Let's Jail Abusers, NOT Mothers ! ( 75 Percent of Imprisoned Women Across the Country are Mothers)

California Investigates a Mother-and-Child Prison Center

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.

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.

“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.

-----------------------------------------

We are filling up our jails at an alarming rate with mothers! 75 % of our women prisoners are mothers, most of who had custody of their children before their incarceration.

Do we realize the permanent damage we are doing to these families, and to the children by jailing their mothers for long periods of time for non-violent crimes, in turn Elder Abusers who have left a path of death and destruction get off fancy free, and some even set up up web sites , and brag and gloat at the suffering they have caused and even think they are immune to prosecution because they have gotten away with it for so long!

I realize it's a lot easier to bust a mother , understand it takes a lot less Police Work to jail a mother , but think of the damage you are doing here , now persecuting an elder abuser and sifting fact from fiction , that takes real police work, why don't we have the political will to go after the cancer in our society , so we take the easy way out and pick on the most vulnerable and least able to defend themselves.

Is it worth it, to continue to pick on society most vulnerable while illegals flood the border on any giving day , and terrorist plan, but NO, lets not go after those either, let's continue to fill our prisons with mothers there is very little political risk in that.

Why are we protecting Elder Abusers, Is it because they are so much like us, some of them even work as caregivers, social workers, in hospitals, and they are very good at shifting the blame, and pointing the finger, and they know how to work the system. Do they deserve to run free terrorizing our elders in a low intensity asset hunt , don't worry if it takes real work to figure out who they are thieving , it is easier for the authorities to label most of these cases family 'Quarrel" and go after the mother's that make up for 75% of our jail's female inmate population , they make the easiest targets/victims! . According to the United Nations Convention on Drug Crime UNODC -People have taken psychoactive drugs for curative, religious and recreational purposes for hundreds of years.