COFFEE BREAK
Saturday, May 28, 2016
PARENTS TALK BACK
East Oregonian
Page 9C
BABIES BEHIND BARS
Love wins
when we
Should moms do time with their newborns?
treasure our
happiest
memories
Editor’s note: Aisha Sultan
is away this week. This column
originally ran in the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch on Feb. 14.
o much of the background noise
in our lives reminds me of
worst-case scenarios, chaos and
decline.
It’s the low-level hum: at work,
on the television, in the paper and
especially on the Internet. The
world we are
shown is largely
one of conlict and
controversy.
There is a chronic
undercurrent of
something bad
happening; an
impending sense of
potential disaster.
Aisha
Things fall apart,
Sultan
people leave us when Parents talk back
we need them to
stay, and too many
people suffer random tragedies and
violence.
In this background gray, which
sometimes darkens, sometimes
lightens, we have to remind ourselves
of the other force that turns this great
big sphere on its axis.
In this moment, as you read this,
so many things are happening outside
the gray. In this very second, these
moments are unfolding:
Parents whose hearts longed
to have a baby are holding their
newborn for the irst time.
A man who aimed too far out of
his league is gazing at his bride and
promising to love her forever.
A daughter is telling her mother
she’s going to become a grandmother.
A father is hugging his grown son
and saying that he’s proud of him.
A cancer patient is hearing a
doctor say the word “remission.”
A teenager has the keys to the car
for the very irst time.
The ground is shaking for
someone getting kissed.
A baby, a spinal-cord injury
patient and an amputee are all taking
their irst steps.
A brand-new business owner is
making her irst sale.
Someone, who no one believed
ever would, is crossing a stage and
accepting a diploma.
Someone is sounding out a word
and beginning to read.
A writer is inishing a book.
An artist is being struck by
inspiration.
A runner is crossing a inish line.
Someone is falling in love.
A stranger is saving another
human being’s life.
A boss is offering a nervous young
adult his irst job.
An unemployed breadwinner with
a family to support is accepting a new
job offer.
A soldier is greeting her family
after a long absence, picking up a
child and holding her so tightly.
An unlikely 10-year-old is scoring
a game-winning goal.
An abandoned puppy is being
chosen by a new family.
Someone is being surprised with a
cake and a birthday song.
Someone is proposing. Someone
is saying yes.
People are dancing — in streets,
at parties, in clubs and in their
bedrooms.
A child is showing his parents his
best-ever report card.
All of that is happening.
Somewhere in this big, wide world,
in the time it took to read that. All
that elusive, random, commonplace,
extraordinary happiness is taking
place — changing people’s lives or
just illing them with gratitude.
I want to pause and consider each
of those scenes unfolding. I want to
let myself remember those moments
from my own life and appreciate
what so many millions of people the
world over are experiencing.
We carry memories of our best
times close to our hearts, but how
often do we take a minute to pull out
those pictures from our mind and
allow ourselves the gift of reliving
them? Of remembering the sights,
sounds and smells as vividly as we
can?
It doesn’t cost anything. And
science has shown us that dwelling in
the good — past or present — makes
us happier. The act of recalling, the
process of committing to memory
these moments, serves us well when
the world seems dark.
It’s a reminder today, of all days.
Sometimes, love wins.
■
Aisha Sultan is a St. Louis-based
journalist who studies parenting in
the digital age while trying to keep
up with her tech-savvy children. Find
her on Twitter: @AishaS.
S
BEDFORD HILLS, N.Y.
(AP) — Jennifer Dumas sits on
a sofa, her smiling 6-month-old
girl on her lap. The room is full of
bright toys and children’s books.
A rainbow-colored activity mat is
on the loor, and Winnie the Pooh
is painted on the walls.
It looks like any other nursery,
except that there are bars on the
windows and barbed-wire fences
outside the austere brick building.
New York’s maximum-secu-
rity Bedford Hills Correctional
Facility is one of the very few
prisons in the U.S. that allow
inmates and their babies to live
together, a century-old approach
that not all corrections experts
agree is the best way to deal
with women locked up while
pregnant.
