Locked Down, Locked Out (11 page)

“People put their hands on my baby, and say, Aww, when is she due,’ and I’m thinking, Who the hell did you murder?” she says, rolling her eyes. Logan houses all but three of the women convicted of homicide in Illinois. Kayla heaves her long hair into
a pile atop her head, dark drizzles of makeup residue sliding out the corners of her eyes. “The next day, I find out. Oh great, you killed your kid! And your
dog?
Thanks for the good luck.” She smiles. Kayla’s sense of humor may be floundering a bit, given her current pool of material, but she’s still got it.

Murder jokes notwithstanding, Kayla often reminds me not to make assumptions about people based on their conviction. She’s friends with women convicted of murder—women who, in the midst of gang violence or domestic violence or any number of circumstances, made one horrible decision that condemned them for the rest of their lives. “Those crimes happened within a few minutes, usually,” she says. “And then they’re here forever.”

The clock inches toward our visit’s 7:30 departure time. We scoot closer, and Kayla grabs each of our hands to put on her belly. We feel the baby kicking. “Do you feel her now?
Now
?” she asks, and turns to Mom with a sudden, eager grin. “Are you excited to be a grandma?”

As we hurry back out to the car, I’m laughing and forgetting about the heat, bouncing a little as I make my way through the somber, emptying parking lot. The circumstances are wretched, but still—I’m going to be an aunt!

“I Want to Hold Her Forever”

At 4:47 a.m. on September 3, 2013, Mom wakes me up with news—“Kayla called she’s on her way to the hospital she’s really scared naturally whoa I can’t believe this is happening!” No one really can, including Kayla. Her water hasn’t broken, and she’s not having contractions. Yet, at the convenience of the prison, her labor has been scheduled for today: It will be induced.

Mom and I commence waiting by our phones. No family can be present during labor and birth. Kayla’s only company will be
medical personnel and prison guards, who must watch her at all times. At some point after the birth, she’ll get one phone call to let us know the baby has arrived. Once Angelica is born, Kayla will have twenty-four to thirty-six hours with her. Then the baby will be taken away, and Kayla will return to prison by herself.

I’ve never seen someone give birth in real life. My images of it, culled from movies, books, and friends, all feature groups of anxious, excited loved ones clustered inside and outside the birthing room, radiating warmth and comfort, preparing to ring in a time of communal celebration. I can’t imagine anyone having to go through it alone. Kayla will not only be alone but also literally confined to her hospital bed: As soon as she’s given birth, she’ll be shackled to the bedposts.

Finally, at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Mom calls the prison and pleads for news. She’s transferred around and finally handed off to a counselor. He doesn’t have much information, he says, and he shouldn’t be telling her anything, but here’s what he knows: “Ten fifty-two a.m., seven pounds, five ounces.”

“EEEEE!” I dance and cry around the kitchen. “Ten fifty-two, seven pounds, five ounces! Ten fifty-two, seven pounds, five ounces!”

Then I stop. Is Kayla OK, health-wise? How did she handle almost twenty-six hours of labor? Did she get to breastfeed? When will they be separated? Aside from weighing seven pounds and five ounces, what’s Angelica like? How is she dealing with methadone withdrawal? (Kayla has been kept on a steady dosage of methadone over the past few months in prison.) How is Kayla taking the anticipation of a different kind of withdrawal—withdrawal from her baby, whom she’s only just met? Mom redials the counselor and asks him why Kayla can’t yet call.

“She’s in the free world right now, so there are security consid-
erations,” she’s told. The warden has taken the day off and can’t authorize the call, and the guards in the hospital room haven’t allowed Kayla to pick up the phone.

The free world
. This was the phrase used in the Cold War era to distinguish the US and friends from their communist foes. This was the phrase Neil Young used, ironically, to describe many Americans’ poverty and despair, in “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World.” The American president is the “leader of the free world.” I think,
In what “world” do America’s incarcerated live (that is, when they’re not giving birth alone except for the company of prison guards)? Who’s responsible for that un-free world, where mothers are torn from their babies every day?

