed to male officers during childbirth. If prison is not a safe place to be pregnant, Why are women still being sentenced while expecting?

Who is doing something about it and is the media listening? In labour and locked in a sound. Prison healthcare let me down. And I ask again, why should she not go to jail because she's a mother? Shockingly, she was the second baby to die in a woman's prison in England in less than a year. She was begging for an ambulance and she was in excruciating pain. Systemic abuse of human rights. I feel like my birth was just taken away from me.

Welcome to Media Storm, the news podcast that starts with the people that are normally asked last. I'm Helena Wadia and I'm Matilda Malinson. This week's Media Storm, pregnant in prison, the case to stop births behind bars. Welcome to the Media Storm studio. Our first guest is the co-director of Level Up, the feminist community campaigning for gender justice in the UK. She is a writer, media strategist and campaigner on a mission to end in the UK. imprisonment of pregnant women and mothers. Welcome to the studio once again, Janie Starling.

Hi, hello. And our second guest is a co-founder of Level Ups No Pregnancy in Prison campaign. She has lived experience of the issue as she was first sent to prison when six months pregnant and gave birth whilst held on remand. She's using a pseudonym to protect her privacy

and we're so thankful to her for joining us to share her experience and expertise. Welcome to the studio, Anna. Hi, thanks for having. So to start, Janie, can you just explain the issue that we're here to discuss and tell us how and why the level up campaign started? Prison will never be a safe place to be pregnant. We know that pregnant women in prison are seven times more likely to suffer a stillbirth, twice as likely to give birth prematurely. And tragically, three babies have died in the last five years inside the women's prison estate.

Now, the campaign started six years ago now, after the deaths of two. babies inside women's prisons. One was the death of baby Aisha Cleary at HMP Bronsfield in 2019, where her mother, Rihanna Cleary, was left to give birth inside her cell at night. Her calls for help on the buzzer system had been ignored, and she was left to bite through her baby's umbilical cord. Oh my God. Her baby died. A matter of months later, Louise Powell in H&P style in Cheshire, went into labour prematurely on a prison toilet. Again, her calls for help went unheard and her baby was born, Breach, which meant its feet came up first. Breach babies are a high-risk birth.

They need to be managed really, really carefully. She didn't get the medical care that she needed. She was in agony for hours. And again, by the time paramedics arrived, it was too late to resuscitate her baby. the deaths of these two babies were shocking in their own right but what was more shocking was that the only thing the government had to offer in response was to quote unquote improve healthcare for women in prison and it just seemed really clear that if the case wasn't obvious enough

that prison by very design will never be a safe place to be pregnant and any healthcare improvements that are written on paper just simply don't happen in practice if that was ever going to be obvious it was going to be when two babies had died so level up started about launching a campaign to shift the needle away from this health care reform inside prison to just keeping pregnant women out. And the launch of the campaign was in 2021 after the prison ombudsman actually did a report into the death of the first baby and ruled that every pregnancy in prison is categorised as high risk. By virtue of the fact a woman is held behind locked doors for significant periods of time. now in that statement is an admission that the very design of a prison will never be safe and what it meant was if every pregnancy in prison is high risk when a court sentences a woman to prison they sentence her to a high risk pregnancy now we just think that's completely untenable and so since 2021 we have been fighting for pregnant women to be kept out of prison that says it really well if you sentence a pregnant woman to prison you sentence her to a high risk pregnancy

Just for context, can you outline how does the UK's policy on pregnancy in prison compared to other countries? Is this done elsewhere the same way? So there are several countries that have laws that severely curtail the use of imprisonment for pregnant women. Costa Rica, for example, uses home detention curfew and house arrest. Brazil has a practice. There's a Supreme Court ruling that says that pregnant women and mothers of children, I think up to eight years old can't be held in prison before their trial

so on remand or in pre-trial detention so there are much there's much better practice in other areas of the world and actually England is behind Anna I wonder if you can tell us a bit about your story so you were pregnant when you were first sent to prison can you describe that feeling and tell us a bit more about those experiences

first time I'd have been arrested first time I'd yeah ever being involved with the criminal justice system I was six months pregnant I was arrested taken to the police station from there I was charged told that I was going to court

the next day wasn't even mentioned in court that I was pregnant even though I was visibly pregnant I was six months pregnant I just had a temporary solicitor a duty solicitor he didn't even mention in that that I was pregnant or even try and fight for bail

it was very poor went into custody yeah I was given the option to either go into a cell by myself a single cell because I was pregnant or I could be padded up with somebody I chose to go with my co-defendant because ultimately I knew I was going to end up going into labour whilst I was in prison so I thought that was the safest option because obviously as you can imagine you're behind a locked door and you've got no support so yeah went in stayed there for the three months until I went into labour and had my son how was your labour experience. Obviously it was my first son so I didn't really know what was going to happen.

