The traditional Mothering Sunday, or Mothers Day as it is now known changes dates each year, because it is timed to coincide with the 3rd Sunday in Lent. For those who are following the traditional Lent denial of certain nice things, the true tradition is that on each Sunday during Lent, the items which one has been giving up during the week, can be enjoyed. This is particularly helpful if one is celebrating Mothers Day at Home with one’s Mother. However because Lent varies in timing each year, the third Sunday of Lent also changes date so that next year it will be 31st March and then in 2020 on 22nd March. This means that this year is a rare case when Mothering Sunday or Mothers Day falls in the same week as International Womens Day. This enables a focus on the issues impacting women in our society to be reinforced more than usual. The text above explains an issue that impacts on Mothers in an unnecessary way, as our society fails to grasp the need to find effective ways of punishing people who have broken our laws. One of the reasons why our Criminal Justice System needs a major rethink is that the small numbers of women who do end up in prisons, are inevitably held miles, in some case hundreds of miles from their families because of the small number of women’s prisons. As we celebrate Mothers Day (or Mothering Sunday if that is ones tradition) and reflect on a week that allowed people like Baroness Corston to speak out on behalf of women who are poorly served by our Criminal Justice System, rather than read the news from one of our tabloids that is trying to use the day to criticise Waitrose, it would be great to find a way of supporting the views of Jean Corston. I suspect her views expressed in the All Party Parliamentary Group will be opposed by some of our right wing MPs. My MP will be entirely supportive of this statement which came from an e-news article, however sending a message to MPs to ask them to support Jean on Mothers Day would be a good way of helping.