Female Inmates: Mothers in Prison 337time permitted for proper bonding to occur between mother and child has extreme
consequences for the psychological well-being of the child and the mother.
According to a fact sheet provided by the Chicago Legal Aid to Incarcerated
Mothers (1997), nearly 90% of male prisoners report that while they are incarcerated
their children are being cared for by the children's mothers, whereas only 25% of
similarly confined women report that their children are being cared for by then-
fathers. The result is that thousands of children end up in "the system." At times,
relatives will care for the children of incarcerated mothers; however, all too often
the children are placed in foster homes, separated from their siblings, and denied
visitation with their mothers. Fifty-four percent of the mothers in a study conducted
by Bloom and Steinhart (1993) reported that their children had never visited them
while they were in prison. Participants in this study attributed the distance between
their place of residence and their mother's place of incarceration as a primary reason
for the lack of visitations. Thus it becomes obvious how the incarceration of mothers
has a great impact on society overall, not solely on the lives of the women in prison.
Perhaps being separated from their children is the most difficult issue faced by-
women prisoners. Watterson (1996b) reports that 75% of the jails in 1994 did not
allow contact visits between prisoners and their children. When such visits are
allowed, it is often a traumatic experience for everyone involved. Children have a
difficult time with the intimidating environment of a prison. They often do not
understand why they have limited or no contact with their mothers, and they have
difficulty saying goodbye to their mothers orice the visit is over. For the mother,
once a contact visit is granted, she knows that in order to be with her child she may
be subject to the humiliation of a strip-search immediately after the visit.
jTjhe reality is that she knows before she begins that after seeing her children and
family and perhaps feeling very good about herself, she will have to take off all her
clothing and stand naked in front of the guards, who will check under her arms and
breasts for contraband. She'll have to open her mouth and let them look under her
tongue and in her cheeks. Then she has to squat, pull apart her buttocks and cough, so
the guard in charge can check her vagina and anus for any hidden objects. (Watterson,
1996, p. 214).
For this reason, contact visits can simultaneously be a rewarding and positive
experience as well as a humiliating and punishing one. Acknowledging the im-
portance of interaction between mothers and children, programs were developed
in the 1980s to support such contact. However, in the 1990s such programs were
largely discontinued due to a loss of state and federal funding (Watterson, 1996).Forensic Psychology and Policy ImplicationsThe number of women incarcerated in the United States is increasing with every
new law that requires stiffer sentences for minor offenses. Although the vast ma-
jority of women prisoners are incarcerated as a result of drug-related crimes, few