The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Under an unusual program, the state of Ohio lets Patterson raise him behind prison walls.

Some experts say that approach is best for both mothers and their children because the women are less likely to commit crimes when they get out, and children get to be with their moms during critical periods of their development.

One critic calls the program a waste of taxpayer money and says prison should be a place for punishment, not somewhere to raise babies.

Either way, one thing is not in dispute: the number of women in prison has skyrocketed in the last three decades, and most female prisoners are single mothers.

In Ohio, being a prison mom is a full-time job for up to 18 months.

In Kentucky, infants can bond with their mothers, but for only a few hours at time.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the number of women behind bars has increased 843 percent in the last three decades, growing from 12,279 in 1977 to 115,779 last year.

In that same time, Ohio saw a 577 percent increase in female inmates, from 577 in 1977 to 3,905 last year; Kentucky experienced a whopping 1,573 percent increase from 139 in 1977 to 2,326 last year.

With so many more women landing behind bars, who is left to take care of the children?

In a 2004 survey, 84 percent of imprisoned parents said they left their child with the child's other parent. The rest went elsewhere - including 3 percent who went into foster care, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics report, Parent in Prison and their Minor Children.

Ohio is one of nine states with prison nurseries.

Guidelines are stringent for Ohio's program. Since opening in 2001, 137 women have raised babies behind bars.

Still, the benefits are indisputable, said Terry Collins, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Bonding key issue

Establishing an early bond between the infant and mother is imperative to childhood development. And for the mothers, having that strong bond with their children tends to be the impetus to play it straight on the outside.

"It is well known that family support and family bonds are among the top factors that increase a returning citizen's chance of having a successful re-entry," Collins said.

Ohio set up a nursery in 2001. Indiana followed last year. Kentucky has a nursery, but children are not permitted to live with their mothers.

The Women's Prison Association, a New York-based agency that advocates for women with criminal records, recently studied babies behind bars and urged states to allow moms to serve sentences in the community or to start nurseries similar to Ohio's.

"I think people are realizing more and more women are going to prison and the reality is that women are mothers," said Chandra Villanueva, of the Institute on Women and Criminal Justice, part of the Women's Prison Association. "It makes sense to keep mothers and children together and give them the foundation to build a healthy relationship with their child."

Earlier this year, Villanueva released a report that found that women who participate in prison nursery programs are less likely to commit another crime, and their babies get to be with their mom during critical development months.
Birth of a child/program

The idea for an Ohio prison nursery was hatched in 2000 by two local women, former state Rep. Cheryl Winkler, R-Cincinnati, and convict Barbara Turner, a former nurse convicted of prescription drug offenses. Turner was pregnant when entering Marysville and successfully fought to have the baby's father present at her birth.

Turner wasn't allowed to keep her daughter with her.

Winkler proposed the nursery program, which was passed into law and officially got under way in 2001. Turner has since been released.

That program allows Takeem to live in prison.

Patterson, 29, is one of 11 women currently in the program.

A judge gave her a deal in 2003: Pay back the more than $5,000 she stole from her employer, Fifth Third Bank, and be monitored with five years probation.

In the end, Patterson didn't make good on the deal.

Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Ralph "Ted" Winkler, the son of one of the program's originators, sent Patterson to prison in April.

At the time, she was six months pregnant and a mother of a 3-year-old girl, Tiyann. While standing before the judge again, the reality stung.

"In that courtroom I was thinking about my daughter, my family," Patterson said.

Tiyann went to live with her grandmother.

Patterson went to a Franklin County prison because it was close to a Columbus hospital where she would give birth.

On June 25, with two guards at her side, Patterson was loaded into a van for the 10-minute ride to the hospital. Twelve hours later, she gave birth to 3-pound, 11-ounce Takeem. She left the hospital three days later. Takeem stayed another 11 days while he gained weight and then he joined his mother in prison.

"I wanted to be with him and bond with him, and I didn't want to put that stress on my mom," she said.
Life inside prison

Patterson and her son share a room with another convict and her son. Two beds and two cribs leave little space in the small room.

The Ohio program can handle up to 20 mothers. Of Ohio's 3,000 female prisoners, 69 were pregnant, officials said recently.

Some babies are destined for the nursery program. Others will be released before giving birth. The rest will have to surrender their child to care outside prison walls.

To qualify in Ohio, mothers have to be scheduled for release before their child turns 18 months old to be eligible for the program. Experts think that children that age will have no memory of where they spent their early life.

If there is such as being lucky behind bars, Patterson says she was because she met the criteria. "There are a lot of mothers here who don't get to be with their children," she said. "I want him with me, and I think he wants to be with me."

She vows she's going to make a fresh start when she's released in April.

Programs for convicts and their babies are relatively new, and little research about their effectiveness has been done, according to Villanueva of the Woman's Institute.

