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Baby Cribs in Prison Cells: Assessing Opinions About Prison Nursery Programs by Humanizing Incarcerated Mothers Erin Ostheimer Union College - Schenectady, NY

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Baby Cribs in Prison Cells: Assessing Opinions About Prison Nursery Programs by Humanizing Incarcerated Mothers Erin Ostheimer Union College - Schenectady, NY Union College Union | Digital Works Honors Theses Student Work 6-2016 Baby Cribs in Prison Cells: Assessing Opinions About Prison Nursery Programs by Humanizing Incarcerated Mothers Erin Ostheimer Union College - Schenectady, NY Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses Part of the Community-Based Research Commons, Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Ostheimer, Erin, "Baby Cribs in Prison Cells: Assessing Opinions About Prison Nursery Programs by Humanizing Incarcerated Mothers" (2016). Honors Theses. 194. https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses/194 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at Union | Digital Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of Union | Digital Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Baby Cribs in Prison Cells: Assessing Opinions about Prison Nursery Programs by Humanizing Incarcerated Mothers By Erin Ostheimer * * * * * * * * Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Honors in the Department of Sociology UNION COLLEGE March, 2016 ABSTRACT OSTHEIMER, ERIN Baby Cribs in Prison Cells: Assessing Opinions about Prison Nursery Programs by Humanizing Incarcerated Mothers. Department of Sociology, March 2016. ADVISOR: Janet Grigsby Through my research, I analyzed prison nursery programs in the United States. Prison nurseries are programs that exist in nine states that allow mothers who are pregnant when they are incarcerated to keep their infants with them in prison for a finite amount of time. Previous scholarship on the topic has shown that prison nurseries are effective in reducing rates of recidivism and fostering a bond between mother and infant. My research explored the question of why these programs are so rare given their success. I assessed Union College student and professor attitudes about maternal incarceration to better understand how perceptions about mothers in prison might impact the funding that these programs receive. I screened the film, “Mothers of Bedford,” that follows five mothers throughout their imprisonment at Bedford Hills Women’s Prison. I administered a survey before and after the documentary to the audience to assess how opinions about mothers in prison are altered through the process of humanizing the population through film. Through this data, I analyzed opinions about mothers in prison and prison nursery programs. My analysis shows that participants became more supportive of prison nursery programs after watching the documentary. My research demonstrates the importance in humanizing and raising awareness of the marginalized population that is mother prisoners. ii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Professor Grigsby, for her endless patience, creative thinking and emotional and academic support. No matter what roadblocks I hit along the way, she always kept me motivated, positive and excited about my topic. I would also like to thank Professor Stablein for sparking my passion in the topic of mothers in prison, for his consistent interest in my project, and for agreeing to be my second reader. Also, a huge thank-you to Professor Cotter for helping me navigate SPSS and “putting me in the driver’s seat.” I would also like to thank Professor Goldner for her constant support throughout my four years at Union as my academic advisor; her thoughtful guidance is unparalleled. Thank you to all of the professors in various academic departments who encouraged their classes to attend my screening of “Mothers of Bedford” and expressed excitement and curiosity about the event, and to all of the students who attended. Thank you to the Intellectual Enrichment Grant for providing dinner to the audience at the screening and to the Sociology Department for sponsoring publicity leading up to it. Also, I am extremely grateful for the guidance of filmmaker Jenifer McShane for her correspondence over email and via phone about the screening and about topics of mutual interest and for creating such an important and engaging documentary. Thank you also to the five mothers in the documentary, Melissa, Tanika, Mona, Rosa and Anneathia, who’s words and actions inspire me and every person who watches the film. Last but certainly not least, thank you to my family and friends for easing my nerves, offering me insight and advice in times of need, and for showing genuine interest in my topic. The completion of my thesis would have been impossible without all of you. iii Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction to Mass Incarceration and Mothers in Prison……………….1 1.1. Racial Disparities in Incarceration Rates…………………………………………..1 1.2. Gender Disparities in Incarceration Rates………………………………………....3 1.3. Incarceration During Pregnancy…………………………………………………...8 1.4. Women’s Incarceration and the Law……………………………………………...13 1.5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………...14 Chapter 2. Prison Nurseries: An Overview……………………………………………..15 2.1. Existing Prison Nurseries in the United States…………………………....