It's a labour, it's unpredictable. You don't know how fast or slow it's going to be. I started getting some pains in my back. Early hours of the morning, got up, started pacing up and down the cell. It was a bit like, obviously a very confined area as well. Got to about 5.30 in the morning, pressed the cell bell, told them I think I might be starting labour. That was ignored. They said somebody would be with me soon. They didn't. Between the hours of 5.30 and 7.30, the cell bell was pressed four times. At 7.30, my door was unlocked by the officers that had changed over from the night staff. And when I said to that officer, oh, I'm pretty sure I'm in labour, or my labour's

starting, she looked very shocked. She pulled me at the cell, put me in a communal area and told me I had to wait for the prison nurse. I had to wait for her to come. She was the morning. She was doing med rounds. She was busy and stuff. I then had to further wait for the prison to find two staff to escort me. And they'd called an ambulance. I then had to wait. I then had to for the ambulance to be security cleared to come into the prison for me to then go into the back of it before it could leave. I'd been told previously by a governor that I wouldn't be handcuffed when I was in labour.

There was one female officer. She then cuffed me to her and I questioned it. She told me, be grateful she's put me on long cuffs and not short cuffs. So there was a chain between the cuffs rather than wrist to wrist. So she kind of set the tone for how I knew her attitude was going to be and it just made it very uncomfortable. I actually feel so disgusted, disturbed hearing that. Sorry, I have never heard this story or this, you know, that this happens before.

So you're getting my immediate reaction. I mean, I don't have a child. I've never been pregnant. And, you know, part of the reason for that is because of how scary it is. Giving birth in itself is so scary, let alone doing it in prison or having to go through that, having to be handcuffed, having to wait. A lot of those experiences you just described was a lot of waiting. It is literally, when you go into that situation, yours and your unborn baby's fate is in somebody else's hands,

you have no control over it. Like, once you're in that position and you're in that prison environment, there's physically nothing you can do. Like, and I've had another child now on the outside so I can compare the two situations. And it's like, it's, you know, I had missed hospital appointments. I had a situation where I had reduced fetal movements. They didn't get me out to the hospital until the next day.

So, and it's like, that's an emergency situation. else in the community would take themselves to the hospital and get themselves checked out. But when you're there, your hands are literally tied. Like I said, your fate is literally in somebody else's hands. And it's not just your labour, right? During pregnancy, there's all this focus on nutrition and getting the right diet. Would you get special consideration for being pregnant? Would you get different food to other people?

No, the policy is that you're meant to get extra and if you're hungry, you're meant to be accommodated for, it doesn't happen. Policy and procedure are very far apart. I think people expect, you know, when you go into prison and you're pregnant that you are, that you're cared for. And the actual true story of it is, it's no different. Your healthcare's worse. Your nutrition's worse. You're worse off in that situation because you literally have no responsibility over your own care. After you gave birth, you were granted bail for three months until your trial.

And then once you were sentenced, you were returned to prison and you were separated from your baby. Now I'm sure any parents listening can't even imagine being separated from their child How long was that for and can you begin to describe that feeling And when were you reunited? Court kept getting adjourned So as you can imagine, every time I was saying goodbye to my son Didn't know what was going to happen

I didn't know how long I was going to be away for So I didn't know if I would be able to have him back with me on an NBU if I was leaving him for good So that was emotional. I had to do that three times and say goodbye to him Got sentenced when I set a foot in reception I said I need to speak to the lady from the mother and baby unit

