The Women's Prison Association released a new report on Mother's Day, about incarcerated parenting mothers called Mothers, Infants and Imprisonment A National Look at Prison Nurseries and Community-Based Alternatives.
Since there is no standard policy for what happens when a woman gives birth while incarcerated, it analyzes the two options that are available now, prison nurseries that allow moms to keep their children with them for limited periods of time, and community-based programs that allow parents to fulfill their sentences in the community under supervision while parenting.
This is an increasingly important issue as incarceration rates, particularly for women, have grown immensely in the past decades. According to the report:
Between 1977 and 2007, the number of women in prison in the United States increased by 832 percent. 2 According to data released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), in 2004 four percent of women in state prisons and three percent of women in federal prisons were pregnant at the time of admittance.3 In 1999, BJS reported that six percent of women in local jails were pregnant at the time of admittance.4 As the number of women in prison has skyrocketed over the past 30 years, states have had to consider what it means to lock up women, many of whom are pregnant or parenting.
There are important impacts on these families, particularly since the majority of these women are non-violent offenders who will eventually be released and be the primary caregivers to their kids.
The overwhelming majority of children born to incarcerated mothers are separated from their mothers immediately after birth and placed with relatives or into foster care. In a handful of states, women have other options: prison nurseries and community-based residential parenting programs.
Prison nursery programs allow a mother to parent her infant for a finite period of time within a special housing unit at the prison. Community-based residential parenting programs allow mothers to keep their infants with them while they fulfill their sentences in residential programs in the community.
Some of their research findings:
- The number of prison-based nursery programs is growing, but such programs are still rare. Only 9 states have these programs, and almost half were created in the last five years.
- Research shows that these programs benefit mothers and children. Women who participate show lower rates of recidivism (likelihood to commit a new crime), and their children show no adverse affects as a result of their participation. Improves maternal child bonding as well.
- Many women parenting their infants in prison nurseries could be doing so in the community instead. Women in both types of programs are serving relatively short sentences for non-violent offenses, and will continue primary caretaking responsibility for their child(ren) upon release. Most women in prison nursery programs present little risk to public safety. The issues that bring most women in contact with the criminal justice system - drug addiction, lack of education, poverty - are better addressed in a community setting than in prison.
You can read the full report here.
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Agreed, many people are in prison because of socio-racial and economic factors. However, there are also people in prison that are violent sociopaths. What are the standards for entry into these prison programs? A woman who has rehabilitated her drug problem and is serving a short sentence (when she probably really shouldn't be in prison at all) and will be out soon should definitely be allowed to mother her child. However, the violent sociopath or the still-addicted drug-user is probably a disfunctional mother, and it would be doing the child a disservice by allowing them to be raised by such a a woman in prison, when that woman would probably have the same child removed from her custody by CPS if she was out of prison. Anyway, I'm saying I think these programs are a great idea to rectify some of the wrongs of the world as long as there are very strict standards of entry into a program like this -- the interests of the child should be first in everyone's mind, and being raised in foster care isn't ideal, but neither is being raised in prison and those things need to be weighed.
Also, I am all about equal rights in custody cases. Though I would absolutely oppose a child going into foster care or even being cared for by a distant relative instead of being cared for by his mother serving a short term in prison. However, if there is an option is an out-of-prison father or an incarcerted mother as a primary care giver, I'd have to definitely opt for the father.
I think these are great progams. If they lower recidivism rates thats a huge good for the community. Like becca I do wonder about who qualifies for such programs. I didnt have a chance to click through all the materials but im sure violent felons arent eligible. What I wonder about though is why is this only an option for women? Are we willing to default, now and forever, that mothers are measurably more important than fathers when it comes to raising kids or bonding? If I went to jail and my wife was pregnant, why couldnt I go into a residential program? Seems to me the want to protect maternal rights also does a lot for pigeonholing women into the role of mother when as a society we should be far more flexible.
