The Special Case of Incarcerated Mothers, by Carolina Soto
The end of a prison visit is sad and emotional for everyone. In Danbury Camp we were allowed one visiting day per weekend on Saturday or Sunday, depending on whether your number ended in an odd or even digit. We were lucky, at that time, to be able to sit around tables, conversing but not touching. We sometimes tried to hold hands under the table. Later I am told they took the tables away for better visibility, leaving loved ones sitting across from each other in a row. Children were allowed to sit on their mother’s laps and would occasionally run with their caretaker to the vending machine for a treat. We all loved getting something out of the ordinary from the vending machines. There were perhaps forty or fifty people talking excitedly, laughing or crying. There was an announcement that visiting would end in ten minutes, but we all had our eyes on the clock. Four P.M. came and your contact with the outside world was over. Babies started to cry and special needs children rocked and made unhappy sounds. It was heart wrenching as you watched the very young sob uncontrollably, not able to understand why they were taken away from their mothers again. The sound is piercing and unforgettable. The reality behind it tears your heart apart.
Half of all incarcerated women are in prisons over 100 miles from their families. Impoverished women working for twelve cents an hour have no resources to fund visits. Children of incarcerated mothers are more likely to be placed in foster care than the children of incarcerated fathers. Since the enactment in 1997 of The Adoption and Safe Families Act, a woman who is serving a two-year sentence, and has no immediate family to take responsibility for her child, can lose her child to adoption mandated by the state. Adoption is a permanent action. The Marshall Project analyzed approximately 3 million child-welfare cases nationally and found that incarcerated women are more likely to have their parental rights ended than those who physically or sexually assault their kids. The law must be repealed as fundamentally racist and unjust.
For women, losing access to their children is the most devastating consequence of incarceration. The children of incarcerated women grow up with financial stress, grief, separation anxiety, most often watching their family home broken apart. The visits are a necessary connection, but also a source of stress. As a country, we must recognize that maintaining family relations, especially of mother and child, is a fundamental human right.
There are now many statistics documenting the 700 percent increase in women's incarceration rates since the 1980s. Sitting on a bunk inside a prison makes one painfully aware that three-fourths of incarcerated women are mothers, with two-thirds having children under eighteen. Three-quarters of these women were the sole heads of their households. The same 75 percent suffer from substance abuse problems, while 68 to 80 percent experienced physical or sexual abuse. Inside prison, these women suffer harsher punishments than incarcerated men. La Shonia Thompson-El of The WIRE (Women Involved in Reentry Efforts), was sent to solitary confinement for three months for contacting her ten-year-old daughter without permission.
The mean salary of women before incarceration is on average $22,000 a year. Imagine maintaining a household and children on that salary. The social outcome is inescapable. Abused, impoverished mothers turn to drugs and illegal activities.They deserve help, not incarceration.
The first prayer of any woman entering prison is that she does not have to suffer any illness and be forced to use the prison health facilities. It is easy enough to make the morning sick call line for a painkiller, they like a docile population, but real illness has dire consequences. We had a nurse practitioner who may have passed his organic chemistry exams but seemed to forget to order insulin for diabetics, or make the orders for blood pressure meds and certainly was unable to care for the young mother with lupus. Once, this young mother made a drug run in order to get her little boy out of the projects and ended up a prisoner. She died the month after I went home. It was heartbreaking. The love she and her five-year-old son shared was palpable to all.
The current pandemic is a national shame. Our jails, prisons, and detention centers are notoriously overcrowded. This medically vulnerable and housing vulnerable population should have been among the first to be vaccinated. Under the control and guidance of the government, people are suffering and dying in large numbers due to COVID. The medical care is insufficient and the housing units reorganized with a head to toe bunk positioning that does little to maintain the unit COVID FREE.
