The rate of incarcerated pregnant women has skyrocketed, it is no longer about how to manage the mother but it is now about how to care for the innocent beings they bring along with them. Women made up about 3 percent of the total national prison population in 1981. Today they make up 6 percent of it. They are coming to prison faster than men are (Harris). “The flood of women into the correctional system has prompted a growing number of states to create programs known as prison nurseries” (Yager, 2). These prison nurseries are home to a selected few dozen of mothers and babies who undergo months of blood tests, urine samples, and previous criminal history background checks to ensure the safety of the mothers and other children in the nursery program. These correctional facilities and their rules are rigidly enforced meaning there is no room for noncompliance. The chance of being accepted into these prison nurseries is that of the marines.…show more content… Bedford Hills in New York State is one of the few correctional facilities that has a prison nursery. It should be easier to look upon them with concern for their future, for their future is ours. As long as women are incarcerated anywhere in America, their babies should have the same chance for a decent beginning as the babies of Bedford have. ( Harris, 4) These tiny humans know only of their mother, so to rid them of her is a cause for these children to It's hard for a young prison mother to learn that she is the most important person in her child's life and that how she holds, touches, feeds and speaks to the child, even in the first year can play a role in the quality of the child's future
