This is what happens to most mothers who give birth in prison. For a few, there are prison-based nursery programs (those come with their own problems), but most are separated at birth. That causes deep and longstanding attachment issues, as well as deep trauma for both mothers and babies. Can you imagine if the first thing that happened to you at birth was separation from the most important person in your world--and then being thrown into an atmosphere of upheaval and, often, chaos?
Some newborns can go to stay with extended family members, but others are placed in foster care. Child protective services operates, in some ways, as another arm of the prison nation: If mothers can't meet certain benchmarks to demonstrate they are fit parents--which is really hard to do while you're incarcerated--then they are shuttled along a very quick pathway to losing their kids" the possibility of unification can be terminated in less than two years. The "verdicts" of child protective services come down particularly harshly on black women, and so black children are in deeper danger of being separated from their mothers for life.
We are punishing both parents and babies through this destructive system.
You write, "As soon as she's given birth, she'll be shackled to the bed posts." [p. 83] If true, "punishing" would seem to be a euphemism for something far more callous. Was your sister a particularly violent offender? A risk to herself, her baby, or others? It's hard for me to wrap my mind around this concept; her experience was simply light years from my own birthing experiences in every possible way.
My sister was in prison for a very small nonviolent offense. But even when it comes to women who've committed violent acts, the idea that they are "flight risks" while giving birth is ridiculous. No one who has actually thought deeply about this issue and engaged in conversations about it--and known anyone who's given birth--let alone given birth themselves--can truthfully say, "Yes, women about to give birth, or who have just given birth, are apt to attempt to flee," somehow thinking that this is the time they'll escape incarceration. It's just a senselessly punitive model, one that simply inflicts more violence on people who are already going through a very traumatic and painful experience--because in most cases, they're about to be separated from their newborn children.
Not a pretty picture. The second half of your book is "how we can do it better". What's your take? Where to begin?
Doing better is a combination of many different factors. One aspect is decarceration: shrinking the current system. That means reducing prison populations, reducing prison budgets, initiating bail reform, ending mandatory minimums--all kinds of measures that shrink the bounds of the current system. That also needs to include addressing carceral mechanism that stretch beyond the walls of the physical prison--for instance, the Black Lives Matter movement, all the work being done around policing: Actions along those lines are decarcerative and anti-carceral, because policing is both the gateway to the prison system, AND it creates a sort of prison of its own" The way policing operates in this country is in many ways a structure that attempts to imprison communities of color, and particularly black communities. Police are open-air prison guards. So--all that work is definitely part of building a world beyond prisons.
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