Missouri considers prison nursery to keep incarcerated mothers with their newborns

Two Missouri Republican lawmakers are proposing to create nurseries in state prisons where incarcerated women who give birth can stay with their newborns for up to 18 months.

The program, in place in nine states, is intended to reduce recidivism and improve health outcomes for the children, who would otherwise be removed from the mother without time for breast-feeding or parental bonding.

“The data shows that when you’re able to keep a child with their parents in the correctional facility during [the] critical zero-to-18 month period, those children have much better outcomes,” Rep. Curtis Trent, a Springfield Republican, told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. “They experience much less depression, anxiety.”

The Department of Corrections appears on board with the idea. Officials visited a prison nursery program in Indiana last month to learn of its operations, the department’s legislative liaison Adam Albach told the committee.

Corrections officials estimate a seven-bed nursery would cost about $1 million a year to operate, but that money would have to be approved in future budgets if the General Assembly agrees to create the program. Lawmakers suggested it could reduce the costs of foster care, recidivism, and negative health outcomes in the children.

A study of the prison nursery program in Nebraska found it resulted in a 28% reduction in recidivism for the women who participated.

“For women being productive members of society, for children growing up well-adjusted and being able to participate fully in our society, those benefits are truly incalculable,” Trent said.

Eligibility for the nursery would be determined by prison officials, not the sentencing court, and could include such programs as parenting classes, counseling or a requirement to earn a GED, according to the proposal.

Like the general prison population, the numbers of women and of inmates giving birth, have declined in Missouri over the last five years. Prison births peaked at 73 in 2016, according to Department of Corrections spokeswoman Karen Pojmann.

Last year, the 25 inmates who gave birth had an average of three months left on their sentences. Only two were serving time for violent crimes.

In 2018, the General Assembly approved a ban on shackling pregnant women in prison during their third trimester. Lawmakers have been trying to push county jails to adopt the same measures, said Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, an Arnold Republican.

Last year, one of the nursery program proponents, Ellisville Republican Rep. Bruce DeGroot, pushed to add money in the budget to make tampons and pads free for women in prisons and jails.

Maggie Burke, a former Illinois warden who now works for a St. Louis organization supporting women re-entering society after prison, testified Wednesday that a prison nursery program she oversaw in Illinois reduced inmates’ rules violations and lifted staff morale.

Responding to lawmakers’ concerns about safety, Burke said the Illinois nursery was placed in a minimum security facility where all inmates were screened for past involvement with the child welfare system and convictions for violent crimes or crimes against children.

“They all knew it was a privilege to be at the facility where the babies were kept,” she said. “There was a lot of pride in the women who were caretakers of the unit ... The whole feeling of the facility was different because the babies were there.”

This story was originally published January 13, 2022 at 5:00 AM.