THE FAMILIES LEFT BEHIND AS NUMBER OF FEMALE INMATES RISES

More Children Left Without Mothers

FRAMINGHAM - Kim Cooper adored her 7-year-old son, Scott. But she had a
love that was even more powerful, one that ruled her daily life.

When her son went outside to play, she would make crack cocaine on the
kitchen stove in her Billerica home.

"It's all I cared about," she said. "I thought when I couldn't get it I
would die."

One spring day in 1996, Scott went to a friend's birthday party and
returned to find his mother handcuffed on the floor. A state trooper,
working undercover, had gone to the house and bought cocaine from an
acquaintance of his mother's.

Before mandatory sentencing for drug offenders, a judge would have had the
option of allowing Cooper to remain free on probation while she cared for
Scott. But today, Cooper is inmate F36663, sentenced to MCI-Framingham for
five years for drug trafficking. She is part of one of the fastest-growing
segments of the nation's prison population: women. And with that segment
grows another: children of female inmates, who are taken away from their
mothers -- punished, although they are not guilty. For Scott, membership in
the group has meant a weight gain of 40 pounds, temper tantrums at school,
and antidepressants. He even tried to cut himself with a knife.

The boom in female incarceration has reopened debate over whether laws
intended to capture violent drug kingpins, who are overwhelmingly male,
should be used to lock up women, break up their families, and send children
to overstressed child-welfare systems.

"It's a classic situation where you treat people apparently equally who are
unequal," said US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner. "The results are
unfair. It is not the case that family obligations fall equally on men and
women, so not to take them into account is unfair."

Mothers behind bars face a unique set of struggles, and their growing
numbers pose new challenges to the penal system. Unlike imprisoned men,
whose children are often in the custody of their wives, former wives, or
girlfriends, female inmates are more likely to lose their children to the
state.

The mothers are sometimes wracked by guilt, knowing their criminal behavior
caused their separation from their children. Many dream of being together
again with their children. But a new federal law designed to speed adoption
of children into safe homes will make reuniting more difficult. "There's
been such a rise in the female prison population, and with that has got to
come kids who are left in the wake," said Lorraine Carli, a spokeswoman for
the state Department of Social Services. "If there are no other
alternatives, those kids are going to end up in the foster care system."
Jean Fox, director of Aid to Incarcerated Mothers in Boston's South End,
organizes van rides to bring a dozen children to visit their mothers at
MCI-Framingham each week. When their mothers get out of prison, Fox tries
to help them with the transition. But it's not easy. "When a woman goes to
prison, she loses her house, her furniture, her kids, everything," Fox
said. "So when she comes out of prison, she has to start all over again."

Fox's small nonprofit, and others like it, are struggling to keep up as
more women are imprisoned.

The female population in state and federal prison jumped six-fold between
1977 and 1998, from 12,279 to 82,761, according to the US Bureau of Justice
Statistics. Two-thirds of the women behind bars are mothers of minor
children, according to the bureau.

In Massachusetts, the number of women at MCI-Framingham rose from about 450
to more than 600 between 1987 and 1997, the last year for which Department
of Correction statistics are available. Drug offenses account for 25
percent of their convictions, according to DOC records. More than a third
of the women serving drug sentences were jailed for possession, not
trafficking, according to DOC statistics. "This is part of a new overall
punitive philosophy that cuts across criminal-justice and child-welfare
systems, where you don't give people a second chance and allow for the
possibility that they can change and rehabilitate themselves," said Philip
Genty of Columbia University Law School, a consultant for the Incarcerated
Mothers Law Project at the Women's Prison Association in New York City.

Fourteen percent of the female inmates' children in Massachusetts are in
custody of the Department of Social Services, according to a Wellesley
College study. Ten percent of the children are in foster care and another 2
percent have been adopted.

Some analysts worry that child-welfare systems, already shouldering
unwieldy caseloads, cannot handle the stress of more children. But
defenders of mandatory drug sentences say getting children far away from
their drug-addicted or drug-dealing mothers is more critical than keeping
together such families.

"What we have to ask ourselves is: Are the parents effective role models
and are the children better off by having other people involved in their
lives?" said Plymouth County District Attorney Michael Sullivan. "Sad as it
is, it's probably in the best interest of the child to take the child from
those environments." "It's unfortunate, at least for some of these kids,"
said state Representative Francis Marini of Hanson, the Republican minority
leader.

"You have to be responsible and it's the father and mother of that child
who are the cause of a child being in foster care."

Some mothers inside prison acknowledge that they were not fit parents when
they were on drugs. Cooper said she has received counseling in prison, and
may be a better mother to Scott in the future.

That is, if she gets the chance. After going to prison, Cooper watched
helplessly while her bond to her only son frayed. First, Scott landed at
his grandmother's house in Maine, where he grew emotionally volatile and
angry. He was admitted to Jackson Brook Institute in Portland after he
tried to cut himself with a knife, which a doctor told his mother was a
suicide attempt.

"He was just full of all of these feelings and didn't know how to get them
out," Cooper said.

Cooper's parents couldn't handle Scott, and her former husband's mother
wanted no part of him, she said. Scott would have gone into foster care,
but his father took the boy and moved to Guam. "I don't know what's worse,"
she said, referring to the choice between foster care and her former husband.

Other mothers at MCI-Framingham describe feeling powerless as their
children on the outside tumble into trouble.

From her cell at MCI-Framingham, where she is serving a three-year
mandatory sentence, Marcee Balfour tries to discipline her three children
and help them with homework. She is convinced her 14-year-old daughter,
Alisha, would not have gotten pregnant if Balfour had been around to raise
her.

She's ready for her children's weekly visits each Sunday, with detailed
corrections on their homework.

"It's going to be rough for her because I'm not there," she said of Alisha.
Balfour's release date is Jan. 14, 2001. "The hardest part about being in
prison is the distance from my kids. I have tremendous guilt over this."

Even after they leave prison bars behind, some women will face new
challenges in reuniting with their children because of a recently enacted
federal law. Signed by President Clinton in November of 1997, the Adoption
and Safe Families Act makes states terminate parental rights, with few
exceptions, if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the previous 22
months. That means women sentenced to long prison terms stand to lose their
children. Compliance with the law is mandatory for states to receive
millions of dollars in federal aid. The Massachusetts Department of Social
Services is slated to receive $100 million in such aid.

Fox, of Aid to Incarcerated Mothers, said attitudes against women in prison
are hardening, and her job of helping families reunite will only get tougher.

"Just because a woman is in prison doesn't mean she's an unfit mother," Fox
said. "For a lot of women, incarceration is not the answer. Sometimes, drug
treatment is the answer and incarceration makes things worse." Carli, the
Department of Social Services spokeswoman, said families plagued by drugs,
poverty, and crime are often pulled apart by two state agencies: the
departments of Correction and Social Services. "The profile of women going
to prison is generally single head of household, and that's about 50
percent of our caseload," Carli said. "On some level, the DSS and the
prisons are drawing from the same pool."