In her study, she found Ohio prison officials looked at the program at its five-year mark and found 118 mothers had participated, with just 3 percent of the women committing another crime within three years of being released. Of the general female prison population 30 percent commit another crime.

The Ohio nursery is run on grants and federal programs for the poor that these mothers would have received even if they weren't incarcerated. A $69,000 federal grant pays for most of the program, nearly half of which is paid to a visiting pediatrician.

Mothers also have the option of seeking child support from the child's father and the prison has a case manager to help with that paperwork.

As with all convicts who give birth behind bars, taxpayers pick up the hospital tab.

"The citizens of Ohio should not be paying for this (program)," said state Rep. Joe Uecker, R-Miami Township, a former law enforcement officer who worked at several area police departments. "With the economy the way it is - and even if it were good - these women made a mistake and they need to be held accountable."

Uecker said he researched the program earlier this year when looking at the prison budget and said he found nothing to prove it was best for the child. Foster care, he said, would be a better option than prison life for an infant.

"You first have to convince me it's best for the child and then convince me this is more than a burden borne on those of us who work for a living," Uecker said. "I would be hard pressed to vote for this if we were given an opportunity to."

Collins of the Ohio Department of Corrections said he's proud of the program and called it money well spent.

"These women will be coming back into the community," Collins said. "Is it better for them to have a program where they can learn how to be a good mother and care for their children, or have that child given up to foster care where maybe we're starting another cycle of people coming to prison 18 years down the road?

"These are programs that teach responsibility and hold people accountable and give them skills they don't have and hopefully makes then law-abiding citizens instead of tax burdens," he said.
Mothers for a day

At the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Woman, a line of women all dressed in drab khaki jumpsuits stop and stare as three infants are carted past.

A little girl with-doe shaped eyes and Minnie Mouse ears is really starting to resemble her prison mother, some comment. The children are ushered into the chapel where three inmate mothers sit anxiously on hard chairs waiting.

"No bottle today?" asked prisoner Erica Bowman, 23, as she unpacks a sack lunch that was brought in with her son Tayland by his caretaker Cheryl Dugan.

"No bottle," Dugan boasted of the soon to be 1-year-old's development.

"Wow, I am so proud of you," Bowman cooed to her son.

Dugan has cared for Tayland since he was 2 days old. She and Bowman met through Operation Open Arms just two weeks before Tayland was born.

The group, a licensed private child-placement service, operates on the principle that children shouldn't have to pay for their mothers' crimes. The program does not receive any state or federal money.

Of the roughly 650 woman doing time at the prison between 80 to 90 percent are mothers. About 100 babies are born each year to mothers at this prison. In August alone, there were close to 70 pregnant prisoners, officials said. The correctional center is Kentucky's prison that allows pregnant inmates, so it also houses pregnant woman who would otherwise be sent to jail, as jails don't usually have the staff to care for pregnancies.

The prison allows children ages 3 and under to visit with their mothers for two hours on bonding days, which can be several times a week. About a fifth of the prison moms have children in that age range, but only a handful see their children with regularity because of the time, money and the distances the children's caretakers have to drive to Shelby County to visit the moms.

"These children did not commit the crime," said Laura Carpenter, the executive director of Operation Open Arms, one of two private groups that cares for children of prisoners and brings the babies to see their mothers weekly.

Mothering is fairly foreign to Bowman. Nurturing and raising her children, she admitted, took a back seat to the frenetic lifestyle crack cocaine fueled when she was living on the outside.

Tayland is Bowman's fourth child. The third was born addicted to the drug and was taken away from her. Bowman also relinquished her parental rights to her two oldest children to family during her crack cocaine days.

Now, Bowman says she's done: Done having children; done with dope.

She said her bubbly son with a carpet of dark hair is her inspiration to get her life together so she can provide for her him on the outside.

As Bowman headed to a microwave to heat up her son's lunch, prison mom Shanise Washington, 30, worked on her daughter's hair: changing it from a single ponytail to two puffs of hair above her ears.

A judge allowed Washington, a repeat felon, to stay out of prison until after her daughter was born.

Washington left Ke'syna Burgess with her husband. After five months, he said it was too much. She never saw her child during those months, nor for a long time after.

Ke'syna was eventually handed over to Operation Open Arms, and over the past year Washington has been getting to know her daughter, who will be 3 this month.

Ke'syna is shy around her mother. The two played dolls in a small nursery as another pregnant prisoner filled out forms so that her soon-to-be born child will be placed with a volunteer caregiver through Operation Open Arms.

"(Washington) is going to do the right thing," said prison Chaplain Kenny Talbott.

Seeing Ke'syna with regularity keeps Washington motivated. "She inspires me," she said of her daughter.

Washington finished her GED and has been taking classes in carpentry. She's supposed to stay in prison for another 15 years, but Washington, like Bowman, thinks she'll be out sooner rather than later.

And should she get out?

"I am never going to wear khaki again," she said.
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20091113/NEWS01/911150306/Babies+behind+bars