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In Ohio, Inmate Mothers Care For Babies In Prison
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by Amy Judd | August 13, 2008 at 03:31 pm
461 views | 32 Recommendations | 6 comments
Although this can be a common practice in other countries, in the States, it is less common for mothers to raise children when they are behind bars themselves.
In Ohio, at the Reformatory for Women, about 12 babies are currently growing up in a cell as their mothers are all serving time for committing a crime.
The program is one of many across the country designed to meet the unique needs of mothers who are locked up. Women are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. prison population. At the Ohio Reformatory, the warden estimates that 75 percent of the 2,300 inmates housed there are mothers.
Only a handful of U.S. prisons offer an in-house nursery program like the one at the quickly expanding Ohio complex, located about 30 miles from Columbus. Only nonviolent offenders who arrive at the prison pregnant or with infants and are serving relatively short sentences can qualify.
The mothers sleep in a different area of the prison and the babies sleep in identical cribs with their mothers in the cell, and the mothers and babies have nursery time together.
Some reports have shown that this makes mothers less likely to reoffend, but no program has been running long enough to draw those kinds of conclusions.
What do you think about this? Is it a good idea or not?
Check out the link above for the mother's individual stories...
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (6)
at 17:43 on August 13th, 2008
amyjudd, I have no opinion at the moment on whether or not housing children with their mothers while they are in prison is a good idea or not. However, the fact that more than 1 in 100 Americans are in prison is troubling, not to mention the fact that women are the fastest growing segment. Thanks for posting!
at 18:24 on August 13th, 2008
I share Rhonda's sentiments.
at 19:22 on August 13th, 2008
amyjudd, I like this story. It's good stuff.
I am all for it. The child's need to be ith their mother is more important than the environment that they really do not understand at that age anyway. One object of prison is rehab not just punishment..
at 20:31 on August 13th, 2008
amyjudd, I like this story. It's good stuff.
We had over the past 5 decades a lot of great ideas that where implemented without much thinking though and resulted in total failure! It may be wise to do some more research and debating on this before making it a standard!
at 01:57 on August 14th, 2008
Thank you, Karen.
at 01:30 on August 17th, 2008
amyjudd, I missed this when you posted it, but I'm glad to have found it now. Thanks for following this series, Amy.