A friend of mine recently brought to my attention an article she read in the Calgary Herald newspaper. The article was about women inmates being allowed to raise their babies in prison for up to four years.
I was not even aware of this concept until I read the article. First of all a child is always better off with a parent than anyone else, or at least you would think so, but what if that parent, in this case the mother, broke the law and ended up incarcerated?
When you break the law and end up in jail over it you lose your rights, and I believe that should include the right to be a parent. You have proven yourself incapable as a parent, also as a citizen, and are now known as a danger to society. It doesn't matter what you have done whether it be fraud or theft - you made the decision to break the law. If you cared about your baby in the first place, why break the law?
At first the mother-child program was made available to almost every mother in prison. This even included women who were convicted of higher crimes such as manslaughter. Which to me is completely ridiculous. You took a life, you don't deserve your child. But, after an incident in British Columbia in 2008, changes were made to this program. Now only women who are in minimum to medium security situations are eligible for the program and any women who have been convicted of crimes towards children are not eligible until they are given a psychiatric assessment. But even with these changes, is it still right to raise a baby in prison?
Supporters of this program claim that regardless of the mother being in prison, the child is better off there than in the child welfare system. They believe that it helps rehabilitate women. Another thing they believe is that it will stop the crime rate in families generally caused by a parent being incarcerated. Also, this program is relatively cheaper than putting these children through the child welfare system. Well, this is all well and good but what about this - prisons are full of violent and mentally unstable people. There are people in these prisons who have history of violence towards children and these infants are exposed to these people. Now even though these women with their children are put in separate chambers than the main common rooms, they are still surrounded by criminals on a daily basis, not to mention the fights and drugs that circulate our prison systems. There are even statements made by prison guards that children have been used to smuggle drugs into the prisons. Is all this worth it to save a few bucks?
Not only are these babies exposed to criminals on a regular basis, but at four-years-old they are taken away from their mothers anyway. So these babies bond with their mothers, great. They help keep the mothers happy, fantastic. But after all this bonding, the child is torn from their mother and placed into foster care anyway, being forced to deal with the trauma of separation. As a mother of a three-year-old I know what children that age understand and what they don't, and that child being taken at four and being placed into foster care is going to be so confused. All they know is prison. They have lived with the deprivations of prison environment for so long that they are not going to understand the outside world. Also, prisoners are considered outcasts, so children raised in prisons may feel like outcasts also which can cause issues with self-esteem. Not to mention they are going to miss their moms immensely. So is it better to allow a child to grow up their first few years in prison with their mothers or take them away at an early enough age and place them into foster care or in some cases adoption as soon as possible where they won't know what's going on?
As a mother I cannot imagine a child being raised in prison. The thought alone makes me shudder. There are too many things that are just not right about it. The violence, the drugs, the instability of it all. Children are our futures and should not be punished for the mistakes of a parent who has made decisions leading to jail time. Prison is no place for a child to be raised, the mental and emotional scars it could cause is even hard to think about. Also, what incentive is there for these women to get out of jail if they get to eat three meals a day and also get their children? I may be a mother, but honestly this seems ridiculous to me. These women should be paying for their crimes. They should not get the privilege of raising their children. In my opinion they lost that privilege when they broke the law. So there you have it folks - the criminal justice system.
What's your opinion?
