Celia Lashlie, justice reform campaigner and bestselling author, brings her powerful insight to the problems of families trapped in a spiral of crime, poverty and abuse. She points to the reasons behind why New Zealand’s rates of imprisonment are so disastrously high, what the politicians and social service organisations could do to improve the plight of children in at risk families and why the system should protect be protecting them. Lashlie uses the case studies of Maka Renata and Bailey Junior Kurariki as examples of institutional neglect. She exposes the environment in which they live and the pedestals upon which the media and society place these people, and, and the negative attitudes of many within our bureaucracy work against the efforts of the children’s mother to be the best mother she can. The Power of Mothers is a wake-up call to voter and politician, parent and grandparent, social agency and lobby group alike. We must do more than build prisons to hold the children we fail, now.