Babies behind bars: Prison keeps mothers, children together; State hopes to halt crime cycle; Supporters say families benefit; critics argue it coddles inmates

Shauna Beals bundles her daughter in a fuzzy pink snowsuit, plops her in a stroller and pushes her into the gray-flannel morning. The stroller wheels thrum along a razor-wire fence, under the watch of the guard tower, to the day-care center.

At 4 months old, Beals' daughter is one of the youngest residents of the Washington Corrections Center for Women near Gig Harbor.

The infant is one of three babies living with her mother in prison. Five more are expected soon.

Last fall the prison joined a growing number women's prisons across the nation trying to keep children and parents together through a criminal sentence.

Critics argue that such programs coddle criminals. But growing evidence indicates that when inmates have a steady link to their children, it helps the children and gives parents more incentive to stay out of trouble.

Washington's new Residential Parenting Program provides housing for up to 20 inmates who are pregnant or have children under 3. Mothers and babies live together in a special wing of the minimum-security unit. The women have round-the-clock responsibility for their babies, diapering and feeding and coping with teething.

The program is unique, say its organizers, because of its partnership with Early Head Start, which runs a day-care center for inmates' babies. Inmates attend parenting classes, employment-training sessions and substance-abuse classes.

Some women's prisons, like a minimum-security prison in Cambridge Springs, Pa., sponsor mother-child camping trips.

The Kansas Department of Corrections allows children of female inmates to spend a day visiting in a room with a "homelike setting," said public-information spokesman Bill Miskell.

But Washington, California and New York are among the few states that allow some inmates who give birth in custody to keep the babies with them.

New York's Bedford Hills Correctional Facility began its program almost 100 years ago. It has found that "inmates with strong family ties are less likely to return to prison than those who do not," said Mike Houston, public-information director.

The recidivism rate for women in the Bedford residential-parenting program was 10 percent, compared with 52 percent among the general population of female inmates, according to a 1998 study by the University of California, Los Angeles.

Concern for children

Despite a growing get-tough-on-crime sentiment, critics of such programs are few.

Lew Cox, executive director of Violent Crime Victim Services, however, thinks contact with children is a right prisoners should lose. And he fears for the children.

"I don't think it's healthy for a child to spend the first years of their life in that environment," he said.

Officials in Arizona and Kansas voted against residential programs, saying they were concerned for the safety of children living inside a prison.

But even Washington Republican gubernatorial candidate John Carlson, who is quick to question state social programs, says both babies and inmates benefit at the Gig Harbor-area prison.

California opened the Family Foundations program last fall and is adding two more facilities this year.

Judges there sentence women who are pregnant or have children 6 or younger to live in a highly structured environment, apart from the main prison, for one year. The women take parenting and anti-drug classes.

"It's the best thing we've ever done," said Sharrell Blakeley, head of Family Foundations. "It allows us to break the intergenerational cycle of criminality."

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, nearly 2 million children younger than 18 have a mother or father in prison. And the number of incarcerated women has tripled nationally in the past decade.

The number of women held at Gig Harbor has grown from 200 in 1990 to 765 a decade later.

Of those, as many as 90 percent are mothers, said Abby Kupper, unit supervisor.

When men go to prison, children typically remain on the outside with their mothers. But troubled women are often caring for children alone; when they go to prison, their children are shuttled among relatives or foster homes.

Shay Bilchik, executive director of the Child Welfare League, said studies show that older children who have had no or little contact with their imprisoned mothers are five times as likely to suffer depression, do poorly in school, join gangs or take risks than children who have bonds with their mothers.

Children may blame themselves for the parent's incarceration, grieve for the separated parent, or adjust poorly to an economic loss or the loss of friends if they have to move.

"We're talking a significant number of children who have significant issues," Bilchik said.

When the bond between mothers and children remains despite a prison sentence, children are more inclined to weather the hard times, studies say.

