Babies behind bars sustain maternal tie

NEW YORK — Keeshana, who is 4 months old, wakes up. Her mother, Veronica Flournoy, lifts her out of the crib. She squirms, and her mother helps her stand. Keeshana has aqua and purple balloons on her tiny sweatshirt and a patch of curly black hair. Her big eyes move to the door. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are out in the hall, painted on the walls.

Keeshana, Veronica, Mickey and Donald are in prison.

Flournoy, 30, is serving a minimum of eight years at the maximum security Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester, N.Y., for criminal sale and possession of a controlled substance. Keeshana is there because her mother is.

They are part of a program that provides nurseries for mothers doing time. New York has three of the four known nurseries behind bars in America: in Bedford Hills; at a medium security prison just across the street, called Taconic; and in the New York jail on Riker’s Island. Nebraska recently installed a nursery at a state prison. And now advocates are trying to persuade officials to put nurseries in federal prisons across the country.

Federal authorities ban nurseries because of liability issues. And some civil libertarians raise another issue: Isn’t keeping a baby in prison actually incarcerating an innocent person?

But Sister Elaine Roulet, 67, a Catholic nun who has been director of the Children’s Center at Bedford Hills for 28 of its 96 years, says no baby has ever been hurt in the nursery.

“The babies don’t know they are in prison,” she says. “The babies know that they are with the person who is significant, and that’s where they should be.” What is a crime is “to snatch the babies from their mothers.”

Three months ago, she wrote to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and urged her to provide nurseries for inmate mothers at federal prisons. If a baby bonds with its mother during its first year, she wrote, he or she will more likely make significant relationships later.

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She has not received a response. The number of female inmates has more than tripled since 1980, totaling 116,450 incarcerated women at the end of 1995, largely because of increased prosecutions of drug offenses. In 1996, 75,000 inmates were mothers, and many were the primary caregivers. These children need continuity and emotional security, Roulet says, to lead productive lives.

Bonding with Keeshana is what concerns Flournoy. If this does not happen now, she says, “then she will never get to know me. I could just see her coming for a [prison] visit and crying because she doesn’t want to come to me.

“This is our first year together, and she will know me as Mommy now.”

A young, pregnant inmate storms through the main room of the nursery, just outside Roulet’s office. She is crying and yelling. Her husband will not let any of her five children see her. A guard hurries into the room, but Roulet is there.

They go to talk in a small room filled with children’s books, where mothers can record themselves reading Dr. Seuss and Sesame Street stories and then mail tapes and the books to their children.

All the shouting and crying shows how important children are to these women, says inmate Jan Warren, 45, an aide in the nursery. “That’s about the only thing that can reduce a woman to that level--the children.”

Besides bonding, Roulet wrote to Reno, nurseries provide an opportunity to rehabilitate mothers.

They attend parenting classes. They must take a prenatal course. At night, they baby-sit each other’s children so they can attend school and earn high school, college or vocational degrees.

Caring for babies teaches responsibility. At Bedford Hills, the mothers sleep in single or double rooms with their infants. The nursery has 30 babies. Recently it had to add 12 beds. In 1990, the state built a new nursery at Taconic for mothers who undergo an intensive substance abuse program.

Each morning, the mothers bathe, dress and feed their little ones. Some take their babies to a day care center so they can attend their required courses. The children play on a soft blue rug with rubber balls and teddy bears.

Toys, clothes and cribs are donated. The state pays for necessities: some baby clothes, formula, diapers, powder and shampoo.

Each baby costs the state $4,000 a year, says Bedford Hills prison superintendent Elaine Lord, which she notes is cheaper than foster care. That includes a baby shower for the mother and a first birthday party for each child.

The babies can stay 18 months. Inmate turnover is so frequent that 80% of the mothers leave with their children. Otherwise, the children go to relatives or foster care.

Gina Worley, 37 and the mother of twins, is serving 3 1/2 to seven years at Taconic for criminal possession of a controlled substance.

Impregnated by a rapist, Worley says, she kept her children so they would not go through the emotional, physical and sexual abuse she did in the foster care system.

“When I leave here,” she says, “I have a chance to start my life again, using the parenting skills that I have learned here. I can be a part of society. I can be a mother. I could love again.”