I was bugging absolutely everybody and eventually five weeks later I sat a mother and baby board and I did end up getting accepted to go back onto that mother and baby unit at that prison but it was it's just like no one no one rushes to do anything and I'm just like I've got

my son on the outside and I don't think anyone's really understanding this so he was coming on visits because my mum was taking care of him at the time I said to say to my mum I just yeah I'm going to have to stop bringing him because I was crying he was crying because by that time obviously we had a bond he knew who I was and I said just upset and everybody like until I know what's going on I just we're just going to have to stop the visits so I did that but then luckily a couple weeks later I got the bored and was able

to have him back okay now level up for a long time was campaigning for changes in sentencing guidelines I think right now we need a positive moment so you've had some success in area right can you tell us about that success yeah we have so we had to tackle sentencing and the use of remand but we had to do sentencing first so we targeted the sentencing council who are a group of expert judges and some academics who oversee the sentencing guidelines that are used in all courts across england and wales and we were shocked we were looking at the processes in courts and we couldn't see anywhere that there was any guide for judges to even consider a pregnancy when they were making decisions on whether to send a woman to custody.

Now that's absolutely appalling. So we thought, well, the first thing we have to do is make sure that courts are considering this and they recognise that it's a high risk environment for a pregnant woman. So we launched an open letter to the Sentencing Council in 2022 and it was signed by, you know, the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of Obstitricians and Gynaecologists, British Association for Perinatal Medicine. It was very, very clear that was just broad consensus across all healthcare and materials. experts that it was simply unsafe and we needed a new sentencing framework to take that

into consideration. So years on, the Sentencing Council have listened. They've run two consultations on new sentencing measures for pregnant women and then more recently they announced much more wide-ranging measures in their new imposition of custodial and community sentences guideline which essentially now says all pregnancies in prison are high risk and courts must avoid the use of custody for pregnant women which is massive it's like landmark change not only that but they go into detail on pregnancy is a factor that indicates it's appropriate to suspend a sentence which means that when a woman is facing a prison term the judge has the discretion to suspend it if the sentence is less than two years which means that you don't go to prison and unless you

commit a further offense you will stay out of prison it's just been honestly women helping women helping women helping women get them out and have the baby safely well done Huge wins, yeah, huge win. With that out of curiosity, do you think, have made a difference to your experience, Anna? Yeah, 100%. 100%. Because when you are sentencing these women, you're just adding to their trauma and their cycle. And then you're putting these children in these unnecessary unsafe environments.

Like a lot of these women, they're non-violent offenders. I don't even like calling them offenders. But their offences are non-violent. So they don't really pose a risk to the community. There's no reason why you can't take these women, pick them up and just put them in a community setting and let them do their sentence. That way, there are other things that they can look at. Yeah. You know, well, let's talk about that.

We'll turn to the media now. And one of the media's key rebuttals to this issue. And indeed, you know, one of society's key rebuttals to this issue has been, well, you know, what if a pregnant person has done something really bad? Like, surely they should be in prison. And I'm sure there are some listeners even, you know, who are listening to this conversation and thinking, well, you know, if somebody has done something, bad. Why shouldn't they face justice just because they're pregnant? As an example of this as a media rebuttal, we want to play a clip of you, Janie, on LBC, being interviewed by or debating with or being interrupted by, it's hard to say, Nick Ferrari.

Oh, Nick. For those who don't know, Nick Ferrari is the presenter of LBC's breakfast show and he's known for his conservative views. They only go behind bars if it's a fairly major crime, Janie. You're suggesting they don't go behind bars for that? I'm sorry to correct you, but the majority of women are in prison, the most prevalent offence is shoplifting. Have you looked at the latest stats on actually what women are in prison for? I haven't, no, I have no idea, no.

You need to correct that. You really can't say anything. I assure you, it won't be the first. It won't be one case of shoplifting. It will be a pattern of repeat behavior. It won't be they've nicked a few lambed shops. Let's be honest with each other. it will be the reality that we're living in a positive

It'll be the reality of a repeat offender And I ask again, why should she not go to jail Because she's a mother We need to look at the reality of what prison creates They'll have probably done it about 20 times Look at the lens of punishment They should go to buy bars Crime

Wholesale We can look at diverting Funding from prisons into communities So people get the support they need For poverty, trauma, drug use Mental Health, Domestic Abuse That has grounded in evidence. But the same could be saved for men. That's the point, isn't it? The same could be

said for men if they've had an abusive background, which is horrific for them. But that doesn't mean you're going to go to jail if you're a repeat criminal, is it? What I'm talking about is actually resourcing communities to address these drivers at the point, at the route, where they are first a problem. Prison, by the time people are being sent to prison, you're just compounding the deprivation. We need to... Let's all have them walk in the streets then. a lamb chock to be found in Sainsbury's. Can I just say, I found it so obscure because this was at like 7.50 a.m. And this man would not shut up about lamb chops.

