Child-Friendly Prison Visits Help Moms Stay Connected, Reduce Trauma Of Separation
States are experimenting with programs that allow low-risk, incarcerated mothers to spend quality time with their children. Women are the fastest-growing prison population, in large part due to the national opioid crisis. In other drug news, supervised injection sites are debated in cities.
The New York Times:
Getting Past The Barriers: When A Mother Is In Prison
Currently, over 200,000 women are imprisoned in the United States, the majority for nonviolent drug or property offenses, which have recently skyrocketed in connection with the opioid crisis. The number of children in foster care or living with relatives has soared as well. According to the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit research organization, women are the country’s fastest-growing prison population, and 80 percent of them are mothers. The overwhelming majority were the primary caregivers of their children. (Valencia, 12/6)
NPR:
Programs Help Incarcerated Moms Bond With Their Babies In Prison
Sonya Alley is the Correctional Unit Supervisor overseeing the Residential Parenting Program at WCCW. She says the program gives women a tangible way to turn their lives around. "It gets them out of their addictive past and co-dependency on drugs, or alcohol or relationships," she says. "It seems oxymoronic but there's some clarity when forced to do a prison sentence and forced to be a parent. It starts to shift the way the women think about themselves, their environments and wanting the best for themselves and their child." (Corley, 12/6)
CQ:
Supervised Injection Site Implementation Faces Uphill Climb
A growing number of cities are seeking to fight the opioid epidemic by providing people with an addiction a place to inject drugs with sterile needles, despite questions about the practice’s legality under federal law. The trend suggests a showdown with the Justice Department may come if one of these cities is able to pass legislation and find funding to open a supervised injection site, which could happen as soon as next year. (Raman, 12/7)