This clinic was a beacon of light, but the drug war continued and grew stronger. With mandatory sentencing came a huge increase in prison population, with inadequate or unavailable drug treatment in communities. Too often children were left without parents. Although drug abuse, without intervention, destroys families and takes lives, parental incarceration hurts children in insidious and far-reaching ways.
Through parental incarceration, PB&J learned another painful lesson. A beautiful young mother graduated with her two little girls from PB&J’s therapeutic pre-school. She was off welfare and off drugs, raising her daughters and facing an optimistic future when her husband was released from prison. His first night out, her husband wanted to party. Stating she had work in the morning, the young mom resisted. Frustrated and angry, he left home to party and drink. When he returned, he drunkenly demanded his “old wife” back, the one who partied and was dependent on him. He woke her, and when she again refused him, he went after the kids—a common occurrence in domestic violence. She used all her strength to stop him, threatening to call the police. Again he left. Terrified, she put her children to bed and went to sleep, but her husband came home, this time drunker and with a gun. Joe killed his wife that night and ran, tragically leaving two children without parents.
Again PB&J was devastated, and again it became clear that invading a family system had consequences. We had never addressed the issue of a parent in prison. And so, into unknown territory I went—this time to prison. I soon walked into the warden’s office and asked him for permission to initiate a parenting program. “Parenting program?,” he said, incredulously, “These guys don’t even know who their children are!” I was astounded, but I insisted that he had nothing to lose. I explained that we were there as volunteers, and our intention was to prevent harm to children threatened by the release of a parent who might feel disenfranchised, disengaged, and isolated. In 1980, New Mexico had a horrifying prison riot resulting in unspeakable carnage, and the corrections department was under court order to improve conditions in prisons. Family connection was something prisons were required to foster. The warden realized that letting us come in would help fulfill that requirement. He agreed to let us start the program. “Okay,” he said, “You can start. Bring no weapons, bring no drugs, and don’t make trouble.”
And so we established Project ImPACT (Importance of Parents and Children Together), a parenting education and family reunification program designed to teach parents and support them in their parenting role from prison.
Today, the Child Welfare League of America estimates that one in forty children is a child of an incarcerated parent. Many suffer terribly in their parents’ absence. The U.S., with 5% of the world’s population, holds 25% incarcerated people.1 We are by far the world’s most aggressive jailer and an estimated two-thirds of those in prisons and jails are parents.2 Yet our systems give little or no thought to these children and how they are affected.
Jails are a thriving industry. Each day in the United States, hundreds of people will be arrested. Parents will be handcuffed, some in front of their children, and taken away. They will be questioned, searched, questioned again, but it is unlikely that questions will be asked like, “Who is expecting you home tonight?,” and, “How can we help?”
In New Mexico, that is changing. Through executive order, Governor Bill Richardson established the Blue Ribbon Commission on the Welfare of Arrested and Incarcerated Parents. Child-sensitive arrest practices, including identifying children upon parental arrest, are now law. The current focus of the Commission is to establish safety for children of arrested parents. These children are often abandoned, frightened, worried and unsure of their parents’ whereabouts. In New Mexico, we continue our work to create child-sensitive jail visitation practices, and to link children and caregivers to systems of support already established throughout our state. Yet so much remains to be done.
Another major cause of children’s instability is the huge population growth of women in prison, most of them mothers. Nationally, the number of women serving sentences of more than a year grew by 757% between 1977 and 2004. The vast majority are non-violent drug offenders. In New Mexico, 94% of women in prison are mothers, and a staggering 88% are single mothers of dependent children.
A destabilizing factor for families with incarcerated parents is a federal law that was passed in 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA). This act mandates the termination of parental rights for children who remain in foster care for fifteen of any twenty-two-month period. Most incarcerated mothers serve prison sentences significantly longer than fifteen months. Realizing this, many mothers going to jail do not identify their minor children, fearing that foster care placements will result in the termination of their parental rights. Consequently, for parents without sufficient family support, their children may be left without planned supervision, left to fend for themselves or in the care of older (but still minor) siblings. The following is a poem written by a mother in prison to her child upon the termination of her parental rights:
It is a penalty worse than death
Imposed Lightly, In Stages, like the sanctions of the secutar
But with the same intent
To remove the bad from the part worth saving
It is true there was a time we went our separate ways
You seeking warmth and nurturance
While I sought their bitter substitutes
But long before that we grew together
Our veins intertwined
Now it is written in law that we will grow separately
Together, yet forever apart
I want you to know I wanted you
I want you to know I tried
But I could not hold on—Maria de Los Angeles
I firmly believe that policy development and advocacy is necessary in serving children and families. Through our efforts, New Mexico has incorporated language into its children’s code making parental incarceration a compelling reason to extend the AFSA timeline if it is in a child’s best interest. We’ve also placed into statute that parental incarceration alone cannot justify the termination of parental rights.
- “US has the most prisoners in the world” by James Vicini, Saturday, Dec 9, 2006. Reuters. www.commondreams.org. [↩]
- US Department of Justice press release, August 26, 2008: www.ojp.usdoj.gov. [↩]
