Motherhood for Prisoners

October 13, 2011 permalink

A small program allows a few Canadian women prisoners to care for their own babies while serving time in prison. The article is mostly positive about the results. Now that the government has discovered the benefits of preserving the mother-child bond in prison, how about extending the same policy to mothers who have committed no crime?

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A baby’s home behind the barbed wire

Women inmates are allowed to keep babies in jail for four years

By Laura Stone, Calgary Herald October 12, 2011 7:31 PM

Amanda Edgar, a 27-year-old convicted thief, is one of the few federal inmates in Canada now participating in the mother-child program at the Fraser Valley Institution for Women in Abbotsford, B.C. Here she is pictured with her baby Tiakohl.

Photograph by: Courtesy, Amanda Edgar

Baby Tiakohl cries inside the only home she has ever known.

It’s a low-rise cottage with a playground out front, surrounded by lush green grass and a barbed-wire fence. Her compact room is outfitted with a crib, a change table and a rocking chair, as well the soft jungle toy she likes to jingle with her tiny hands.

According to her mother Amanda Edgar, she is babysat and doted upon, a carefully-watched source of curiosity and awe. The newborn, who wears Winnie the Pooh T-shirts and strawberry outfits, is the only child around.

Edgar is in prison.

And so is her baby.

The 27-year-old convicted thief is one of the few federal inmates in Canada now participating in the mother-child program. It’s a little-known but controversial initiative that allows criminals to raise their babies in jail.

Each day, Edgar wakes up beside three-month-old Tiakohl, bathes and feeds her, and hands her over to a fellow inmate who babysits her daughter while Edgar attends prison classes such as Grade 11 accounting.

“Everyone loves the baby. And everyone’s very protective of the baby and wants the baby to be safe,” Edgar says from the Fraser Valley Institution for Women in Abbotsford, B.C.

“It’s a great program.”

Edgar and her baby embody the polarizing issue unique to women’s incarceration: should convicted criminals be allowed to keep their children behind barbed wire?

Supporters say the program helps to preserve the maternal bond between mother and child, and it’s better for the baby to be with the mother than in a bureaucratic child-welfare system.

They also contend babies help mothers and other inmates rehabilitate in prison.

“Just having the children around, women would describe as changing the whole environment,” says Kim Pate, executive director for the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies.

So strong is the conviction that mothers have an inherent right to parent, that a former inmate at a B.C. jail is taking the provincial government and a warden to court for cancelling that province’s mother-baby program in 2008.

The case is scheduled for trial in B.C. Supreme Court next spring, and could have ramifications for the federal system if it finds mothers have a constitutional right to raise their kids in jail.

“That baby needs to be breastfed, that baby needs to bond,” says Alison Grainger-Brown, a recreational therapist at Fraser Valley who also worked in the B.C. jail system.

Detractors, including those who work in federal prisons, tell a different story.

They say children are not safe in a prison environment, where drugs proliferate and violence is on the rise.

Victims of crime also question why women are entitled to be with their children after committing offences, since a loss of rights is fundamental to the concept of incarceration.

“You’ve given up that right, because you have proven yourself incapable of it and a danger to society,” says Natasha Cartledge, 23, whose father Anthony was killed in 2006.

Anthony’s killer, Lisa Whitford, was allowed to bring her baby into a B.C. prison the following year.

The future of the mother-child program is unclear.

It now appears to be virtually non-existent, plunged into uncertainty by a string of changes in 2008 and squeezed by the continued growth in the federal female prison population.

The program remains part of the mandate of women’s corrections, which sets out that female offenders have different needs than men. A seminal document from 1990, which still guides the female prison system today, identified a huge concern over separating women from their children.

“I wish we could use the program more,” says Kelley Blanchette, director general of the women’s offender sector at Correctional Service of Canada.

“We’ve never had an incident in any of our institutions with the child. I think it’s helped to preserve the mother-child bond and I see that as really important.”

Yet, participation has dwindled from 12 women in 2001 to only one last year, according to prison documents obtained under Access to Information laws.

Sometimes, there are none.

As of Aug. 31, 2011, there were three women enrolled.

The concept first began as a pilot project at the new aboriginal women’s prison — Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge — near Maple Creek, Sask., in 1996.

But internal documents show the alternative prison had no participants from March 2005 to September 2010.

In fact, the prison service notes the accuracy of such numbers is difficult to verify “as these are tracked manually.”

Blanchette says the program is “alive and well,” but acknowledges few women participate.

She suggests space in prisons is an issue. This comes as the number of federally sentenced women has surged by 40 per cent in the past decade, and is expected to rise as new federal legislation mandates longer sentences.

It’s estimated almost 350 of the 500 federal inmates are mothers, many single parents.

The program operates full- and part-time for both pregnant inmates who give birth while behind bars, as well as mothers whose children visit them on weekends, holidays or school vacations.

Children who live with their mothers in prison can stay until they are four years old, while those in the part-time program can visit until they’re six.

Even before the program was revamped in 2008, there were problems.

In 2001, at the Saskatchewan healing lodge, inmate Renee Acoby — who has since been declared a dangerous offender for five hostage-takings inside prison — had her daughter taken away after refusing a drug test. Acoby later admitted to smoking marijuana and taking Valium while serving time.

Upon learning authorities had removed her child, born inside prison, Acoby became distraught and took a guard hostage.

It wasn’t until 2008 that public outrage sparked substantial changes.

B.C. convicted killer Whitford was allowed to bring her infant daughter, Jordyn, into the federal Fraser Valley prison.

Jordyn was born in provincial custody in 2007 to Whitford, who killed boyfriend Anthony Cartledge with a shotgun inside their home near Prince George, B.C., the previous year.

