Program gives convict mothers a boost

LOS ANGELES (AP) When her prison sentence ends in 1999, Stacey Lopez
says, she hopes crime and drugs are her past and being a mom is her
future. The state hopes so, too.

The Department of Corrections placed Lopez and her 2yearold daughter,
RayAnn, in a halfway house where they get to live together while Lopez
gets parenting lessons, drug and alcohol counseling, medical care, job
training and education.

``I want to raise her the way I should have been raised,'' Lopez said.
``I don't want her to be like me.''

Lopez has spent most of her 25 years on the streets of South Central Los
Angeles or in jail or prison.

She was 13 when she was convicted of residential burglary and sent to
the California Youth Detention Center in Saugus.

She spent the next 12 years in and out of prison, adding seconddegree
robbery, escape and selling cocaine to a cop to her rap sheet.

``When I'd get out, I could never stay out for long,'' Lopez said. ``I'd
usually be out on the streets for four months, six months at the most,
before I was arrested again. I ain't been out a year since 1987.''

``I will this time, though,'' she said.

What makes this time different is the state's California Mother Infant
Care Program, she said. Ninetyfour inmates are assigned to the program,
which has contracts with halfway houses in Santa Fe Springs and Pomona.

Lopez entered the program in July 1995, when it was operated out of the
House of Uhuru, a converted Watts convalescent home, where her daily
routine included taking RayAnn to day care and hopping a bus to get to
writing and typing classes.

In June, the Watts Foundation lost its contract to run the program, and
Lopez was moved to Santa Fe Springs. In the meantime, the Department of
Corrections shifted the emphasis of the program.

``In the past, the program allowed the women to work in the community,
but we want to place the emphasis on parenting and life skills,'' said
Sterling O'Ran, chief of the department's Women and Children Services
Unit.

Lopez knows the program won't erase her past, but she has a newfound
confidence she hopes will help her.

``The program made me see that there's nothing out there no more for me
to be running to,'' she said. ``I got a daughter, I got
responsibilities, I can't be doing that stuff anymore.''