It was really bizarre. Yeah, I mean, honestly, my favourite part is when you say, I'm sorry to correct you without a hint of being sorry. I was not sorry. And then you just hit him with the stats. He didn't even look at all. Of course he didn't. No, I mean, the interrupting is also next level.

I have to say, I think people won't even, because of the style of his interview, those stats didn't even get the moment to come through and basically completely falsify what he was saying. Right, well, let's do it now. So you mentioned there in that clip of the tiny part that we could hear you, shoplifting. So can you explain to us, you know, what women are usually in prison for and also how you tackle this question when it comes up? So what prison represents in the public imaginative? as opposed to what prison is in reality are two vastly different things because the stats show year on year on year

the vast majority of women in prison are for short sentences. The last stats were 50% of women in prison are there for less than six months and the most prevalent offence predictably is shop theft and it doesn't take a genius to recognise that that is something that is environmentally created by the society

that we are living in and I think Often, you know, the criminal justice system blames individuals for the failures in our society to support people, to make sure that everyone can earn a decent living wage, to make sure that everybody has, you know, safe and secure housing. The evidence has been there for 20 years now. So there was a landmark government report in 2007 called the Cawston Report and just found the same things that people see now, which is that the majority of women in prison are mothers that is so much trouble. trauma and poverty and deprivation and substance use and domestic abuse that are driving women into the criminal justice system. And ultimately, prison just compounds the deprivation.

You know, in theory, when you send someone to prison, you remove their liberty for a set period of time and then they're released back out in the community. In practice, what happens is even if you're there for two, three months, you lose your home. If you have children and there's no family to take care of them, your children will go into care sometimes irreversed. If you had a job, that job is gone. And what happens is you find women then being released, homeless, completely traumatised because their children have been removed from them, which is arguably the most severe punishment you could ever inflict on anyone. It's barbaric. You know, side note, not only is that awful for the mother, but also produces so much intergenerational trauma for children.

And then when you look at the reality that women are going there for often crimes of survival, survival in a society that is becoming increasingly difficult to survive, it's so clear that the fault lays with government. It's so clear that, you know, when we remove our welfare safety net, our criminal net expands because that's all that is left for people. Yeah. This is the vast majority of cases that you are talking about. And most women have committed non-violent offences.

However, your campaign is no births behind bars. I'm sure that lots of media make the case for, you know, oh, non-violent manipulated domestic abuse victims, you know, shouldn't be in prison. I am curious, though, why you are also advocating for women who have committed serious crimes, as much of a minority as they are and are pregnant. Do you believe that they should not be in prison while pregnant? And how do you make that case in the media? It is a difficult line to take because when it comes to people,

prison, everyone's first question is, well, what's she done? Well, why should you there? There's this immediate barrier because they don't want to have empathy because criminalised women are seen as separate. But ultimately, if we say that prison is high risk for some women, not others, we undermine our own argument. You just can't say that the risks are universal to all women and their children. And I think even in the most extreme cases, which are so, so rare and few and far between, and I feel, you know, reluctant to have to address it, but you have to. There are options for a sentence, for example, to be deferred so a woman can give birth safely. And that is something that has happened in the US.

That's something that other countries do. It's not controversial. Some of the longest sentences are for non-violent crimes. You will find that the women who are serving 18-year sentences are there for Class A drugs imports. And often they've been trafficked. So we don't want to get into the weeds of criminal justice policy. We want to keep the focus on that bond between mother and baby, on reproductive justice and on making sure that, you know,

even when you look at the stats, the vast, vast majority of women, I'm talking like 75%, 3 and 4 women are there for less than 4 years. Even if we can get them out, that's a massive improvement. For too long, the argument has been, you know, hypotheticals outweighing the lived realities of women in prison. We can talk about pregnant murderers roaming in the streets, or we can talk about the fact that three babies have died. inside custody in the last five years and that is simply untenable

we have to stick with the material reality of women's experiences and keep them safe. Thank you for addressing that. Thank you. I think a lot of people had a very close mind and thought we were just saying like don't punish people if they've committed a crime and just let them off squat free

but that's not what we were saying at all. Like our whole main aim was punish people in a different way there's community alternatives. The dancer can't always be prison because it just doesn't work And it doesn't even work for people that aren't pregnant. People, it's just trauma. There's cycles, people go in and out.

