Study looks at babies behind bars

Advocates for incarcerated women are hoping a program allowing mothers who give birth in B. C. provincial prisons to keep their babies with them will be reinstated thanks to a case before the B. C. Supreme Court.

Samantha Sarra, a principal investigator behind the Bonding through Bars international roundtable, held at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of B. C. last week, said the forced removal of newborns from mothers who give birth in prison is damaging to the children, the mothers, families and the general prison population.

“Children are the ones that have their rights violated by this,” said Sarra.

The mom and baby program, which ran from 2005- 08 allowed women serving sentences for non- violent offences to keep newborns with them behind bars. Once the program was cancelled, newborns were removed from their mothers and placed with family members or in foster care.

“The program had seen amazing success with the moms in there, but also with other inmates. It changed the atmosphere,” said Sarra.

Conference delegate Alison Granger- Brown was a recreational therapist employed at Aloette Correctional Centre for Women when the program was operational.

“Eighty per cent of women who come into an institution in Canada have children,” said Granger- Brown. “The prison population is a community of women. Having babies there changed the atmosphere, it softened everything.”

Granger- Brown said there was never an incident or problem while the program was running, and she resigned her position when the program was abruptly cancelled.

Mo Korchinski, a Maple Ridge mother of three, was incarcerated for drug trafficking at Aloette when the mom and baby program was running.

“You know when a baby ( is brought) into a room all the women turn to mush. It also turns a whole jail to mush.”

The women took parenting courses so they could help babysit, and a nursery, complete with a Winnie the Pooh motif, was created.

Being around women and their babies helped Korchinski begin the long road to health, and to a reunion with her own children.

“I didn’t have my kids in my life, I didn’t know where my kids were. It affected all the women who didn’t have their kids. It started the healing, the yearning.”

Korchinski, who has been clean and sober for nearly eight years and now helps women when they leave prison, said 12 babies were born in the provincial program while it was up and running.

“Of those children, none of them are in the foster care system now. The numbers speak for themselves.” Korchinski said she hopes the program will be reinstated to foster better relationships between incarcerated mothers and their babies. “Once the bond is broken, it’s really hard to get it back.”

Granger- Brown said statistics show children who are separated from their parents through incarceration are nine times more likely to end up in prison as adults.

The four- week trial, slated to begin in Vancouver on May 27, will focus on the constitutional rights of the child to have access to its mother.