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| Panel Unveils N.C. Mother-Child Prison Program |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 03/05/2003 |
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North Carolina needs a program in which female prisoners could live with their young children, state and child-care education officials said Monday as they unveiled such a proposal. The rehabilitation project envisioned by a planning committee would allow 20 nonviolent prisoners to live with up to 40 of their children ages 8 and under at a center featuring a day-care and preschool. Prisoners would receive vocational training and substance abuse treatment and learn parenting skills while caring for their own children, said state Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, D-Orange. Of the 2,000 or so women incarcerated at any one time in the state prison system, about 13 percent are pregnant when they enter the prison system. Eighty of those 2,000 will deliver in prison, the Prisoner Mother/Child planning committee said. The newborns then are separated from their mothers within a day of delivery, said Dante Haywood, a social worker at the state women's prison in Raleigh. The separation between a prison inmate and her child often leaves the mother ill-prepared for raising the child once she is released. 'So many of these ladies do not have good parenting skills,' Annie Harvey, warden of the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, said at a news conference to discuss the proposal. The youth usually live in poverty with other family members and have emotional scars that could lead to repeating the parent's mistakes, Kinnaird said. 'These children are six times more likely to be involved in the criminal justice system while growing up,' Kinnaird said. 'We can change the lives of not just the children but the women.' The committee is working with the state to lease state property for the project in Butner. Thanks to $85,000 in planning grants, some from the Gov.'s Crime Commission, an architect has drawn up plans for the project. The Correction Department ultimately would have to agree to use the program, which would include a screening method to determine eligible prisoners. The state likely would contract with the center and provide the daily per-diem cost equal to housing an inmate at a state prison, organizers said. The committee has embarked on a $3.5 million fund-raising campaign for the nonprofit center's construction and one year of operating the program. 'We support the effort to develop a program that will provide some new resources for inmate mothers and their children,' department spokesman Keith Acree said, but there's no money available to build the facility. The money would come from private foundations and fund-raisers, such as a clothing silent auction this fall organized by a Carrboro piece-goods store owner. Planners hope to begin construction in two years. Kinnaird hopes the program can receive a grant from the federal government to perform a pilot program. Project officials say four other states have similar prisoner-child projects. The North Carolina proposal is based on a California project called Prototypes, which serves up to 300 women and children through a center in Pomona. While kids living with their incarcerated mothers may sound odd, organizers said having mother-and-child intimacy is priceless. These 'children are so stigmatized already,' Kinnaird said. |
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