Program enables chosen few to live in housing with their children

Second chance for prisonermothers

By Melinda Sacks
Mercury News Staff Writer

MICHELLE Williams is like many young mothers. She dotes on her 2
1/2yearold daughter, Johnnisha, reading her books like ``I'll Always
Love You.'' She splashes in the bath with her, and sings bedtimefavorite
Barney's theme song: ``I love you. You love me. We're a happy family.''

But the similarities to normal family life end there.

At 25, Williams has spent much of her life behind bars. Before she turned
14, she had owned a gun, been busted for selling drugs, and involved in
more violent street crime than she cares to recall.

Today, she is a habitual felon doing time and a mother who gave birth in
jail and now raises her daughter while incarcerated. Patdown searches,
random urine tests and 24hour surveillance are a part of her everyday life.

``When Johnnisha sits with me and tells me, `Mommy, I love you,' said
Williams, ``all I can think of is, `You wouldn't have loved me if you'd
known me then.' ''

Even though ``then'' wasn't all that long ago, Michelle Williams' life has
changed dramatically.

At the center of that change is a littleknown state program that gives 100
jailed moms a chance to stay with their young children. Instead of being
locked up in state prison at Chowchilla, Williams serves her sentence along
with seven other women in one of three restored Victorian homes in a
Salinas neighborhood. Inside the homes, the women attend parenting classes,
receive treatment for substance abuse, and spend time in a highly
structured residential setting.

If the idea seems anachronistic by today's tougher sentencing standards,
it's probably because the program was conceived nearly 20 years ago as a
way of handling increasing numbers of mothers in prison. The first
prisonmom centers, however, didn't open until 1988; the Salinas houses
followed in 1991.

Spread among seven locations around the state, the homes have allowed
several hundred women to be with their children since the program began.
Those hundreds, however, are just a fraction of the 11,000plus female
inmates held in California prisons. Eighty percent of those women have
children, officials say. And the number of imprisoned moms continues to grow.

``The increase of women in prison is really quite dramatic,'' said Michael
Rustigan, professor of criminology at San Francisco State University.
``Since 1984, it has quadrupled.''

Drug cases led to rise

The numbers are a result of far more stringent sentencing laws and tougher
punishment for drug convictions, said Rustigan. He added that the majority
of imprisoned mothers are single.

``On the one hand, you can say let's be humanitarian and unite children
with their parents,'' said Rustigan, who strongly favors keeping women
prisoners and their children together. ``But the practical argument for
these programs is just as strong without them, the children are going to
become damaged goods.''

The state Department of Corrections recognizes this and has tried to find
additional locations to set up more motherinfant programs, said
corrections spokeswoman Christine May.

``The department believes these kinds of programs are very important,'' May
said. ``They allow young children to be with their mothers and bond at the
same time the women are in programs teaching about substance abuse
prevention, parenting and job skills.''

In California alone, it is estimated that 200,000 children are growing up
while one of their parents is in prison. Nationwide, the figure is 1.5
million. Illinois and California are the only states that have established
prisonmom programs as a part of their corrections system, officials said.

``Having your mom in prison is like having a parent die,'' said Jennifer
Tait, director of San Jose Friends Outside, a nonprofit group that helps
families with a family member in prison. ``Children growing up in families
with parents incarcerated are five to six times more likely to be
incarcerated themselves.''

To apply for one of the 100 beds in California's motherinfant program,
women must have a child under 3 and be serving less than three years for
nonviolent crimes. They must agree to the parameters of the daily routine.
If they stray, they are returned to prison, where they are separated from
their child.

Those who are accepted to the program share a double room with another
mother and both women's children. Mom goes to therapy, treatment for trauma
recovery (a majority of female inmates are victims of physical abuse), and
classes for addiction, parenting, stress management, and financial
management. There also are classes to finish high school or get a community
college degree. The children are cared for by staff and volunteers.

The program's goal, said the Salinas program director, Ann Harrison, is to
truly rehabilitate, not simply punish. Planning for life after release is
crucial, she added. When the women leave, they will be clean and sober,
they will know how to be good mothers, and, she believes, they will have a
future.

``Most of the people who go to prison are going to come back into the
community they were arrested in,'' Harrison said. ``If they sit in prison
with no access to treatment or education, with close to animal conditions,
how are they going to behave when they get out?''