`A fair chance'

DeAnna Sindelar, 32, sits in the Gig Harbor-area prison's day room, in a pink smock and gray leggings, watching the babies and eagerly waiting for her daughter, due June 2.

Sindelar says she also is eager to put prison - she was convicted of delivering narcotics - and drug use behind her.

"I try to get as much out of the program to give this baby a fair chance and myself a chance," she said.

Shauna Beals is at Gig Harbor for drug offenses and forgery. It's her second stay here; when she was sentenced last fall, she was pregnant with her boyfriend's baby.

But now "money and drugs don't matter anymore," she said.

If not for the Residential Parenting Program, Beals would have been taken to St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma to give birth, then returned to prison. Her daughter would have been placed with relatives or in foster care.

Then when Beals' sentence ended, in December, she and her baby would be reunited as strangers.

"If I can't do right by her, I can't do anything," Beals said, pausing to wipe cereal from the infant's nose.

A taste of the outside

Women can't get into Gig Harbor's residential program if they have been convicted of violent crimes or as sex offenders, or if they have been referred to Child Protective Services for allegations of child abuse. They have to pass a psychological examination and be eligible to live in the prison's minimum-security wing. Their sentence can't be more than three years.

When Teresa Leon, 34, learned she was pregnant just before going to prison, she was "worried about what was going to happen to my baby."

Her husband also is in prison; both were convicted of possessing narcotics with the intent to deliver.

Being sent to prison for her first and, she says, "last time," was "a blessing in disguise." She is learning how to be a parent and has had time with her son, now 3 months old.

"I get to see him learn, get to see him eat for the first time, hear him coo, talk. I don't have to miss out on anything - even the 2 a.m. feedings," Leon said.

The residential program tries to replicate the working conditions an inmate will find on the outside, Kupper said.

Mothers rise early to feed their babies and get to work. Beals drops her daughter at Early Head Start day care before starting her shift on the prison industry assembly line.

At noon, the mothers gather at the day-care center for lunch with the babies. At 3 p.m., they pick them up to go "home," pushing strollers across the campus. Razor wire and guard towers are always in sight.

The minimum-security wing they call home is soothed at night by the click-click-click of a rocking chair or the padding of footsteps as someone walks the floor with a cranky baby.

Mothers and babies share their own rooms, complete with white cribs and elephant mobiles that chime nursery tunes.

The staff, inmates and volunteers from the community painted the bedrooms, edging them with jungle-motif wallpaper, and sprucing up the day room by painting red, yellow and blue airplanes on the walls.

Early Head Start received a $1.2 million federal grant to build the day-care center. Other costs have been paid by volunteers. "Grandpa Frank" Kinney, his wife, Jan, and others from the nearby Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church provide cribs, blankets and toys, help rock babies and counsel new mothers.

"If God would grant me one wish," Kinney said, "it's that these children don't follow in the footsteps of their mothers."

Mostly for women

To date, prison-based parent-child programs are mostly found in women's prisons.

"It's really lopsided," said Faith Lutze, associate professor of criminology at Washington State University. "It's not to say that men aren't interested in maintaining contact with their children, because they are."

But corrections officials have found it difficult to run such programs in men's prisons.

According to a U.S. Justice Department survey, female inmates are more amenable to taking parenting classes and staying in touch with their families.

Bobbi Denley was one of the first inmates in the Gig Harbor residential program. Now 21, she was finishing a sentence for delivering methamphetamines when she was admitted into the program with her newborn.

"It would have torn me apart to give my baby away," she said.

She's now out of prison and on parole in Goldendale, Klickitat County, where she works at a convenience store and cares for her baby and an older child.

"She's doing very well, taking classes" that keep her straight and help her with parenting skills, said Kenneth Bridge, her parole officer. "I know she cares very much for her children."

Beals hopes to follow the same path soon, her daughter at her side.

"In my heart I've always wanted to have something to be responsible for," she said. "Now that I have her, it's changed my whole life."

Nancy Bartley's phone message number is 253-437-9461. Her e-mail address is nbartley@seattletimes.com