……….15 2.2. Prison Nurseries in Other Countries……………………………………………….18 2.3. Outcomes of Prison Nurseries……………………………………………………..20 2.4. Opposition to Prison Nurseries…………………………………………………….23 2.5. Residential Parenting Program Alternative………………………………………..24 2.6. Current Problems with Prison Nurseries…………………………………………..25 Chapter 3. Methods……………………………………………………………………….29 3.1. The Ups and Downs of Research………………………………………………….29 3.2. Mode of Analysis………………………………………………………………….30 Chapter 4. Results…………………………………………………………………………32 4.1. Demographics of Participants……………………………………………………...32 4.2. Survey Questions…………………………………………………………………..32 4.3. Mean Frequencies………………………………………………………………….34 4.4. Individual Changes through Cross-Tabulation…………………………………….37 4.5. Paired T-Tests in Two Categories………………………………………………….39 4.6. Individual Sample T-Test of Means by Gender of the First Sample………………40 iv v Chapter 5. Implications and Conclusion…………………………………………………43 5.1. The Inaccessibility of Prisons………………………………………………………43 5.2. Changing Opinions through Film…………………………………………………..44 5.3. Social Theories and Prison Nurseries………………………………………………46 5.4. Limitations and Future Advocacy………………………………………………….48 Appendices A – G ………………………………………………………………………….51 References…………………………………………………………………………………..70 v v Chapter 1. Introduction to Mass Incarceration and Mothers in Prison Mass incarceration is a hot button topic in our country today. The increasing number of people we imprison and the profit-generating industry that surrounds our prisons are cause for concern. Much of the increase is a result of The War on Drugs that was waged in the 1980s in attempt at reducing drug use in the United States. In addition to the monumental impact of the harsh drug laws, many mental health hospitals and clinics closed during the 1970s (Hotteling 2008: 37). People suffering from mental illness who had previously received treatment or lived at these institutions were abandoned by the government. Whitlock (2010) asserts that “jails and prisons are now the primary institutions for housing people with mental illness” (Interrupted Life: 32). As a result of the War on Drugs and changing policies in treating mental illness, our rates of incarceration have skyrocketed in the past three decades. A great deal of research has been devoted to exploring the impact that mass incarceration has and will continue to have on our country. In this chapter, I will review the literature that has been devoted to addressing issues of race and gender disparities in our prison population and the resulting effect. I will then discuss existing research about mothers in prison, with a specific focus on mothers who are pregnant when they are incarcerated, as this population is the focus group of my research. 1.1 Racial Disparities in Incarceration Rates A concurrent issue of mass incarceration is the fact that the prison population is disproportionally made up of minority group people. Much of this disparity is a result of 1 heavier policing and harsher sentencing for minorities in relation to drug use and drug sales. Only one quarter of all crimes that prisoners are convicted of are violent crimes; a majority of the remaining three quarters of criminals is convicted for using or selling drugs (Bernstein 2005: 3). The number of drug convictions has increased dramatically as a result of President Ronald Reagan’s declared War on Drugs in 1982. Reagan’s harsh drug laws had the façade of policies aimed to eliminate drug use, but in reality, they created, “a racialized war on crime that targeted low-income communities of color” (Sudbury in Interrupted Life 2010: 12). Since the implementation of these strict laws, a great deal of government spending that had previously gone towards community infrastructure and institutional support for the poor has shifted towards funding for law enforcement and prisons (Sudbury in Interrupted Life 2010: 11). The War on Drugs has had a disproportionate impact on the incarceration of minority groups (Alexander 2012). Provine (2007) claims that the War on Drugs was not the first time that certain drugs had been associated with minority groups and asserts that when a drug is associated with a minority group, it becomes a deviant drug worthy of harsh punishment. The process of demonizing a drug because of an associated group of drug-users occurred with opiate and Chinese immigrants, with marijuana and Mexicans, and most recently, with
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