So if you can break that and give people a chance, like, why not? And it saves the government money, which they seem to like to waste it. Paramount Woos. Check out the big stars, big series, and blockbuster movies. Streaming on Paramount Plus. Cue the music. Like NCIS,

Tony and Ziva. We'd like to make up her own rules. Tulsa King. We want to take out the competition. The substance. This balance is not working. And the naked gun. That was awesome.

Now that's a mountain of entertainment. Haramow. Hi, Media Stormers. Before we return, if you're a keen MediaStorm listener, we know you'll love the news meeting from Tortus. Like us, they try to understand what's behind the headlines, which is so important as the news cycle becomes increasingly chaotic. Why do some stories dominate while others barely get a look in?

Every Monday and Friday, three journalists battle it out to try and convince the editor that their chosen story should lead the news. And once a month, you'll get the chance to see the competition live and in person in Tortoise's London Newsroom. Catch up on the latest episode by searching for the news meeting wherever you get your podcasts. Anna, I wonder what have your experiences been like speaking to the press on this issue? I've had a mixed bag of experiences, to be honest. Obviously, I do a lot of the work anonymous, and that's my choice because my son's still young.

He doesn't have to go to prison, but he doesn't know he was born there. And that's obviously a conversation I have to have him later. You know, I've had an experience where I asked to be anonymous. They was meant to blur my image, but they didn't. They put it out. and somebody had recognised me. I had another experience where I did a radio interview. It was pre-recorded and then he started it,

which I didn't hear this bit into it went out and he said, oh, I've asked Anna to disclose her crime and she's refused to. And all he had said to me in the conversation before pressing record was, would you be happy to disclose your crime? I said my crime was non-violent and I really feel like it's irrelevant to the topic.

And he was like, okay, and then he started the interview with that, so I felt a bit blindsided by that. But apart from that, People were being quite positive and I think a lot of the shock was as well. I think people never really understood that pregnant women were sent to prison and it was overlooked. When we first started the campaign, there's definitely been a turnaround for people's point of view. I wonder, Janie, when do you think the media started taking notice of this issue?

Was there a surge in coverage at any point? Or was it a bit of a slow burn or was there a turning point? We have forced them to take notice of this. obviously there have been key junctures for example when the prison ombudsman issued the report when there was an inquest into one of the baby's deaths when kind of legal processes have caught the media attention and kind of been on the weekly news cycle but repeatedly over the last few years level up has found the hooks and made the hook so what we've done is you know submitted FOI requests to find out the rates of stillbirths and premature births and the rates of gestational diabetes

You know, most recently we found that pregnant women in prison are three times more likely to suffer gestational diabetes. And obviously, they do not get the support that they need. FOI is freedom of information. Yeah. And, you know, we've used that data to get journalists to take interest because obviously journalists want something that's new, that's hooked to something. So we'll either get the stats or we'll do mother and baby protests around Mother's Day. We actually have one coming up outside the Ministry of Justice on Friday the 28th of March. mother's day, mom and baby protest.

And obviously they're very cute, but they are a very carefully curated media strategy because when you put lots of very cute moms and babies outside the Ministry of Justice, it's like catnip for journalists because they are adorable. They don't look like any protests you've ever seen. We're just there with a parachute

and a yellow banner playing reggae nursery rhymes. And then journalists come, take pictures, report on it. And obviously, every time they report on a mum and baby protest outside the MJ, they go to the MJ for right of reply. And they say, hey, all these protesters are saying that you shouldn't be putting pregnant women in prison. And so the Ministry of Justice, Media Office then have to come out with a line. That obviously goes into their clippings and their meetings every single week. And for the last four years, I think this will be our 12th mum and baby protest.