It is too soon to show success figures because the full program, including
the key element of treatment for substance abuse, is only four years old.
But Williams and her housemates say they will change the public's
perception about what they can accomplish.

``It used to be when I'd mess up and people would say, `This too shall
pass,' I'd look at them like, `What are you, in the Charles Manson school
of reality?' But now I've changed,'' she said. ``I believe God didn't
change my life this much to drop me off somewhere. I think this is it for
me. I believe it.''

Harrison is banking on those words. As executive director of Friends
Outside in Monterey County, she is confidante, house mother and eternal
optimist.

Harrison and her staff work under contract with the California Department
of Corrections, operating the center from the three restored Victorians in
a neighborhood of apartments and lowincome housing. The program costs the
state about $25,000 per woman each year, about the same as a prison stay.

Some would consider the lavender and palegray homes to be the nicest on
the block. There are no bars on the windows, and from the outside no one
would know prisoners live there.

But in the foyer just inside the front door is the checkin desk, where a
guard uses a video camera to observe residents in this and the other
houses. Every minute of every day, the women's whereabouts are tracked. A
wall chart tells what time medications are available. If anyone goes out,
they must get permission first.

For those who have obeyed the house rules for 90 days, a bit of freedom is
the reward. Day passes allow certain, preplanned outings. Upon return, a
desk check involves showing receipts and purchases. In the four years the
Salinas center has been operating, two women have walked away.

While the moms do their work, the children go to onsite day care and play
with volunteer grandmas older women who live in the community. When the
children reach 4, they go off to nursery school at the local Head Start
program.

In spite of a strict regimen of classes and therapy, there is little
resemblance to life in jail, said Williams.

While she was in prison at Chowchilla, she said, the day's activities were
``wheeling, dealing, robbing, stealing.'' In fact, she said, it wasn't too
different from living on the street, where gangs ruled and drug use was
rampant.

In and out of jail for selling drugs, getting into fights, robbery and
burglary, Williams followed in the footsteps of her parents, who both
served prison sentences while she was growing up, she said. Today, four of
Williams' nine siblings are in jail, she said.

``I am determined to break the cycle,'' Williams said. ``Maybe if I am not
away from my daughter, she won't have to act out and go to therapy and be
in gangs because her mother deserted her. It's not that I'm against
discipline, but when I was a kid, everyone told me to shush and I got
whipped for everything, whether it was bad or just not perfect. Pretty soon
I just thought I was bad, bad, bad. I want my kids to be doctors or lawyers
or whatever they want. But most of all, I want to be a positive role model
like I never had.''

For all the turmoil of Michelle Williams' life, she is far from unique.
Women in jail, mothers in jail and now babies being raised by women in
jail are no longer considered rarities. Women have shown they can be
just as violent, and just as incorrigible, as men.

Tawanna Ward, whose fourth child was born in midOctober is living proof of
how it happens.

After her alcoholic mother died young, Ward, 22, was raised for a while by
her father, who she said was in and out of prison. She also spent years of
her life in foster homes, never really feeling like she belonged. Her
grandmother tried to keep her, she said, ``but I started going really fast
on her and she couldn't handle me.''

Ward was 12 when she was caught for petty theft.

``At 13, I started smoking cigarettes and drinking,'' she said. ``I dyed my
hair honeyblond, I started having experiences with older men. I'd tell
them I was 17. I got pregnant with twins when I was 14.''

An arrest at 18 for selling crack cocaine to an undercover agent landed
Ward in prison.

The twins, now 8, live with their father and his wife. They are used to
``seeing their mother behind glass,'' said Ward, who grew up in San Jose.
Last time they visited, she was still in jail.

``I've tried to explain to them that I'm not a bad person, I just did some
bad things,'' Ward said. ``One of them asked me why I was wearing an orange
jumpsuit. I told her I had to wear it in jail. She said, `Mommy, if you
took off that suit could you come home?' ''

`Home' is better today

At least ``home'' today is better than the cell Ward left just three weeks
ago in prison.

The biggest difference between prison and Salinas, said Ward, is the
feeling of family. Mother and baby have a builtin support system of other
mothers. ``Just being around other kids, being able to sometimes walk down
the street, or cook a meal (in the group kitchen they all share) is so much
better,'' she said. ``I go to the store with an escort, but it's better
than going to the canteen.''

As her baby grows, Ward will finish school: ``This time I have plans,'' she
said. ``I'm into service for other people, nursing, whatever I can do. I'd
like to help other people.''