Finally, my mom gets the “one call” from Kayla. She puts her on speaker and calls me in. Kayla’s breathing rapidly, and I can’t tell whether she’s laughing or crying as she gasps, “Oh my God, she is so beautiful. And I love her, I love her, I love her, and I just want to hold her forever.”

Angelica is wailing full-blast when Kayla holds her face up to the receiver.

In the background, Kayla is sobbing, “My little baby, she doesn’t even know what’s coming,” and her voice is heavy with the weight of the prison-bound pregnancy, the lonely labor, the painful birth, the love-at-first-sight, the shackling, the dreaded moment of separation, and the eighty-one days of waiting to come.

A few hours after our conversation, Kayla is handcuffed and led away from her baby and back to prison.

When my parents and I visit Angelica in the hospital, long after Kayla’s gone, she’s wide-eyed, squirming in her tiny bassinet. Taped to the wall of her crib is a three-page note filled with my sister’s neat, decorative handwriting: a list of instructions.
She likes the top of her mouth tickled with the tip of the pacifier or your
finger. It helps her feed. She loves to be held. She loves when you hold her hand
. And on, and on. And then:
I love you so so much, baby. I promise I’ll be home soon
.

“Sentenced to Lose Each Other”

Kayla’s story is not unique. Four to seven percent of women entering prison are pregnant, and most carry to term.
¹
No statistics exist on the availability of abortion in prison. While in theory, incarcerated women have the same constitutional reproductive rights as others, many incarcerated women find that a request for an abortion is met with denial, delay, or dismissal.
²

For the vast majority of prisoners who carry to term, the birth is a solitary and secretive affair, barred to family and loved ones. The following weeks, or months, or years are ravaged by one of the most excruciating breeds of isolation concocted by humanity: the separation of mothers from their babies. Even if a mother’s sentence is short (on average, pregnant prisoners spend six to twelve months incarcerated after the birth
³
),infants may not remember their mothers upon release. Newly released moms often struggle to know their kids, as well. The two must reacquaint—like strangers—kicking off this most important relationship on a broken foot. For prisoners, who have already been severed from their communities, the mother-baby bond can forge a key path to societal reconnection, heightening their chances of avoiding reoffense and recidivism.
⁴
Conversely, severing the bond can feel like yet another way (and perhaps the most painful way) they’re cut off from the “free world.”

This isn’t just true for babies born while their moms are incarcerated. It’s true for prisoner moms across the board. (And there are a lot of them—nearly two-thirds of women in prison are mothers.
⁵
) In fact, studies show that mothers separated from
their kids are more likely to be subsequently incarcerated. A 2004 study of mothers at New York City’s jail showed that “family preservation efforts may function as a crime reduction strategy. Successful efforts to avert placement not only keep families together and children out of foster care, but can also help prevent the increase in maternal criminal activity that can take place following a child’s removal.”
⁶

Instead, many mothers end up permanently losing custody of their kids: Due to long distances, visitation barriers, and extended periods of separation, lots of moms aren’t able to meet court-mandated benchmarks required for reunification with their children upon release.
⁷
Even though Kayla will be released in just two and a half months, the Department of Child and Family Services pays her an unexpected visit in the days after the birth, intimating she may not be reunited with her child due to her current incarceration and prior drug use.