We've done them outside the prisons where babies died. We've done them outside the Royal Courts of Justice. We've done them outside the Ministry of Justice. And every time we do when we get media attention, every time we get media attention, there has to be a right of reply. there's been a steady drip feed both in the public because it's the public who are reading the papers and then also behind the scenes to stakeholders so they can see that there is public interest and huge public sympathy. We commissioned polling that found the majority of people do not want to see pregnant women or mothers in prison

where a community alternative is available. Now that's hugely persuasive to a judiciary who are frankly scared of public opinion because of the way the media has produced so much moral panic around. crime. Really interesting to hear the behind the scenes of, you know, making the news media listen to you. That's really helpful. Thank you. But also, you know, it's not just the news media. It is also pop culture. And earlier this year, EastEnders ran a storyline which featured a pregnant character, the iconic Sonia Fowler, in prison. Now, okay, someone who's watched EastEnders since they were 10 years old. I'll just give everyone like a little rundown of the

storyline, what happened. Okay, so Reese and Sodia were a couple. They wanted to to have a baby, but they needed to go through the IVF route. After stealing his comatosed ex-wife's money to pay for the IVF, Reese gets further and further into debt. So, like the sneaky psychopathy is, he ends up killing his comatosed ex-wife to get the life insurance. However, it turns out Sonia's DNA is on the pillow used to kill his ex-wife because she visited earlier that day because she's like a lovely person.

And then Sonia gets framed and goes to prison while pregnant. Could happen to anyone. Very realistic stuff. Don't worry, guys, Sonia is now out of prison and Reese got killed by a bathtub on the live 40th anniversary episode. Really had that coming. That's justice.

Yeah. So, you know, when Sonia was in prison on the show, there were some very powerful scenes when, for example, her family came to visit her in prison and she talked about what she was going through. First of all, Anna, how did it feel to watch that or to see that? I'll be honest, I didn't watch. I'm not an extended fan

but obviously I have read things about it and I think my main thing was it's a lovely storyline to bring attention to the situation but why did they have to put her in for murder? You know like it's like they've gone for a violent offence and it's like it doesn't depict the true

the true situation that we're trying to talk about so I'm like it undermines it okay that's so interesting yeah obviously you know right of reply she was innocent but you know but Janie you know they Sonia actually quoted some level up statistics on the show that is watched by millions of people I mean that's got to be a win right huge win and I think also obviously when you asked me the question before about like the news media

that's been one facet of our campaign but another key part of this campaign over the last five years has been more in the magazines and features space and that's where really the heart and minds work has been done because even if you haven't had experience of the prison system, everybody has some relationship to pregnancy, to motherhood, to parenthood, to children. And it's that universal value that really connects people. And I think that has, that has been what has contributed to the East Ender storyline. It's been, it's not necessarily been the stats. Of course, the stats have been important. But it's the way that those stats have then been grounded in so much empathy and compassion and solidarity for women's experiences that has landed

up, you know, with EastEnders portraying this in a very careful and sensitive way, barring the fact that they used murder because I agree. It's just not representative, but then are the soaps how many people get killed by a bathtub, you know? Are the soaps that exactly? But I think what was really powerful was the way that, you know, that stat came up because. because Sonia was terrified of giving birth in prison. And that has only come about because of stories like Anna's again and again featuring in the media and people recognizing that it is a reality for so many pregnant women inside the prison system

that they are terrified of giving birth inside prison and the reality that babies have died. I have no doubt that Anna's testimony and the testimonies of all other words, women, brave enough to share this hellish experiences, has changed minds. You cannot not be affected by it. Rihanna Cleary, the mum whose baby died at Bronsfield, after the inquest into her baby's death, at the end of it, she went on Channel 4 and she gave a statement. And in her statement, she just said, the way prisons are run is about power and control.

They will never be caring places. And I just thought that sums it up, really. Like, the very design of a prison just means it will not be a caring place. and we need to stop entertaining the delusion that a prison could ever be safe for anyone, let alone a pregnant woman. So let's look a bit towards the future now. What's next? Now you have achieved the changes to the sentencing guidelines. Bail, babes. That's the name of the new campaign. Bail babes? Oh, yeah, bail for babies. That could be quite good. Yeah, no bus behind bars and bail for babies.

Yeah, so obviously we've achieved sentencing guideline change. Now we need to look at the number of pregnant women who are being held before their trial or sentencing. We need to make sure that the considerations that a court now has to make at the point of sentencing are also made when, you know, women are coming through from police stations and the court is deciding whether to keep them at home on bail or send them into custody.

And we will always say, keep them at home on bail. Thank you for listening. If you want to support Media Storm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the show notes and a special shout-outs to everyone in our Patreon community already. We appreciate you so much. And if you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow a podcast. So please do tell your friends.

You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal, at Helena Wadia, and follow the show at Media MediaStorm pod. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helen Awadier and Matilda Mallinson. The music is by Samphire.