By Linda Korbin / straight.com
The Alouette Correctional Centre, located in the Fraser Valley, is the only separate women’s prison in B.C. and is where more than 150 women are serving time or awaiting trial. Most have been jailed for relatively minor offences, and three-quarters of them serve sentences of less than three months. Until last year, the Alouette Mother-Baby program provided an option for new mothers to keep their babies with them until their release from custody. Between 2004 and 2008, 12 women gave birth and nine chose to keep their babies with them. When the province made the decision to close the Mother-Baby program in 2008, people predictably lined up on both sides.
Those in support of the program cited the importance of early maternal attachment, the deleterious consequences of sending a baby into the foster care system, and the evidence of improved morale and wellbeing among the mothers, which resulted in better outcomes for them and their children. Those against the resumption of the program referred to the need for these women to accept the consequences of their behavior, including the penalty of losing their children. After all, why should an innocent baby have to start life in jail?
So who is being “punished” by the cancellation of the program? The experts on early childhood development will tell you unequivocally it is the children. We know that separating babies from their mothers can lead to long-term problems for children, from attachment issues to emotional disorders. Social workers see these children down the road—as do psychologists, physicians, and corrections officers. They are the kids who have been shuffled between friends and relatives, moved into foster care, and are often “lost” to their mothers who leave prison and find themselves without the financial or emotional supports to regain custody. This doesn’t have to be.
The first assumption that must be challenged is whether a new mother needs to be incarcerated at all. Given the minor nature of the crime that brought them to Alouette, are there other options for them? The Elizabeth Fry Society, which has for 65 years worked with women and youth involved in the criminal justice system, is working with B.C. Corrections to seek out alternatives that would allow mothers to serve their sentence in the community and continue to raise their child. Such alternatives would benefit not only new mothers, but mothers of older children. According to Elizabeth Fry, two-thirds of jailed women are mothers and two-thirds are the sole caregiver to their child. Contrast this with incarcerated fathers. Few are the sole caregivers—a recent U.S. study reported that 90 percent of children whose fathers were incarcerated lived with their mothers.
Every day babies are born to mothers living in precarious circumstances—women who are living in poverty, who are victims of abuse, who are misusing drugs and alcohol, who are involved in crime—and whose babies face a rocky future.
Removing these babies from their mothers would seem, at first glance, the “right” thing to do. However, our experience tells us otherwise. A more effective response is to create conditions that enable mothers to keep their children and raise them in a safe and healthy environment.
In our less than perfect world, approaches rooted in reality and based on the philosophy of harm reduction are having the most success. One example is the work being done with pregnant women struggling with addiction. The integrated programs of the Sheway maternity clinic in Vancouver’s Downtown eastside and the FIR (Families in Recovery) Square at B.C. Women’s Hospital have been successful in improving the health status of newborns, decreasing substance use by mothers, and allowing more mothers to go home safely with their babies. Consulting physician Dr. Ron Abrahams notes that “the babies and moms that come through this program are demonstrating to us, through our long-term followup, that given the opportunity to bond together in the newborn period, they do indeed go on to be healthy and emotionally stable”.
The Mother-Baby program at the Alouette Correctional Centre is also based on harm reduction principles. Social workers know that the best start a newborn can have is by bonding with its mother. The B.C. Association of Social Workers strongly supports the reinstatement of this program.
Linda Korbin is the executive director of the B.C. Association of Social Workers
Link to article:
http://www.straight.com/article-206120/linda-korbin-taking-babies-mothers-prison-punishes-children
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