[Ppnews] Mother-and-Child Prison investigated
Political Prisoner News
ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Fri Jul 6 17:27:17 EDT 2007
hello comrades,
Today the New York Times broke a story about a
mother-infant prison facility that LSPC has been
investigating for months. Please read the
article below, but please do more than
that: Call the members of California's state
government and let them know we do not accept
abuse and neglect! It only takes 2 minutes to
make a difference. Flood their offices with our voices!
CALL NOW:
Wendy Still (Assoc. Director of Women and
Children, California Department of Corrections
and Rehabilitation) 916-322-8055
tell her: "I am outraged about the neglect and
abuse of mothers and their children at Family
Foundations San Diego. Stop punishing these families!"
Sen. Christine Kehoe (California State Senator, San Diego)
916-651-4039
tell her: "I am outraged about the neglect and
abuse of mothers and their children at Family
Foundations San Diego. There is no such thing as
'better beds'; stop California's prison expansion now!"
Sen. Gloria Romero (California State Senator, Los Angeles)
916-651-4024
tell her: "I am outraged about the neglect and
abuse of mothers and their children at Family
Foundations San Diego. There is no such thing as
'better beds'; We support Sen. Romero in
stopping California's prison expansion!"
Maisha Quint
Advocacy Coordinator
Legal Services For Prisoners with Children
1540 Market Street Suite 490
San Francisco, CA 94102
(p) 415-255-7036
(f) 415-552-3150
<mailto:maisha at prisonerswithchildren.org>maisha at prisonerswithchildren.org
www.prisonerswithchildren.org
The New York Times
July 6, 2007
California Investigates a Mother-and-Child Prison Center
By SOLOMON MOORE
LOS ANGELES, July 5 - The authorities in
California are investigating accusations that
poor health care at a center where mothers serve
prison terms with their young children led to the
stillbirth of a 7-month-old fetus and endangered the lives of several children.
Staff logs, statements by prisoners and
interviews with investigators, staff members and
prisoners' families depict a facility where
inmates and their children were denied hospital
visits and medications, and where no one kept
adequate records of accidents involving injuries
that included a skull fracture and a broken collarbone.
The California Department of Alcohol and Drug
Programs, one of several agencies investigating,
is expected to decide this month whether to
continue licensing the center, which houses
nonviolent offenders, most convicted of drug crimes.
The problems at the center coincide with
continuing intense scrutiny of health care
delivery in California's prisons. A
court-appointed receiver was handed control of
prison medical services more than a year ago
after a federal court found widespread neglect and malpractice.
The 40-bed facility, located in San Diego and
offered as an alternative to serving time in the
customary penitentiary setting, has
dormitory-style rooms for inmate and child
adjoining shared living areas. It is run under
the banner of the Family Foundations Program by a
nonprofit contractor, Center Point Inc., which
did not return calls seeking comment.
An official with the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation, Wendy Still, said
the department had looked into accusations
surrounding the center and had ordered Center
Point, based in San Rafael, Calif., to hire a
part-time doctor for the facility and keep a
registered nurse there. Disciplinary action could
be taken against Center Point, depending on the
results of the investigation, Ms. Still said.
The San Diego police would not comment on the
inquiry, except to confirm that their child abuse
unit was taking part. A spokeswoman for the
court-appointed receiver, Robert Sillen, said it
was unlikely that his authority extended to the care of children at the center.
"We don't think that these kids are part of our
mandate, because they are not incarcerated," said
the spokeswoman, Rachel Kagan.
With the state dogged by prison overcrowding, the
Family Foundations Program had been considered a
model for nonviolent female offenders. A
provision for a similar program in Fresno, the
state's sixth for incarcerated mothers and their
children, is in a new law that, to accommodate
53,000 more prisoners, provides $7.7 billion for
prison construction and new initiatives.
Though only a small fraction of the total prison
population, female inmates are growing in number
in California and other states. The federal
Bureau of Justice Statistics announced last week
that the nation's prison and jail population grew
2.8 percent from midyear 2005 to midyear 2006,
the largest rise since 2000, and that the number
of incarcerated women grew at almost double the
overall rate, to a total of 111,403.
Sharp increases in imprisonment of women began
after the enactment of stiffer drug sentencing
laws in the 1980s and 1990s, said Robert J.
LaLonde, an economist at the University of Chicago.
"A lot of women who probably wouldn't have gone
to prison before are now going in for Class 4
drug felonies - the least serious felonies," Dr.
LaLonde said, referring to crimes that in some
instances had previously resulted in nothing more than probation.
Studies show that about 75 percent of imprisoned
women across the country are mothers, most of
whom had custody of their children before their
incarceration. In most cases, the children are
left in the care of grandparents or other members
of the extended family, but about 10 percent are placed in foster care.
Only a handful of states offer imprisoned mothers
the opportunity to live with their children, and
even those states allocate few spaces to them.
The most such spaces are in California, where 140
women live with their children at five small
centers, including the one in San Diego.
Advocates of mother-child prison programs say
they can reduce recidivism while retaining family
bonds and easing pressure on the state's child
welfare system. But even supporters worry that
the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation, or C.D.C., may be too
dysfunctional to provide sufficient oversight.
