New program gives prisoners chance to mother
Kristy Winburne, Heaven's mother, notices such things. Doing a
6-month state jail stint for theft, she has time to notice such
things.
Winburne, 30, calls her situation "a blessing."
Until April, her fate -- and that of her baby -- would have been
much different. She would have given birth, the infant handed to a
foster parent and Winburne again locked up to serve her time.
Winburne and Heaven, though, are reveling in the life of BAMBI --
the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Baby and Mother Bonding
Initiative. Mandated by the 80th Texas Legislature, the program
gives select state jail inmates the chance to live and bond with
their newborns.
Operated out of the Santa Maria Hostel, a northeast Houston
facility for troubled women, the program offers young mothers life
skills and substance abuse counseling, classes leading to a GED and
a crash course in parenting. The idea, said Santa Maria CEO Kay
Austin, is to give the baby a wholesome start and the mother an
incentive to stay straight.
"Our concern has been with the ability of the mother to form a
bond with the baby, but that's not our only concern," Austin said.
"The child -- that's the big issue here. When you have a child with
an attachment disorder, you've got people going through TDCJ again
and again. We're trying to break that cycle."
Becky Price, deputy director of TDCJ's rehabilitation programs
division, said the state's program is patterned after a similar
effort at a Fort Worth federal prison. At its core, the program,
which is supported by the University of Texas Medical Branch and
other organizations, strives to instill a sense of responsibility
in women who previously acted irresponsibly.
"This is the 'ah-ha' moment in terms of learning and accepting
responsibility," said UTMB's BAMBI program manager Liz Moore.
"It's a very positive time in a woman's life."
A typical day, Moore said, starts early with a group session at
which the women -- six currently are in the program, two others have
been released -- set goals for the day. The women are required to
compose a written plan for meeting short- and long-term goals.
Except for brief periods, the care of the infants is in their
hands.
BAMBI participants typically have been convicted of crimes such
as forgery, theft and minor drug offenses. As such, they are
assessed sentences of two years or less and remanded to a state
jail, Price said. In late February, the most recent month for which
records are available, 65 of the state's 11,007 female prisoners
were pregnant.
Women guilty of violent crimes, sex offenses or arson are not
eligible for BAMBI. Program coordinators generally choose women who
are scheduled to be released within six months.
"We give them as many resources as we can," Moore said. "They
leave here with Medicaid, with WIC in place, with birth
certificates applied for. We try to give them as much support as we
can before they get out and try to figure it out for themselves."
Despite its unsettling aspects, some inmate mothers find giving
birth and interacting with their newborns in a prison setting
provide a newfound clarity.
"I realize there is a better life than crime and being in
trouble," said convicted thief Desiree Wilson, 20, whose son,
Aventae, is 2 months old. "Now, I have a baby and I'm loving it."
Kortny Courtney, 32, discovered she was pregnant two weeks after
she arrived at a state jail to serve one year on a drug rap.
"I was scared to death," she said. "The thought of giving
birth and being separated from the child was really weighing on
me."
Courtney, who is the mother of two girls, ages 9 and 14, was
"extremely thrilled" when told she might be eligible for the
BAMBI program. But even when things go well, prison is daunting.
On March 26, more than a week before the program began, Courtney
gave birth to a son, Dylan. In the brief birth-to-BAMBI interim,
Dylan was placed with a caretaker. "Being without him was just
torture," his mother said.
Courtney, who plans upon release in August to work in a family
business and study cosmetology, said the program has changed her
worldview.
"I have set better goals for myself. I don't have to do the
same thing over and over again," she said.
Like Courtney, Winburne, who had two children before entering
prison, credited the program with changing the way she viewed life.
"I think I have benefited from being here," she said. "I'm
ready to get back out there, to take care of my kids."
Heaven, who sleeps through the night except for brief wakeful
interludes at 2 a.m. and 5:30 a.m., seemed blase as her mother
emotionally described how she would do better when released.
"Oh my God, she's her own little person," Winburne said of her
new daughter. "She just looks like all of us. I look at her and I
see all of us in here and that's really special. ... I think I'm
going to cry."