Complaining about the carelessness of a C.O. in maintaining social distancing, or not wearing the required PPE mask, even when it endangers a woman's life, can leave the woman punished. With such high rates of sexual and physical abuse, women are less able to defend themselves under these dire circumstances. They face harassment that can be anything from sexual, physical, loss of phone or commissary "privileges" or search and confiscation of personal property.
Vicky Law documents the horrific conditions in FMC Carswell, the country's only federal medical prison for women. Most women there have serious medical issues that the BOP does not treat at other prisons. Before COVID most women feel they are sent there to die. Of the 1,285 COVID tests administered to the 1,066 women in Carswell, nearly 60 percent, or 765, came back positive. There is a national COVID directive to release people with serious illnesses across the BOP's prisons. Still, they have denied many women with medical vulnerabilities release to home confinement with little to no explanation.
Michele Scott recently wrote from the Central California Women's Facility.
This morning, when I saw that there wouldn't be six feet between us, I considered quoting public health messaging. Time in prison, however, has taught me to think through these urges and I reconsidered taking on five correctional officers who clearly weren't concerned about the coronavirus. I held my breath as I walked by, grateful for the mask that hid equal parts frustration and fear.
To us, these Covid quarantine rooms are dungeons.
Police do not make us safer, prisons are not necessary to lock away the bad guys.
There are alternatives to prison. I do not make a distinction between violent and non-violent women offenders. There are women imprisoned that should be in institutions where their mental health issues or their addictions could be addressed. I do not believe in violence, but when a woman is pushed to defend herself from certain death, she does not deserve prison. Till death do us part does not mean accepting being beaten until all of your teeth need replacing, living with violent migraines because of repeated concussions, or being beaten to death. These women deserve shelter, help, and counseling. What they do not deserve is the systemic violence against women that is only amplified in prison. Other women who committed violent crimes are now the mentors and the very people running programs that help their younger sisters in prison the most. Redemption needs to be a reality. No one should spend 25 years in prison.
I believe that there are 700 percent more women in prison because they are good workers. When you pledge allegiance to any official flag, remember it was probably made by women in prison making twelve cents an hour. I will not be pledging allegiance any time soon to a system that exploits the labor of convicted people for profit or a country that does not provide soap let alone alcohol for washing or enough fresh masks to keep incarcerated people free of COVID. My allegiance is to the women who were chained to a hospital bed while giving birth. My allegiance is to the women that I served time with who made the conditions of life better for each other with caring and innovations. The incarcerated people that really ran the prison who did their best to mitigate harrowing circumstances. #Free Her!
As one small way to show your support for women in prison, please join us in celebrating mothers in prison. Mail call is a very important part of the prison day. When you hear your name called it means that you are connected to the outside world.
On Monday April 26th at 7 pm Re/Creation is hosting a virtual card-writing event to send notes, cards and emails to women in prison in celebration of Mother’s Day. Help us reach through the walls to honor these women and remind them they are in our minds and hearts.
At this event, we will share names of incarcerated women who would like to receive your email or physical cards. You can download a card image directly from our website, add your own personal message, and connect with others who wish to send a message of appreciation. At the end of the event, you’ll send your messages directly to your designated recipient.
For more information on this event, email contact@reslashcreation.com.
To donate to Re/Creation, click here.
Read more:
Virtually No One is Dangerous Enough to Justify Jail. A common sense cost-benefit analysis of pretrial detention.
Prisons Make Us Safer and Twenty Other Myths by Victoria Law- a brand new book!
One of “the real women of Orange Is the New Black,” Carolina Soto is one of the founding members of the Re/Creation writing workshop at Restoration Plaza in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Unlike the fictionalized Yoga Jones, Carolina has a long history of work in social justice and advocacy, and is a seasoned painter and visual artist. Since beginning her work with Re/Creation, Carolina has increased her confidence and aptitude with both the written and spoken word, composing speeches and essays for her advocacy work and as well as written memoir. In particular, her essays and memoirs illustrate her vast capacity for empathy in her descriptions of people with whom she shared time inside. She now splits her time between living in New York City and the Dominican Republic.