As early as next week, California prison officials will begin sending home female inmates who are mothers and who are convicted of ‘non-serious, non-sexual’ crimes, as the state seeks to relieve overcrowding in its prison system.
The program is “a step in breaking the intergenerational cycle of incarceration,” state prisons Secretary Matthew Cate said, arguing that “family involvement is one of the biggest indicators of an inmate’s rehabilitation.”
California State Sen. Carol Liu (D-La Cañada Flintridge), wrote the 2010 bill that created the new policy in the hope that keeping kids with their parents, rather than in foster care, will “reduce the likelihood that inmates’ children will embark on a life of crime,” according to a 2010 memo from Liu’s office.
At the time the law was proposed, upwards of 19,000 children had mothers in California prisons, and 79% of the incarcerated mothers had never received visitors while they were behind bars.
Read more at latimes.com.
