When women leave prison most states have laws that are major obstacles for a successful transition back home. A former inmate in California, as in many other states often has great difficulty reuniting with her children. If a woman’s child is in foster care for 15 months parental rights are terminated. Unfortunately, the average sentence for women is 18 months. So, many times a woman will lose custody of her child, and is released feeling like a failure as a mother. This sense of low self-esteem can cause a woman to adopt behaviors that are not conducive to staying out of prison. Sometimes relatives of the newly released woman are caring for her child. This, too can cause problems. The relative might be loathe to give the child back to its mother for a variety of reasons, including projecting that the mother’s future behavior will be the same type that landed her in jail in the first place. Judgmental views can cause rifts instead of reunification. Understanding and support are what the woman needs, not condemnation. Relatives, and non-relatives, are offered payment by the state to care for a woman’s child when she is in prison. When a the mother gets out, some caregivers might not want to lose that added income, and might try to keep the mother from gaining custody of her child. A woman’s identity is often enmeshed with her identity as a mother. Losing custody can have a disastrous effect on a woman’s feeling of self-worth.
Female offenders who are convicted of drug related crimes can no longer obtain aid through federally subsidized programs. Welfare, food-stamps and federally funded housing are denied to recently released women in most instances. A California state watchdog agency, the Little Hoover Commission, recommends that formerly incarcerated females be allowed to participate in CalWORKS, the state’s cash assistance program. Doing so, the Commission argues, would allow female ex-offenders to secure housing, child care, employment and even substance abuse treatment. The Committee also declared that tax credits and bonuses should be given to housing developers who offer housing to formerly incarcerated females. Another suggestion was to provide fully funded substance abuse treatment programs, making it easy for parolees to receive the help that they need.
Dr. Barbara Bloom, a professor of Sonoma State University’s Department of Criminal Justice, sees the need for a deeper understanding of issues related to women in the criminal justice system. Testifying before the Little Hoover Commission, Dr. Bloom stated that “Women’s most common pathways to crime are based on survival of abuse, poverty, and substance abuse.” It might be argued that obstacles to women reentering their communities must be removed, or the women are doomed to follow the same path.
Source: Rebecca Vesely, Oakland Tribune
|
|
|
|
