USA: programs help incarcerated moms bond with their babies in prison

Source - NPR

In Daidre Kimp’s room, the walls are pink and white and there are family photos on a bulletin board. A stroller sits in a corner. It’s early morning.

Kimp grabs a diaper, a tiny shirt and pants and lifts her smiley, 8-month-old daughter, Stella, from her crib.

They are getting ready for the day at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) in Gig Harbor, about a one hour drive from Seattle. It’s their home, at least until Kimp enters a work-release program next spring. She picks up Stella’s toothbrush.

“She’s brushing her three little teeth she’s got and we do that every morning,” Kimp says.

Down the hall in another room, 35-year-old Crystal Lansdale is helping her 2-year-old son, Kirshawn, get dressed. The toddler, standing on his mom’s bed, lets out a big yawn and tries to zip up his jacket while Lansdale straightens his collar.

WCCW is one of at least eight prisons in the country that allows a small number of women who are pregnant and give birth while incarcerated to keep their newborns with them for a limited time.

Supportive officials say since women make up the fastest growing segment of the country’s prison population, prison nurseries provide a way for mothers serving time to nurture and maintain a strong bond with their children.

“In here, I have a chance to focus on Stella” says Kimp, “and read books about smart love and confident parenting.”

There are more than one thousand women incarcerated at WCCW — about 300 more than the prison’s capacity. Those considered minimum security risks live in green cottage-like buildings with far less of the concrete and razor wire that surrounds maximum and medium security buildings.

Mothers in the Residential Parenting Program or “RPP” have keys to their rooms and travel the hallways carrying infants or pushing them in strollers. They can use a kitchen to prepare food for themselves and their child.

Daidre Kimp has been in the prison for a little more than a year. She’s an accountant who was convicted of stealing from clients. Like others in the program, she gave birth to her daughter at a nearby hospital in Tacoma, Wash., and then returned to the prison with her child. She’s 41-years-old, married and has three other children from a previous marriage — a son in college and two younger children who live with their father.

Read full article.