Are we willing to default, now and forever, that mothers are measurably more important than fathers when it comes to raising kids or bonding?
fathers dont have boobs. new york state has a program allowing one year for mothers to stay with their babies to encourage and support breastfeeding.
I can see how breastfeeding can be beneficial but the program is not ment solely for breast feeding purposes ( since if breast milk was the issue they could pump it). And I agree with the lack of looking at fathers' influence on children's lives especially at such a young age. Paternal bonds are just as important and I think limiting time spent between babies and their fathers ( to be fair to the study - single fathers) does reinforce the mother as natural nurturer persona.
Are we willing to default, now and forever, that mothers are measurably more important than fathers when it comes to raising kids or bonding?
fathers dont have boobs. new york state has a program allowing one year for mothers to stay with their babies to encourage and support breastfeeding.
Its for women who give birth while in prison. Unless the man sprouts a uterus he's kind of left out of the whole giving birth process...
Give birth while in prison? So what? Giving birth is anywhere from 2-36 hours from what I've seen though I'm sure there is even more variance. Once the child is delivered, once its here on this earth does a mother have more right to be with it than a father or any other legal guardian that may have been designated for that child? Personally I dont think so. I think trying to hard to ensure maternal rights, while mostly good, also locks women into the motherhood role we've created in our culture and strengthens a lot of the ills that come with it.
As far as the breastfeeding, there is formula and there are pumps and other workarounds. These are prisoners and it most likely should be case by case but the best interests of the child very well may not include breastfeeding, hell the best interests of the women in question might not include it either.
Its a tough situation but it just drives me to distraction sometimes. If it lowers recidivism great but the bonding argument is very case by case to me and most times I hear it, it seems to rely to heavily on that sacrosanct and important above all mother/child relationship which again I agree is important but I also think the fetishising of it causes a lot of problems.
Once a child is on this earth it doesnt matter a whit how it got there. I say the same thing to some women as I do to some of the MRA's I encounter who whine about paper abortions or lack of reproductive control/rights. I tell the MRA's, sorry friend, thats just the way the dice rolled, once you ejaculate you have no more choice. Same goes for women, we're not in the world we need to be in yet so its not completely the same but once youve chosen to be or remain pregnant, you have the kid, thats the way the dice rolled, no special role for you other than first in line to have a close relationship with that child but sharing that spot in line with the father or your partner. These programs just seem to distill some bad things for me. Apologies for the rant.
Its hard for me to look at this rationally and come up with a satisfactory answer.
Emotionally, I think that if I carried a baby inside of me for 9 months (assuming of course that I chose to continue the pregnancy), and then went through the long and painful process of giving birth, and then had the baby taken away from me immediately, I would feel much worse than if someone I'd had sex with gave birth to a baby and I wasn't able to see it right away. (That doesn't necessarily apply only to men. Lesbian couples would be in that situation too.)
Of course, to a large extent that sort of feeling of bonding with a baby in someone else's uterus has to do with how much time you spend together during the pregnancy, whether you planned it together, etc. It really depends on those factors. If a father wanted a child and has been anticipating it for 9 months, he's going to have different feelings than if he suddenly finds out that a stranger he had a one night stand with 9 months ago is giving birth. But genetically (and legally, I think) those two men are both considered equally the father of the baby in each scenario.
The same can apply to the woman carrying the child, but hopefully she would have had the option to terminate the pregnancy if she didn't want to bond with it. So if she continued the pregnancy, she's very likely to feel a strong bond with the baby that's been inside of her for 9 months and that she made all of these physical sacrifices for.
"...and community-based programs that allow parents to fulfill their sentences in the community under supervision while parenting."
Are there other ways for equally-nonviolent convicts to fulfill their sentences in the community under supervision? I hope so - because if not then it adds up to keeping women in prison for not giving birth.