Mothers who get such a
chance say it’s better than the
alternative: In most prisons,
babies born behind bars must be
given up within a day to a relative
or foster care.
“Before I came here, I thought
it was a terrible idea. A baby
in prison? No, thank you,” the
24-year-old Dumas said as her
daughter, Codylynn, gleefully
rocked in a bouncy seat. “But it’s
actually wonderful to be able to
spend this much time with my
little girl. ... I’m blessed to be
able to go through this.”
Nobody thinks raising babies
behind bars is ideal, and some
worry that the children could
be scarred by the experience.
But some advocates say that the
practice allows mother and child
to develop a vital psychological
attachment, and that the parenting
classes and other practical
instruction help the moms stay
out of trouble when they get out.
About 112,000 women are in
state and federal prisons, mostly
for drug or property crimes. And
an estimated 1 in 25 are pregnant
when they enter, according to the
nonproit Sentencing Project. But
there are no national statistics
on the number of babies born to
inmates.
Of the more than 100 women’s
prisons in the U.S., there are
eight nurseries. While nearly
100 countries, including South
Sudan and France, have national
laws that allow for incarcerated
mothers to stay with their babies,
the U.S. is not among them.
Dumas was three weeks preg-
nant when she was arrested last
year, along with her boyfriend,
on charges they tried to steal a
safe packed with $32,000 in cash
and jewelry. Her baby was born
just days after she took a plea
bargain on attempted burglary
charges that sent her to Bedford
Hills, about an hour north of New
York City, for up to two years.
She is now among 15 carefully
AP Photo/Julie Jacobson
In this April 12 photo, Jennifer Dumas looks out the window with her daughter, Codylynn, inside
her room at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, in Bedford Hills, N.Y. Bedford Hills has one of only
eight working prison nurseries where women live with their babies, out of more than 100 women’s
prisons around the country.
“Before I came here, I thought it was a terri-
ble idea. But it’s actually wonderful to be able
to spend this much time with my little girl. ...
I’m blessed to be able to go through this.”
— Jennifer Dumas, mother at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility
screened new mothers allowed to
serve up to 18 months of their
sentences in a nursery unit that
includes a communal playroom
stocked with toys and mother-
and-child rooms equipped with a
single bed and a crib. The walls
are painted with rainbows, luffy
clouds and jungle and barnyard
scenes. The nursery currently
has 16 babies, including a set of
twins.
During workday hours, the
babies are taken across the street
to a day care center, where they
are watched by staff and other
inmates while the moms go to
school or vocational programs.
But there are constant
reminders it is a prison. Armed
oficers patrol the unit. And the
moms know their babies can be
taken away for such infractions
as ighting or even leaving a toy
in a crib while the baby sleeps.
“It’s still scary,” Dumas said.
“At any given point if you do
what you’re not supposed to your
baby could get sent home.”
Some women have been
dropped from the program from
time to time for breaking the
rules, but corrections oficials
and advocates said they could
not recall any instances in recent
years in which a baby was
harmed.
Still, some argue that prison
should be reserved for punish-
ment and that women should
instead consider putting their
children up for adoption.
“The focus should be on
what’s best for the baby,” said
James Dwyer, a law professor at
the College of William & Mary
who has written a paper on the
topic. “There is skepticism about
these women being adequate
parents.”
Columbia
University
researcher Mary Byrne, who
spent years studying mothers
and children who started life
in Bedford Hills, said that the
youngsters
formed
critical
attachments to their mothers and
that a second study after they
were released found they were
no different from children raised
entirely on the outside.
“Many people would assume
any exposure to prison would
cause problems ... they’ll be
exposed to violence and horrible
people, it will scar them,” she
said. “But that’s not what we
found.”
