My friend and colleague Lois Ahrens’ recent piece in the Daily Hampshire Gazette reminded me that in this time of outrage over the separation of children from their parents at the border, there is not much being said about children — infants, toddlers, adolescents, teens and all ages in between — separated from their incarcerated mothers. Ahrens quotes the New York Times: “A quarter of a million American children are estimated to have a single mother in jail, where most detainees are awaiting trial or committed a minor offense, according to the most recent data from the mid-2000s.”

As a way of keeping focus on the myriad ways in which oppressive political, social and economic structures destroys families, I am dedicating this early summer 2018 blog to Massachusetts mothers I have come to know whose children have been taken from them. (You can read more background on the women as mothers  and how incarceration hurts both parents and children here.)

Three Mothers, Three Stories, One Outcome

More than ten years after I came to know a group of Massachusetts women who recently had been released from state prison, few of the women have been able to resume caring for their children.

For some women, like Francesca, that is because her children grew into young adulthood in the years in which she was homeless or incarcerated. She is thrilled to have a “second chance” with her grandchildren, yet is limited by not having a secure place to live (she still stays with various friends and relatives) or a car (she simply cannot afford one on the small disability check she receives each month.)

Joy‘s child, in contrast, is a pre-teen. Joy not only is homeless but also lost custody of her child when she was incarcerated. The problem is that the grandparent who has been caring for the child is now too old to continue doing so. The grandparent has arranged to send Joy’s child to live with relatives on the other side of the country. Joy acknowledges that these relatives are kind and loving, but she knows that this means that she will not see her child for many years, or perhaps ever again.

Kahtia is still fighting to get her young children back. They have been in “temporary” state custody for almost two years. In that time they have lived with four different foster families while Kahtia has attended and successfully completed numerous therapeutic programs and frequent drug-testing mandated by the Division of Children’s and Family Services (DCF). Every few months she is given a new court date to decide and told that this will be the final appearance. Each time she is confident that because she has complied with all of the Court’s and DCF’s demands she will have the children back. And each time she faces the same heartbreak when is told that “something else” is missing, or has come up, or needs to be clarified.

Francesca, Joy and Kahtia initially were separated from their children because they were incarcerated. They did not commit serious or violent crimes; they did not serve particularly long sentences (all under a year). And they remained separated from their children because someone, in some agency, decided that they were not fit to care for their children. They were not accused of abusing or neglecting their children.

Yet once the children were “in the system” it was an uphill battle to try to get them back.
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Alternatives to Incarceration

It is yet to be seen how this will play out, but criminal justice reform legislation working its way through the Massachusetts governing bodies may reduce family separation, at least in part, by advocating for community supervision (probation or parole) instead of incarceration for some primary caretakers of minor children.

Based on the experiences of the women I know, however, I am concerned that overly zealous community supervision can turn into a set up for being sent to prison for minor infractions such as failure to show up for an appointment or to make a required payment on a fine or Court fee. Due to their poverty and minimal control over their life circumstances, for many women these sorts of infractions are more or less a given.

In order to establish policies that work for families, it is crucial to involve parents in the bodies that set up the rules for community supervision. These women — and others like them — need(ed) social, psychological, financial and logistical support in order to raise their children. In some cases they have received support, but never on their terms, never the support that they felt they needed and wanted, and never in a straightforward or seamless way.

It Always Comes Back to Housing

For many poor or criminalized women,

housing is the final straw in terms of losing their children. While homelessness is not a crime in and of itself (though many homeless people are arrested on trespassing and other charges), not having a suitable home is reason for removal of one’s children. To me, this seems the cruelest way to punish families for having the misfortune to be poor in a society in which housing costs are prohibitively high.

Criminal justice reform will not, of course, address the poverty and housing costs that can lead to family separation. On my daily rounds I drive past immense suburban homes inhabited by two or three people. I also drive past boarded up homes in both rural and urban neighborhoods. Surely we can find ways to house families, especially when we know that sending children into institutional or foster care is associated with high rates of over-medication with psychotropic drugs and that “Children in foster care who are arrested for delinquent acts are more likely than other children to be sent to juvenile detention to await their trials.”

I hope that in this moment in which public outrage is (rightly) turned on the Trump Administration’s policy to separate children from their parents, we’ll work to change the old policies that have destroyed families for many years.