You can be a part of the solution by contacting your state representatives and members of Congress to ask them to get behind efforts that support incarcerated mothers and their children.
This Mother’s Day many of us will be fortunate enough to celebrate the person who brought us into this world. But for millions of families, the empty seat at Sunday brunch will be a painful reminder that our criminal justice system tears countless children from their mothers’ arms every year. This is a terrible injustice that affects us all.
Having cycled in and out of custody for more than 20 years of my life, I have witnessed the ways in which mass incarceration wreaks havoc on families and women in particular. It’s why I created A New Way of Life, a reentry organization helping formerly incarcerated women rebuild their lives. It’s also why every Mother’s Day A New Way of Life honors incarcerated mothers, their families and the community at large by sharing how our criminal justice system has left these women and their children behind–and by asking you to join us to do something about it.
It’s no secret that fractured families create trauma that reverberates across our communities for generations. Children lose so much when they don’t have their parents, and that leads to a predictable result: Intergenerational cycles of incarceration and higher rates of recidivism. Today, over half of all women in U.S. prisons are mothers. The heartbreak that is inflicted on them and their families is staggering. When mothers are imprisoned, their children are often left without a primary caregiver. Family separation due to a parent’s incarceration has impacted over 5 million children and has profound negative impacts on a child’s well-being including poverty, homelessness, unemployment and academic underachievement.
