Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

In a move that will drastically redefine incarceration in California, prison officials are about to start releasing more than 4000 of the roughly 9500 female inmates in state facilities who have children, to allow them to serve the remainder of their sentences at home. The move will help California meet a U.S. Supreme Court-imposed deadline to make space in the state's chronically overcrowded prisons. In May, the state lost a U.S. Supreme Court appeal of a ruling that had found California's prison overcrowding and the resulting lack of access to medical care amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Now state officials are struggling to meet a strict timeline that requires them to reduce the inmate population by more than 30,000 before July 2013. The policy could be extended to male inmates in the near future, administrators said Monday.

Mothers who were convicted of non-serious, non-sexual crimes - and who have two years or less remaining on their sentences - could start going home as early as next week, prison spokeswoman Dana Toyama said. Any conviction for a violent or sexual felony, or for any crime involving child abuse, would disqualify an inmate from taking part in the program. An escape attempt in the last 10 years, gang membership or an active restraining order also would rule an inmate out, state officials said. The women would be required to wear GPS-enabled ankle bracelets and report to parole officers. Corrections officials say they would notify victims and local law enforcement before sending inmates back to the community.

The program is "a step in breaking the intergenerational cycle of incarceration," state prisons Secretary Matthew Cate said, arguing that "family involvement is one of the biggest indicators of an inmate's rehabilitation." The hope is that keeping kids with their parents, rather than in foster care, will "reduce the likelihood that inmates' children will embark on a life of crime," according to a 2010 memo from Sen. Carol Liu's office, who wrote the 2010 bill behind the policy. At the time the law was proposed, about 19,000 children had mothers in California prisons in 2005, and that 79% of incarcerated mothers in the state never received visitors while they were behind bars, Liu's office said. While many of the inmates who win early release would serve their remaining sentences at home, others would go to drug treatment centers or halfway houses. All would be permitted to get jobs or go to school.

Story from LA Times. Thanks to HRC-Fed Up! for calling attention to this.