. . . and against, in N.Z. and U.S.

Press, 2 May 1984, Page 15

. . . and against, in N.Z. and U.S.

By

KARREN BEANLAND

Justice officials in New Zealand believe that children should not be kept in prison with their mothers. Women inmates who have older children get no special treatment. Their children may visit them in prison for four hours each week — if they can get there. The main prison for women in New Zealand is at Paparua. Most of the inmates come from the North Island and distance cuts them off from their families.

Most prisoners in minimum security are allowed home leave once every two months to see their children if they are in Christchurch or can afford the cost of travelling. The policy is a little more flexible for women who are pregnant when they are sent to prison. “Where a prisoner intends keeping her baby, our policy is that every effort must be made to maintain the mother-and-child contact, short of keeping the child in the institution,” says the assistant secretary for penal institutions, Mr Bob Williams.

When the woman is due to give tjrth to her child, shfe is sent to a

maternity hospital, where she usually remains until arrangements are made for the child. In a few rare cases, some of which have been recent, women have been allowed to have their babies in prison until proper provision has been made for their care either by the woman’s family or the Department of Social Welfare. Mr Williams says this happend once many years ago in the nowclosed Dunedin Women’s Prison. More recently, it has happened at the Arohata Youth Institution near Wellington.

The Christchurch Women’s Prison has not yet been faced with the problem, although there are two pregnant prisoners there at present. The superintendent, Miss Fleur Grenfell, hopes that both these women will be released by the time they give birth; Mr Williams says that even when women at Arohata have been allowed to keep their babies with them, it has been only for a short time — a matter of weeks.

The mother and child are kept in virtual isolation in the institution’s sick bay, which means that there is no facility for other sick

inmates. Mr Williams says the usual policy when a prisoner wants to keep her baby is for arrangements to be made so that they are held together outside the prison. In all the cases dealt with at Arohata so far, the new mothers have been granted early release on parole by the Minister of Justice under section 31A of the Penal Institutions Act, 1954.

The superintendent at Arohata, Mr Lyn Rastrick, says that each application for special release is treated on its merits. The nature of the woman’s offence and the sentence she received are taken into account.

He adds that if any prisoner failed to get special release, arrangements would have to be made for her family or the Department of Social Welfare to look after the baby. Miss Grenfell says that the courts usually take a woman’s pregnancy into account when imposing sentence o;£ her. She does

not believe that the Christchurch Women’s Prison is an appropriate place for children. “There are a lot of pressures and tensions in a prison like ours.” Nevertheless, she believes it is good for the women in the prison to have contact with young children. She encourages visitors to bring children with them and thinks it would be even better if the inmates could have more contact with their own children.

The problems surrounding the holding of new mothers in custody came- under the spotlight in 1982, when a Tongan overstayer was arrested and held at the women’s division in Mount Eden prison until she could be deported. She was breast feeding an eightweek old baby at the time, but the baby was put in Social Welfare care, along with her four other children. She was also refused permission to breast feed the baby while she was held briefly at the Auckland police station. Amid general public Outrage,

including claims that taking a breast-fed baby from its mother was “a form of torture,” Justice Department officials ordered that she be held under guard at a Salvation Army home with her children. They said that the welfare of the baby was paramount. Another case early last year raised similar problems, although it attracted less public interest. A 29-year-old Christchurch woman was found guilty of wilfully ill-treating a foster child. She had a nine-month-old baby, which she was breast feeding, and was pregnant with another child. In the two weeks between her District Court trial and her appearance for sentencing, she was held in custody at a Salvation Army home so that she could be with her baby. They were separated when she was sentenced to six months in prison at Arohata and a year probation. After her new baby was born last September, she was released from prison and was allowed to live “under strict supervision” in a hostel near her family’s North Island home.

Mr Williams says that the object

tion to having children in prisons with their mothers is that there are no proper facilities for them. A separate facility could be built at one of the existing institutions, but it would be empty most of the time because of New Zealand’s small prison population. There would inevitably be some stigma attached to a child in prison. It would also place “a very heavy burdon of responsibility” on staff, who would have to ensure that the mother and child were protected from harassment by other inmates.

Mr Williams says the approach to, pregnant women prisoners varies from country to country. Some countries, like New Zealand, do not allow mothers to have their children in prisons. Others, which have a bigger female prison population, have facilities for mothers to be with their babies until they are 12 months old. Some allow children up to.the age of five to stay with their mothers. “Ours is not a perfect solution, but we think it is a good solution for New Zealand conditions, given the small number of women we are dealing with,” he adds.