She was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to four years.

Whitford, who had a long history of being abused and drug addiction, fought to bring her baby with her to Fraser Valley, the first such case at the institution.

She spent the whole time with the baby. She sent me pictures of Jordyn and her by the cottage with grass and, of course, high wire fences around,” recalls Whitford’s former lawyer, Bruce Kaun.

But the victim’s daughter from a previous relationship says Whitford should not have been allowed to raise her baby in prison.

“This is a woman, that regardless of the circumstances of her past and how hard her life was, she killed mine and my sister’s father with a gun,” says Cartledge.

“My biggest concern and sadness was they were focusing so much on teaching her how to be a mother, that I was worried that she wasn’t focusing on just being a functioning human being.”

The recently released Whitford breached her parole. In June, a Canada-wide warrant was issued for her arrest.

In 2008, Whitford’s case set off a chain of events that led then-public safety minister Stockwell Day to review the program.

That June, Day unveiled significant changes, including the exclusion of women serving time for violent crimes — which includes more than half the female inmate population — from raising their babies in prison.

“I remember at the time, the case very well. But not being in government now I don’t reflect on what should or shouldn’t be happening,” Day says today.

“There are the competing interests of the restoration of an offender to be fully reintegrated into society, and when it comes to kids, there’s always the question of the best interest of the child . . . .

“Those are my feelings, and I believe that those are still the overriding principles and that they should be.”

The changes also lowered the age for children to participate part-time from 12 to six, required an offender be approved by local child and family services, and threatened to terminate a woman’s participation if she refused to allow her kids to be searched for drugs or contraband.

The program review, also obtained by Access to Information laws, noted there were few evaluations of similar international mother-child programs.

“No study has found any significant negative effects of such programs on either mother or child, and the majority of the studies appear to reflect positive results,” it stated.

Mothers are expected to pay for the needs of their own children in prison, and it’s not available to women serving time in maximum security.

The prison service document noted the program was relatively cheap, costing only $292,000 annually for six prisons to “address the myriad of issues faced by incarcerated mothers and their children.”

Since the changes were made, participation in the program has dropped by 60 per cent, estimates prison ombudsman Howard Sapers.

“If we want to enhance the chances of releasing a more responsible person capable of sustaining herself and her dependents in a crime and substance-free lifestyle, then surely it is time to have another look at the eligibility criteria that unnecessarily restrict participation in the mother-child program,” he writes in his 2010 report as correctional investigator.

On the flip side, the program can lead to fewer children being part of the welfare system, where costs average $40,000 per child each year.

At the Elizabeth Fry Society, Pate insists the program helps to break the cycle of incarceration which can happen when mothers are sent away, and keeps children off welfare.

“It’s premised on not so much the needs of the women, but the needs of the children.”

Proponents also include former B.C. jail warden Brenda Tole, who ran the provincial Alouette Correctional Centre for Women in Maple Ridge where Whitford also raised her baby while awaiting her murder trial.

Tole started the mother-child program in 2004, in partnership with the B.C. Women’s Hospital & Health Centre.

“The babies of the women did much better if they were with mom than they did if they were taken away from mom,” says Tole. “They were able to be nursed, they were able to bond with their mom in those first very early, very very important times.”

But some say it is not worth the risk.

The union representing Canada’s guards says babies end up complicating the job of correctional officers, making prisons unsafe.

Guards also sounded the alarm in 2008 that children were being used to smuggle drugs into the institutions.

“We don’t believe prison is a place for children,” says Kevin Grabowsky, Prairie regional president at the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers. “There’s a lot of inmates that abuse children in there and now (the babies are) exposed to them.”

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews sees no problem with the program, but he is more concerned with accommodating parent prison visits, as much as possible.

“I’m not passing judgment on any changes that were made on the mother and child program, maybe it isn’t appropriate,” he says.

“I did child welfare work for many years as a lawyer, and often, as bad as a mother can be, that mother is probably better than some of these children disappearing into the foster system.”

In Edgar’s case, she has seen both sides of that equation.

She was arrested in September 2010 for breaking into a family home in Abbotsford and stealing cash and jewelry to support her $1,000-a-month drug habit.

She’s serving her first federal sentence, but has been in provincial jails.

Edgar found out she was pregnant with her third child while awaiting her fate in Surrey remand.

“I cried really hard, because I knew that I was going to be in jail for a long time, and I felt pretty hopeless,” says Edgar in a high, girlish voice.

The former meth addict already lost custody of two daughters when she relapsed in 2005.

Now, she lives in a private room in a minimum-security cottage with four other inmates. One of them is Elena Banfield, a 30-year-old mother serving time for fraud.

“It is a joy to have a baby around,” says Banfield, whose three young children are living with her partner in Ontario while she serves her sentence out west.

“I miss my kids, but at the same time it’s nice to be able to give Amanda some guidance and some knowledgeable experience on what we’ve gone through as mothers ourselves.”

Edgar says no outside visitors are allowed in her baby’s room and insists the prison is a safe place for her child.

“There really isn’t very many fights here at all, and the drugs, they don’t come near me,” she says.

She expects to be eligible for parole later this month, and hopes to reunite with the baby’s father, who is living in Mission, B.C.

Edgar doesn’t want to think what would’ve happened if she had lost custody of her daughter after giving birth in prison.

“I can’t even imagine. I just know what happened . . . when I lost my last two children. I probably would have went berserk, honestly,” she says.

“I would have been as bad as I can be. It wouldn’t have been good. She’s my whole world.”

stone.laura00@gmail.com

Source: Calgary Herald