Scholar Beth Richie points to child protective services as yet another arm of the prison nation, using stringent regulations, surveillance, and policing to punish women—particularly black women, poor women, and single mothers—by taking away their kids.
⁸
Especially since the passage of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act in 1997, incarcerated mothers have struggled to hang on to their children. The act’s stringent reunification time-frames push foster care agencies to begin termination proceedings if a child has been in foster care for fifteen of the past twenty-two months. The majority of states usually do not include exceptions for moms in prison.
⁹
Plus, as legal scholar Dorothy Roberts notes, the restrictions on employment, housing, education, and public aid placed on mothers released from prison mean that, even after they’ve “reentered,” formerly incarcerated moms are at a steep disadvantage when it comes to meeting the require
ments of child protective services.
¹⁰
Bolstered by a distorted logic of “protecting” kids, the entwined forces of incarceration and foster care have bent toward the punishment of both mothers and children, with moms and kids of color receiving the brunt of “protective” attention.

Like Kayla’s story, Angelica’s circumstances—the separation that “she doesn’t even know is coming”—are not unusual. Yet compared to many babies born to prisoners, Angelica is lucky. She has family on the outside who can care for her, though it won’t be easy. My mother will be taking her in, with help from me and my dad, until Kayla’s release. Many babies born in prison are shipped off to foster families and may never be able to visit their moms. More than half of the mothers in prison never see their kids while they’re incarcerated.
¹¹
Thus, prisoners’ newborns are effectively sentenced along with their mothers.

Such sentencing may carry a premonition of further sentencing, of the sort that happens in a courtroom: Kids whose parents are incarcerated are more likely to engage in “criminal activity.”
¹²
They’re more prone to drug addiction, and they tend to lag behind on the education front. Many such behaviors are attributed to “attachment disorders”—a conditioned inability to connect. According to the American Psychological Society, babies who establish a strong bond with their mothers develop higher self-esteem and are better able to cultivate relationships later in life. For children born into the system, who don’t develop the links that materialize in those earliest months, deep attachment issues can set in. Studies have shown that young kids with incarcerated mothers become more conflicted and detached, not only from their moms, but also from other caregivers.
¹³

Compounding the situation, the vast majority of babies born to incarcerated moms can’t breastfeed, denying both of them the
possibility of one of the most intimate human bonds—and a source of health benefits that last years after nursing ends. Beyond nursing, it’s been shown that babies whose moms are locked up have diminished chances of survival. According to Ernest Druck-er’s
A Plague of Prisons
, an examination of prison’s effects through a public health lens, the impact of parental incarceration on infant mortality rates is undeniable: “Recent parental incarceration ... independently affects infant mortality, elevating the risk of early infant death by 29.6 percent.”
¹⁴
Given the demographics of who is in prison, infants of color are at an overwhelmingly greater risk than other groups.

As I watch Kayla and Angelica struggle with their separation, I think,
Wouldn’t supporting mothers and babies in their lives together do a lot more to foster “public safety” than separating them?
What’s the point of isolating these women, breaking their strongest ties to the outside world—their greatest motivators to “do better” upon release? Shouldn’t we use the vast resources poured into their incarceration to bolster the difficult but toweringly important task of motherhood?

A week after Angelica’s birth, my parents and I visit the hospital nursery, where the baby lies in her isolette, which is plastered with Kayla’s notes. I see Kayla in Angelica’s mouth, her eyes, the tensing of her forehead. She is, indeed, so beautiful—the softest, smallest, most earnest person I have ever seen. Someone places her in my lap, and she wriggles impatiently, her mouth wide open; she wants to nurse. She’s out of luck on that front.

I stare down at the nineteen-inch human sprawled in my awkward arms. As she drifts off to sleep, I think,
I know what she’s dreaming inside that delicate, perfect head
. It’s no mystery. She wants her mom.

The Prison Nursery

In rare circumstances, babies born to prisoners aren’t yanked from their mothers at birth. A very small number of those newborns simply travel back to prison with them. It’s a controversial practice. On the one hand, it means imprisoning people at birth—people who’ve been convicted of no crime. This is not to say their mothers
should
be incarcerated, but that even under the current system’s logic, the prospect of incarcerating babies is discomfiting. On the other hand, allowing children in prison means maintaining some vestige of the vital maternal attachment that’s demolished for so many prisoner moms and their kids.