The Growth of Prison Nurseries

by Matt Kelley · 2009-06-06 06:06:00 UTC
Topics:

I wrote Thursday about a woman whose sentence was extended by a federal judge because she is pregnant and has AIDS and the judge felt that she and her baby were safer in prison. This sentence is extreme and is clearly misguided, but how should we handle the more common occurrence of women who are pregnant when they arrive in prison? The Women's Prison Association has some ideas.

A new report from WPA examines the growth of prison nurseries and community incarceration with children - both viable options to keep mothers together with their children when they have short sentences, usually for non-violent crimes. Seven states currently allow women to keep their children with them inside correctional facilities, with maximum eligible sentences ranging from 30 days to 18 months. Several other states, and the federal government, have residential community corrections programs for new parents.

The report finds that while both prison nurseries and community incarceration work, alternatives like community incarceration are preferable. Download the report here.

After the jump, check out a trailer from the 2003 documentary Prison Lullabies, which presents a case study on a nursery at Taconic Correctional Facility in New York.

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
PREVIOUS STORY:
Friday Tweets: Texting Behind Bars
NEXT STORY:
Make the Call! Stop the Torture of Special Needs Children in Massachusetts

COMMENTS (0)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.