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In a blog post entitled "Mothers Rocking the Prison Cradle," Marian Wright Edleman, President of the Children's Defense Fund, wrote that mothers are one of the fastest growing prison populations in the country. She wrote a poignant description of what it's like for some women who bear their children behind prison walls:
Childbirth is not so joyous for the growing number of women who give birth behind bars. It is a time of humiliation, sadness and separation. Before, during, and after delivery, prison mothers are commonly shackled. No one is there to take those first baby pictures. And the infant may be whisked away by a social worker to be given to a family member to raise, or if they are less fortunate, the child goes to foster care. The mother returns to an eight foot by 12 foot prison cell to grieve. The bond between mother and child is broken at the moment of delivery. (Marian Wright Edleman at HuffPo)
But what if the system worked differently? What if women who had not been convicted of violent crimes and who had to serve short sentences were able to bond with their babies, even keep their babies with them?
Recently I listened to the first part of an NPR Morning Edition series called "Who's in Prison?" It discussed the growing number of mothers in prison, first telling the audience that in America right now one in every one hundred adults is incarcerated. In the print introduction NPR posted a correction. The fact is not one in every 100 adults is behind bars but that more than one in 100 American adults are serving time in the federal, state, and local prisons. (Also see Incarceration Nation here at BlogHer.)
The NPR story focused on an Ohio program that lets some of its inmates keep their babies with them:
At the Ohio Reformatory for Women, a dozen babies are spending time behind bars. Too young to say the word "crime," they are participants in a program that enables inmate mothers to raise their children in their cells. (NPR)
When I heard about the prison with baby program, I felt it was good on the surface. But something about the program disturbed me. I asked myself, "What if it gets out of hand? What if what seems like a compassionate solution to mother/child separation ends up keeping children with their mothers in prison for longer periods of time?"
I also thought of the how often blacks land in the prison system in disproportionate numbers and how quickly this compassionate system of keeping mommy and baby together could look, after a time, more like slavery: a woman born in chains bearing a child who remains with her, and so, not free. According to Edleman's post on mothers rocking prison cradles, "The majority of the 1.5 million children of incarcerated parents are Black or Latino."
The mental connection to slavery is not as big a leap as some people might think. With prisons under scrutiny for taking advantage of prison labor, a practice abused in the past, and disparities in sentencing for minorities compared to whites, prison/slavery analogies are not uncommon. But mostly, I wondered about the pain of mothers who must leave children behind to serve prison terms.
So, I talked to Babz about my gut feelings regarding babies in prison. She is a BlogHer.com member and the author of the blog Lovebabz: A Life in Transition. In addition, Babz is an African-American woman who holds of a Masters of Public Administration from City University in New York where she was a National Urban Fellow. She also has a BS in Marketing from Barber Scotia College in North Carolina. Formerly she held the position of Executive Director for a housing program.
Babz is a professional, an inspirational woman, someone who's always moving forward. She's also the mother of four children, all adopted, and a former resident of a federal prison camp. She spent 29 days confined for misappropriation of federal funds, a crime that would normally get a slap on the wrist for a person not in the political spotlight as she
