Letters to the Editor
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Interesting comment jrbrown, but you're off track wrt men's rights. It was Carol that sidetracked this into being a discussion of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and
anytime a mommy goes to jail, all of society is doomed to hell.
The rest of us just came here to ask her to examine her nonsensical ideas, but of course, she ran away hoping we would confuse her intellectual cowardice with valor.
As you or someone else pointed out, the implementation around the world is often NON-sexist, and kids can spend the day in the cooler with dad, eating eggs and working on their communication skills.
But Carol ignored that and went straight to the worldwide conspiracy to equate women with bathwater.
So while I thank you for your enlightening comments (I do), I think you are way off the mark in somehow blaming men for the idiocy that originated with Salon staffer Carol Lloyd.
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Don't you think
at least part of thereason the kids are in prison with Mom is so the state doesn't have to reallythink about what to do with them? Kids under 6 don't eat much (compared to teens and adults), don't take up much space, and don't "need" much from the state if Mom is there to provide care.
Orphanages, foster care, social work, monitoring, WIC programs, etc., are expensive and time-consuming to run. Locking the kids up with Mom is cheap and easy. It's win-win!
Yikes.
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Some things to think about...
Those who are raising questions about how having babies in prison would work, why anyone would do it, and related issues should read the Quaker United Nations report referenced in the article. It answers a lot of those questions, with data from several countries.
Speaking specifically of this country, something I think a lot of people commenting in this section are missing is that most imprisoned mothers are not murderers in there for life. They're in there for a short time for theft, motor vehicle offenses, drug posession, that kind of thing. If the mother is only going to be in prison for a year, it starts to make sense to have the baby she gives birth to halfway through that sentence stay with her, doesn't it? It's better for the babies to have the same caregiver or caregivers; it's better, in a lot of cases, for the mother to start out caring for the baby in a supervised enviornment rather than get out of prison and suddenly be handed a six-month-old; and it's cheaper for the state to provide adequate facilities for the child to be cared for by the inmate mother than to pay for foster care. (A lot of the countries mentioned in the report, including parts of the US, don't provide adequate facilities for the babies, and that's the problem with it--the upshot of the report is that if prison systems are going to keep mothers and babies together, they need to commit to doing it right and not half-ass it.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that a mother who has her baby to look out for is not going to be making trouble for the prison staff. The main reason behind most privileges granted to inmates--whether it's child visits, educational opportunities, or color TV--is that it gives the prisoner a reason to follow the rules and get along with guards and other inmates. The guards can't beat the prisoners senseless, because we have a Constitution in this country (and also because physically subduing prisoners is more dangerous for guards than other methods of management). Letting the prisoners earn privileges makes guards safer, is the bottom line. Outside of Mexico, having her children with her is a privilege that can be taken away from the mother, if she doesn't do what's expected of her. And if she wants to have the baby with her, she's strongly motivated to keep that privilege, because she wouldn't have chosen that if she had a lot of other good options.