In Pictures : Formerly incarcerated women

[Jefferson23]

Meet some of the women who are struggling to reintegrate into their communities after being freed from prison in the US.

Gabriela Bulisova Last Modified: 13 Jul 2011 16:13

The United States is the world's leader in incarceration with more than 2.3 million people currently in the nation's prisons or jails. Included among the total number of prisoners are more than 200,000 women, and more than one million who are under the supervision of the criminal justice system, on probation or parole.

The majority of female offenders are poor, disproportionately African American or Hispanic, under-educated, unemployed and unskilled. After being freed from prison, reintegrating into the community is often a difficult process for women.

Medical treatment for both mental and physical illness isn't easily affordable, and finding work can be difficult. Addiction, poverty, unemployment, physical and mental illness, sexual abuse, and homelessness serve as challenges for formerly incarcerated women and in many case lead them back to a path of crime.

This is a look at women recently released from the US prison system as they struggle to reintegrate into their communities.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/inpictures/2011/07/2011713152511745482.html

[handmade34]

1. recommended

we do a great disservice to many people in our country... so sad

[Jefferson23]

3. We offer no resolve, it is not only deeply sad but also counterproductive.n/t

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Some women also face the prospect of having their children taken away from them

due to poverty, drug use, and incarceration.


The other dimension of the final showdown was battling the baby snatchers since birth was the period of time when continued custody of children was most imperiled. Eliza, a 29-year-old African-American heroin user feared her baby would be taken away:

Well, you know, just heard about it from different people. And most drug addicts, you know, they say, ÔBefore you have your baby, stop using. They testing these babies. They taking babies.' And I say, ÔGod, you don't go through all of this to go to the hospital and have a baby for them to take it.'(PAD)

Women who retained custody began their mothering careers as failures because they used drugs during pregnancy and endangered their children. Women who lost custody of their infants usually began abusing their drugs of choice immediately, surpassing previous heaviest use periods trying to drown painful guilt and self-blame. Despite lifelong gender, race and class-based subjugation and stigmatizing drug use, study participants implemented strategies to reduce fetal harms and claim respectable social identities. These private struggles were embedded in a socioeconomic context characterized by increasing degradation and deprivation, and decreasing social support. Mothering must be placed in its historical and political framework in order to understand its importance for the women's sense of self and social position. It is also necessary to explicate the policy context in which our study participants began or postponed motherhood.

Mothering

Mothering is a social role with tremendous responsibilities, precious little preparation and ambiguous standards of good practice. People do not necessarily know how to tell a woman to mother, but everybody seems to know when she is doing it wrong. Being labeled an "unfit mother" has horrendous social consequences of personal and social condemnation and social isolation.

http://advocatesforpregnantwomen.org/articles/murphyandsales.htm