United Arab Emirates: Dubai prison ensures female inmates’ children do not miss out on school

Every week, an inmate, 45, wakes up early to go to the nursery at Dubai Central Jail. Wearing a maroon uniform and headscarf, she rushes to say goodbye to her children before they board a school bus.

When she was incarcerated in September 2014, her son was only 1 and her daughter 2.“I made just one request to the police: to let me keep my children. I didn’t have a choice because I don’t have a family here,” she said.

The nursery has separate areas for playing, studying, dining and sleeping. On the day The National visited, one inmate, 25, was with her 4-year-old daughter, who was born during her incarceration. “I didn’t mean to bring her here but when I was sentenced for seven years, I was pregnant” the inmate said.

Col Al Zaabi said prison officials have two main challenges while raising children in prison: “The first is when a child leaves us after many years, it’s really painful for us to say bye to him,“ she said. “Secondly, for school-going children, we don’t want their classmates to know their mother is an inmate. So, we choose a woman and call her the mother of the child. She would go to the school with them, whenever needed.“