For example: if Ms. A and Ms. B are both sentenced to the same 4 years for the same type of tax fraud offense, 3 months later Ms. A gets pregnant during a conjugal visit from her partner and Ms. B doesn't have a partner in the first place, and 9 months after that Ms. A gives birth allowed back into the community but Ms. B's kept behind bars, then the sentences might as well have been 1 year for each for that type of tax fraud offense and 3 extra years for Ms. B for not giving birth.
As Miriam said, "The issues that bring most women in contact with the criminal justice system - drug addiction, lack of education, poverty - are better addressed in a community setting than in prison," and wouldn't this apply even for women who don't give birth?
Are there other ways for equally-nonviolent convicts to fulfill their sentences in the community under supervision? I hope so - because if not then it adds up to keeping women in prison for not giving birth.
I thought of that too. I bet there are not generally other programs like that, otherwise these mothers could just have used those programs and they wouldn't make a big deal out of pioneering a new program for them.
If you read the report, the majority of the women in these two programs were non-violent offenders.
I saw a TV show once on the National Geographic channel about prisons where mothers keep their children with them until the kids are six years old (I think they profiled a prison in Mexico and one in India but I might be wrong about that). I couldn't decide how I felt about it. There are just so many things wrong with that situation that neither choice is really good. If their crimes weren't bad enough to keep them from raising their children, then why were they sentenced to more than six years in jail?
If their crimes weren't bad enough to keep them from raising their children, then why were they sentenced to more than six years in jail
two words, mandatory minimums.
my husband, when clerking during college watched a judge sentence a woman (even though he thought it was wrong) to some rediculous amount of time for essentially being a drug mule. often they cant get the big dealers, so it's the poor and opportunity-less, or coerced low-rankers that get the short end of the stick.
First, let me say that I am opposed to our draconian drug laws that often punish non-violent offenders much more harshly than violent offenders, largely due to minimum mandatory sentencing. Aside from that, I do not believe that your gender or parental status should have any bearing whatsoever on how you are treated by the penal system. If a man would get 5 years for trafficking drugs, so should a woman, even if she is a mother of 6. How can you argue that the system isn’t thinking of what’s best for her kids when she obviously wasn’t? Many men are the primary breadwinners and their families suffer when Dad goes to jail,too, but that is no excuse for not punishing a man who has knowingly broken the law. Kids are not and should not be a get out of jail free card and ‘community alternatives’ for one select group of convicts are not appropriate if we claim to value equality in the eyes of the law. This is the kind of thing that causes backlash for feminism: we want to be equal until it really kinda sucks, then we want the system to understand out special needs and give us other alternatives that aren’t available to men.
Thank You.
You said everything I wanted to say.
I think it's extremely important to remember that while we do allow the state to interfere with parents when parents are harming their children, we do not normally make the loss of one's parenting rights a punishment for unrelated crimes.
Someone can commit a crime and still be a loving, responsible parent in many other respects. I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago about immigration violations and custody issues, and I think the same applies for mothers in prisons. They are still mothers.
Several commenters seem to focus on these parenting arrangements for prisoners as an unfair privilege for women who happen to give birth in prison, but to me (and presumably to the people who created them) they seem like an important step to breaking the cycle of poverty and crime for these children. They allow children to remain with their mothers during the critical bonding period of early childhood. This gives mothers a powerful incentive to get their lives together and children a stable start. Presumably these programs provide parenting education as well as contact with moms, giving these kids a head start at staying out of prison as adults.
In that sense, this kind of program benefits not just the mothers and children it affects, but all of us who live with the lower crime rates that hopefully result.
ps - a link to that blog post: http://childwild.com/2009/04/24/illegal-immigration-costs-some-parents-custody/
I'm so glad this report was mentioned, I just wrote a blog post over at WireTap about the report and how women of color are disproportionately represented in prisons and the importance of reproductive rights for incarcerated women. The summary provided here is excellent I hope people will go over and read the entire report! The studies on each state's program are interesting to read about.