‘My Son Had His First Birthday Party In Prison’
Jayla Currie never quite pictured her son Jayden’s first birthday party the way it happened on March 27: in a small guarded room at the Indiana Women’s Prison, with donated presents and a sheet cake for the guests, who were prison staffers. But she was grateful for it, too, because as an inmate of the WeeOnes Nursery Program, Currie is able to spend not only milestones with her son, but every single day.
“I spent my whole pregnancy thinking I couldn’t keep my son because of the amount of time I had to serve my sentence,” Currie, 23, tells Yahoo Parenting, who is nearly three months into serving 10 months (part of a reduced 6-year sentence) for drug charges. “To be able to have him here with me is wonderful.”
Through the unique program, created in 2008, incarcerated mothers share their rooms with their babies.
To qualify, moms must have no more than 30 months of a sentence remaining after their due date. “We don’t sleep on metal bunkbeds and we actually have furniture,” Currie says. “There’s a bed, crib, dresser, closet, and a chair in our room. They try to make it as homey as possible for the babies.” By living together, the inmate moms gets to bond with their children and form a connection that couldn’t be made during visitations in a cold family room.
One in 25 women in state prisons are pregnant, and in federal prisons that number is one in 33 women, according to the Sentencing Project, a national prison-reform advocate organization. And Wee Ones, modeled after a similar program in Ohio, is paving the way by aiming to provide a better solution for pregnant inmates. Since the program began, 145 babies have come through and, at any given time, there are 10 moms and infants, all of whom receive help from “nannies” — other inmates who qualify by not having any violent offenses on their records.
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