Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

and, once you get past the birth process, there's still the fact that mothers in prison risk losing their children. Because parenting still falls primarily on women, legislation such as ASFA (the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act) impacts incarcerated mothers five times more than it does incarcerated fathers (who usually have a female relative willing to take care of his children while he is in prison):

In June, Gov. David Paterson of New York signed into law the "ASFA Expanded Discretion" bill to ensure that parents like Sharmaine do not lose rights to their children solely for bureaucratic reasons.

The new law allows for foster care agencies and courts to take into account the special circumstances of parents in prison or residential treatment when determining a child's fate. These circumstances include parents' difficulty seeing children in person, difficulty meeting with lawyers or social workers and difficulty making court appearances, especially for women from New York City who are sent to serve their time in distant upstate prisons. The median prison sentence for women in New York is 36 months, longer than the 15-month deadline in effect until the time the law was changed.

The new law also allows for parents to participate in meetings about their children by video conference or other means if meeting in person is impracticable.

Because foster care agencies have not always provided the reunification services that parents in prison are supposed to receive, the new law requires such agencies to give parents information about their rights and responsibilities, as well as referrals to services available to help maintain relationships with their children. (This provision warrants monitoring, as it is not clear how providing referrals would work when parents cannot access services without the assistance of prison or treatment center employees.)

New York Joins Select Group

By allowing for greater flexibility in the foster care system, New York joins a small group of states that have adjusted their laws, including Nebraska, New Mexico, Colorado and California. But in most of the country, parental rights remain in serious jeopardy.

Read the full story here: http://www.womensenews.org/story/incarceration/100722/prison-shouldnt-be...