What happens to children when their mother is incarcerated?
In May of 2018, images of children being separated from their parents at the US-Mexico Border created outrage and action by many in the United States. It was painful to see and hear the cries of children frantically searching for their mother or father. The stories we heard and read were heart wrenching and left many Americans in a state of shock and disbelief. But the fact is that this separation happens every day in our justice system when parents, specifically mothers, are arrested and incarcerated.
Over the past eight years, rates of incarceration have fallen for most demographic groups with one alarming exception: women and girls. Although women have always been a smaller percentage of those imprisoned, they have been entering jails and prisons at a faster rate than men for some time, with numbers increasing more than eight-fold since 1980.
Of the 2.8 million women jailed each year in the United States, 80% are mothers with children under 18 — most of them, primary caretakers — and an estimated 6% to 10% of those women are pregnant upon arrival to prison or jail. I work in Los Angeles County which houses the largest jail system in the world. It’s worth wondering how many of the 17,000 individuals who are incarcerated on any given day in the county are parents separated from their children for non-violent offenses related to poverty and mental health. And of that number, how many of the estimated 2,000 women serving time are mothers being given the support to maintain healthy contact with their children and the resources to return to motherhood upon the completion of their sentences.
One can imagine the long-term detriments of being separated from a primary caretaker for an extended period of time, especially if that separation is due to incarceration. Outside of increased risk of mental health conditions, higher rates of chronic illness have been reported for adults who were once children with incarcerated mothers. Other consequences include a higher likelihood of addiction, dropping out of school, and becoming imprisoned themselves. On top of that, children with incarcerated mothers are five times more likely to end up in foster care than those with an incarcerated father. For many mothers, the last time they may have consistent contact with their children is the day they are arrested.
As for incarcerated pregnant women, most are usually separated from their newborn shortly after giving birth. When a newborn is separated from their mother for an extended period of time, stress hormones flood their body, putting their flight or fight response into full gear. These stress hormones began to chip away at their brain increasing the risk of negative, long-term effects on their mental and physical health and threatening critical bonds of attachment between the mother and their child. In recent years, there have been eight prison nurseries created in the United States, where female inmates can bond with their babies for the first couple of years to prevent long-term trauma and support parent-child attachment. In LA County, this is not an option.
While we have seen some significant successes in criminal justice reform — most notably, a February 2018 vote by LA County Board of Supervisors to identify and invest in ways we can support women and girls in the county’s jails and juvenile lockups — we still have quite a bit of work to do. This includes improving our focus on women and children impacted by incarceration.
The first priority of action should be investing public dollars in quality treatment and services to address the underlying causes of female incarceration. This includes support to gain financial and personal independence and addressing substance addiction, mental illness, and trauma. It is essential to divert women out of the criminal justice system and into appropriate supportive care as early as possible.
Allowing children to maintain critical family ties with minimal inconvenience and in an appropriate setting is another critical step. When the child welfare system is involved, open lines of communication with the justice system increase the likelihood that mothers will have an opportunity to parent from behind bars. And when they return home, child welfare practices should be tailored to ensure that incarcerated women have a fair chance to demonstrate their ability to parent. Educate those that work in the justice system and in supportive services about the needs and characteristics of incarcerated mothers including child development and the impact of parent-child separation.
On a policy level, regular monitoring, and changing of criminal justice legislation that negatively impacts women and their families are essential. We must continue to track the impact of women’s incarceration on their families and change child welfare policies that punish women who are currently or have served time.
If we want to see all children thrive in LA county, we cannot forget the child that has been negatively affected by the criminal justice system. We cannot forget families that have been torn apart by a system designed to do just what it has been doing all along.
Right now we find ourselves living in a time where criminal justice reform has bipartisan support and policies are slowly changing to undue the harm that has been done since the 1970s to communities primarily of color and poor. While we take time to celebrate that, we cannot ignore that the focus on reform has been primarily with the focus on male incarceration. Women’s prison issues, such as struggles to parent and maintain child custody, sexual assault, and reproductive health care have often been overlooked in larger discussions of prison reform and this is heavily impacting the next generation of children whose mothers are incarcerated. It’s time to change that.
