W hen police knocked on her front door, Rachel* had no idea it would be the worst day of her life. She and her son, Joshua*, were still in bed, but when she let the officers inside, leaving him to play on the floor behind a stairgate, she was told she was being recalled to prison – indefinitely – under a sentence she was handed for a street robbery 20 years ago. They said her son, from whom she had never spent a night apart, was being taken into care. Officers could not even say why she was being recalled , simply telling her it was due to “poor behaviour”. She later learned it was triggered by a single call to police from a teenage neighbour over an alleged alcohol-fuelled altercation with a family member days earlier, which Rachel disputes ever happened and has not resulted in any charge. “My mind just stopped,” she told The Independent . “But then I grabbed my son and said, ‘no, no, I’m not going. Why, why, why?’ I was squeezing him, saying no, I’m going to lose him.…