Mothers and babies in prison
 
Sorry I'm entering this discussion thread a little late. 
 
I am very interested in this topic and submitted a recommendation for a policy change to the NZ Ministry of Corrections around nine years ago while completing a post grad diploma in child advocacy at a NZ university. Later the Green Party MP Sue Bradford managed to get a parliamentary select committee hearing on the topic of mothers and babies in prison and just before the Labour Govt lost power in 2008 a bill was passed to set up mother-baby units. The aim was to provide the self care unit facilities for selected mothers and babies to stay together for up to two years in prison. As yet this has not been actioned and even when it is there will only be facilities for four women in the South Island of NZ and four in the North. Insufficient to meet the needs. Currently mothers can have their babies with them in the self care units until the baby is nine months old. This works well for most women as parole board hearings often happen before that time so mother-baby separation is avoided. Trouble is that the nine month option will go when the other programme comes in. Advocating to support the existence of both options is one of my projects. The local prison - where I support breastfeeding women prisoners - has four breastfeeding women in one self care unit at the moment. That is 100% of the current prison mother population and the babies range in age from six weeks to seven months.
 
Part of the prison work I am doing also involves establishing an education programme for pregnant women prisoners and I am working on this project with two other midwives. I am also very keen that women prisoners who birth at the local tertiary maternity hospital receive their entitlement to birthing and postnatal care just the same as any other woman. To this effect I developed an appendix for the facility breastfeeding policy about the rights of women prisoners birthing and receiving postnatal care there.
 
Sorry this is so long - the point of the long preamble is to say that if anyone is interested in receiving a copy of this appendix, based on a human rights framework, just email me off list and I will send it to you.
 
All the best
 
Carol Bartle (NZ)
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