"This program has fallen by the wayside," said
Karen Shain, co-director of Legal Services for
Prisoners With Children, based in San Francisco.
"I don't want to say that they should shut it all
down, but I don't know that the C.D.C. has the
capacity to take care of women and children."
Accusations of neglect and incompetence at the San Diego center abound.
For instance, one inmate, Marsha Strickland,
complained to the staff about her 5-year-old
daughter's blinding headaches and constant nausea
for at least six weeks before the girl was
allowed a hospital visit in January, according to
accounts by inmates and former staff members. The
child is now living with relatives and undergoing treatment for brain cancer.
In April, another prisoner, Sonya Bradford,
delivered a stillborn fetus. According to
interviews with former staff members and to
witness statements offered to the San Diego
police, the prison's staff had ignored Ms.
Bradford's complaints that the fetus, which was 7
months old, had stopped moving. Corrections
officials deny responsibility for the stillbirth
because it occurred only two days after Ms. Bradford's arrival at the center.
Yet another inmate, Dinesha Lawson, says she told
the staff for several days that her infant
daughter's breathing was labored. Finally, on May
3, Ms. Lawson and the baby, Esperanza, were taken
to the emergency room of a children's hospital,
driven there by Trish Hoban, a vocational
counselor later fired by Center Point on the
ground, she says, that she had shared inmates'
confidential health information with other inmates, an accusation she denies.
"They took the baby into the trauma ward to a
room called the resuscitation room," Ms. Hoban
said of Esperanza. "They said the baby's heart
rate was 32. She was in cardiac arrest."
Esperanza's father, William Ramirez, says she had
double pneumonia and was later given a regimen of
antibiotics and a blood transfusion.
Ms. Still, the corrections official, denies that
the girl was in cardiac arrest but acknowledges
that she required placement in an incubator.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACTS: Patrice Douglass,
510-367-9956 (cell) Karen Shain, 415-672-3311 (cell)
Cassie Pierson, 415-255-7036 ext. 310(office)
DATE: July 5, 2007
Prison Investigation Uncovers Child Abuse Pattern
Unsafe Conditions at San Diego’s
Family Foundation Program
SAN DIEGO –San Diego Police Department and Child
Protective Services have opened an investigation
into severe child abuse and neglect by California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s
(CDCR) Family Foundations Program (FFP) in San
Diego, prisoners' rights advocates have learned.
Because there is no transparent oversight into
the FFP programs, these practices went unreported
until Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
(LSPC), a San Francisco-based prisoners' rights
advocacy group, began receiving calls and
uncovering case after case problematic neglect.
In one instance, Denisha Lawson, a prisoner at
FFP San Diego, gave birth to a premature baby who
became very ill shortly after she left the
hospital. After pleading with FFP staff for days
to take her baby to the hospital, Denisha refused
to move until her baby received care. When the
infant was finally taken to the hospital the
child was in near complete cardiac arrest.
Denisha Lawson’s partner, William Ramirez and
father of the newborn baby asks, “If Family
Foundations is supposed to be a treatment
facility, why would they do this to women and
babies? Denisha did nothing wrongshe was only
trying to protect our daughter.”
“Women will go through a lot to stay with their
children. The CDCR has created a system where
women are afraid to complain because they don’t
want to be separated. I can only imagine their
fear and anger when they realize that their
children are in danger!” said Harriette Davis,
LSPC Board Secretary and a former prisoner who
sued for access to a mother-infant program when
she was pregnant with her daughter in the 1980s.
“LSPC and other advocates must be allowed access
to all mother-infant facilities run by the CDCR
to ensure that women and children know their
rights and are receiving proper care,” said
Cassie Pierson, staff attorney at LSPC.
In addition to expressing concern for their
children’s health, mothers are scrambling to find
the daily essentials needed for their children’s
care. In an unprecedented show of unity, all 26
women at the FFP in San Diego filed a grievance
on June 20th, 2007, asking how their children’s
money is being spent when the facility is
chronically undersupplied with diapers, bottles,
and other necessities. “We’d like to know how our
funds are allocated and why we always run short.
We’d like an ample amount of supplies in stock as
to prevent these situations from occurring in the
future,” the grievance states.
Former FFP San Diego employee Megan N. Lini, when
told about this public scandal, expressed deep
fear for her former clients. “I only hope that no
child gets separated from their mother because of
the criminal actions of FFP staff. I wish I could
have done more to protect these people while I was working there.”
Advocates say this investigation shows that
punitive programs are not the answer to substance
abuse/use and that isolation does not stop this
cycle. Maisha Quint, family advocacy coordinator
at LSPC, said, “There is a better way. If you
really want to help women rehabilitate, stop
putting them in hidden cages. These women need
real community-run programs where they and their children can heal.”
Cynthia Chandler, co-director of Justice Now, an
Oakland-based organization that advocates for the
legal and human rights of women in prison,
explains, “The pattern of abuse at Family
Foundations is exactly why women in prison and
their advocates have been opposed to prison
expansion in any form. With judges poised to cap
the prison population and prisoner medical care
already under federal receivership, it is clear
that expanding the system just isn’t an option.”
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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