Alabama Moves Female Prisoners Away From Children

July 18, 2003
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1455

Alabama Moves Female Prisoners Away From Children
Run Date: 07/18/03
By Carla Thompson
WeNews correspondent

Advocates say Alabama's transfer of some female inmates to out-of-state, for-profit facilities goes in the opposite direction of what the women need, which are community treatment programs and plenty of contact with their children.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WOMENSENEWS)--"Are you going take me to see my mama?" asked a 13-year-old girl, who had often visited her mother, imprisoned in the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Ala., through a program called Aid to Inmate Mothers.

The organization's executive director, Carol Potok, had no answer for her.

The youngster's mother is among 300 female inmates transferred out of state so far this year from Julia Tutwiler to relieve overcrowding in the Alabama facility. The mother is serving 20 years, and was incarcerated when the girl was just 18-months-old. But because the girl lives with her grandmother who is on a fixed income, she does not have the funds needed to make the nine-hour ride to visit her mother in the Louisiana prison.

The woman was moved as part of a mass transfer of Julia Tutwiler prisoners that began on April 13, when 70 were moved to the for-profit South Louisiana Correctional Center in Basile, La. Two days later, Potok--whose nonprofit organization in Montgomery strives to maintain or reestablish ties between incarcerated mothers and their children--received a fax listing the names of the women who had been moved. Potok says the move has been "devastating" for many of the imprisoned mothers and their children, whose contact has been jeopardized by the women's transfer to a facility almost 500 miles away.

"As private prison companies become more aggressive in marketing . . . we may see the rise in the number of being sent across state lines," says Lisa Kung, an attorney with Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, who represents the female inmates at Julia Tutwiler.

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Aside from the family issues. I do think that states need to keep their own inmates within their own states, for family.

For profit prisons abuse inmates. Wackenbush, a company that runs some prisons in Texas, Florida and a juvenile facility in Michigan (Bushes and Engler set the deals up) is under investigation for abusing inmates in Florida and Texas. The Michigan facility is for juveniles (Engler called it his "punk prison", so it is visited frequently by social workers and inspectors, as some juvenile kids are federally-funded.

This is not to say that state prisons are never abusive, but there is more accountability to the taxpayers. We've had problems at the women's prison in Michigan with male COs raping inmates or even having "consensual" sex with them. They're the professionals and should know better. The women's facility also doesn't have a doctor on staff and women have to sometimes wait months before seeing a doctor after requesting one. There also was a men's facility that had a TB outbreak. This all happened on Engler's watch. I'm hoping Jennifer Granholm can change some of these atrocities without being labelled soft on crime.

I do think that states need to keep their own inmates within their own states, for family.

For profit prisons abuse inmates. Wackenbush, a company that runs some prisons in Texas, Florida and a juvenile facility in Michigan (Bushes and Engler set the deals up) is under investigation for abusing inmates in Florida and Texas. The Michigan facility is for juveniles (Engler called it his "punk prison", so it is visited frequently by social workers and inspectors, as some juvenile kids are federally-funded.

This is not to say that state prisons are never abusive, but there is more accountability to the taxpayers. We've had problems at the women's prison in Michigan with male COs raping inmates or even having "consensual" sex with them. They're the professionals and should know better. The women's facility also doesn't have a doctor on staff and women have to sometimes wait months before seeing a doctor after requesting one. There also was a men's facility that had a TB outbreak. This all happened on Engler's watch. I'm hoping Jennifer Granholm can change some of these atrocities without being labelled soft on crime.