A decade later - Fundação Luso-Americana

After our interviews in the penitentiary,
Sandra Enos remarked that when you are a
woman who’s committed a crime, you’re
penalized twice. In addition to the legal punishment,
these women often lose custody of
their children. “In most US correctional
facilities mothers and their children are not
allowed to be together,” she says. “Some
women are incapable of putting motherhood
first, but I’ve met good mothers and stable
families among the inmates.”
According to the Prison Activist Resource
Center, on any given day there are 90 thousand
women in detention in the US and, as
a result, 167 thousand children are forced
to grow up without their mothers.
When Sophie, 24, who is sitting next to
Petra, launches into her story, you realize
that she’s lived as fast as she talks. From
her rapid-fire sentences we find out that
her 11 month-old son was born hooked
on the same addictive white powder that
drove his mother to prostitution. Convicted
for selling drugs, Sophie comes from a long
line of marginalized family members who
are no strangers to the correctional system.
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‘ “in most us correctional facilities mothers and their
children are not allowed to be together,” she says.
“some women are incapable of putting motherhood first,
but i’ve met good mothers and stable families among
the inmates.”
’
A victim of child abuse, Sophie was turning
20-dollar tricks before she was picked
up by police. She freely admits that she
needed the help she found in jail. “Being
here saved my life,” she admits. “If it wasn’t
for the doctor’s appointments they made
me go to after I was arrested, my son
would have been born blind.”
Trisha has been sentenced to 18 months.
Less insecure than Sophie, she is a perfect
illustration of the role poverty and crossgenerational
delinquency play in the lives
of these inmates. At 13 she was already an
addict with a mother hooked on heroine
and an alcoholic father. Two fleeting experiences
with motherhood are the closest she
came to having a family relationship.
An inmate and her child in the corridor of the women’s prison in Tires, portugal.
She is tough when she talks and her
words smack of intentional self-flagellation,
as if she thought she deserved all her suffering
and didn’t need anyone to tell her
she’d screwed up. “I’m a 22 year-old junky
and a convict,” she says. “I’m not fit to be
a mother. I’m really sorry about it, but that
doesn’t change anything. Before, if I was
given a choice between coke and my baby,
I would have handed him over in a heartbeat
for a few lines.”
According to the US Department of Justice,
close to two million minors have a parent
in prison. The miles that separate female
inmates from their progeny is one of the
most painful consequences of incarceration,
and one that is attributable to gender. Today,
Parallel no. 6 | FALL | WINTER 2011
JOSé CARLOS CARVALhO