Sister Teresa Fitzgerald, the
Roman Catholic nun who runs
Hour Children, the nonproit
organization
that
operates
OUT OF THE VAULT
Nude man terrorizes Pendleton
I
against him before disappearing
t seems nude men running
again into the night.
amok in Pendleton is
Almost three weeks after their
something that has happened
initial plea in the newspaper,
before.
police inally caught up with the
In the June 8, 1942 edition of
man. Lloyd Vernon Scott, 31,
the East Oregonian, Pendleton
was arrested by oficers L.A.
police revealed a man had been
Bacon and Raymond Bannister
stalking the streets at night,
at 11:30 p.m. on June 20 in the
completely nude except for a
Renee
sack over his head. The man had
Struthers stairway on the south side of the
appeared at least two or three
Out of the vault Christian church. The oficers
were driving by the church and
times in the previous month,
recalled that their quarry was
and on one of those occasions
often spotted near there. They shined
attempted to attack a young woman.
the headlights of the patrol car on the
Police had kept the man’s antics on the
stairway and discovered Scott, who was
down-low while they attempted to trap
wearing nothing but a pair of socks. He
him, but the “Nude Terror,” as he was
surrendered without a struggle, which
soon called, had up to then eluded them
was a good thing — Police Chief Charles
and they were turning to the citizens of
Lemons had instructed his oficers to
Pendleton for their help.
shoot the suspect if he was spotted and
The man was irst reported on May
refused to surrender.
10 in the vicinity of Southwest Court
Scott was registered at a Pendleton
Avenue and Tenth Street, and then
hotel, and in his room police found
again May 25 in the vicinity of the First
a copy of the June 8 East Oregonian
Christian Church on the North Hill. On
containing the original story about the
the night of May 30 he chased a young
Nude Terror. Allegedly a baker by trade,
woman down Northwest Bailey Avenue
to Main Street, then ducked back into the Scott said he had been traveling through
the area during the past few months and
darkness between houses and escaped.
had a wife in Spokane. Military records
During the irst week of June a resident
show he was discharged from the U.S.
of Southeast Court Place called police
Army in 1939 for desertion. It was
when she saw a man exposing himself
and throwing rocks at her window. Police discovered he also had been arrested in
Walla Walla for indecent exposure the
were unable to locate the man in any of
the sightings, and several people arrested previous month, and had skipped bail.
Scott later signed a confession to
for indecent exposure around the same
indecent exposure. In it, he said “I don’t
time of the Nude Terror’s night-time
know why I do this,” and admitted to
excursions were eliminated from
an urge to expose himself — though he
suspicion for various reasons.
professed he had no memory of any of
During a inal sighting, a man living
the incidents with which he was charged
on Southeast Sixth Street and Byers
and claimed he was probably insane at
Avenue returned home at 2 a.m. June 11
the time.
to ind a man wearing only trunks and
■
shoes sitting on his front porch. The man
Renee Struthers is the Community
led into the darkness when illuminated
Records Editor for the East Oregonian.
by the car’s headlights, but as the
See the complete collection of Out of the
homeowner approached his front door
Vault columns at eovault.blogspot.com
he said the man returned and brushed
Bedford Hills’ nursery, put it
more bluntly: “Babies belong
with their mother. In a palace or
a prison, they don’t know and
don’t care as long as they feel
loved and supported.”
The nursery is operated under
an annual contract with the state
of about $170,000, the correction
department said. It would cost
$480,000 a year to put 16 babies
in foster care, according to state
igures.
Bedford Hills’ recidivism
rate for women in the nursery
program is fairly typical of such
programs, at 13 percent versus 26
percent for all female inmates at
the prison, according to a report
by the Women’s Prison Associa-
tion, an advocacy group.
Bedford Hills has the oldest
continuously operating prison
nursery in the country, opened in
1901. There were many nurseries
years ago, according to Elaine
Lord, the former superintendent.
But they fell out of favor amid
a huge inlux of prisoners in the
1980s and a shift in thinking that
said the privilege of living with
your baby was inconsistent with
the concept of punishment.
Most of the nation’s prison
nurseries have cropped up in the
past 20 years.
The nursery at the Indiana
Women’s Prison houses up to 10
mother-infant pairs for up to 18
months. In South Dakota, a child
can stay only 30 days. In Wash-
ington state, it’s three years. The
Decatur Correctional Center in
Illinois opened a nursery in 2007,
and 73 moms have participated.
ODDS & ENDS
Norway subjects viewers to
2-day stream of app terms of use
HELSINKI (AP) — A Norwegian consumers’ group
took inspiration from “slow television” to produce a
marathon webcast of a team of readers going through
the ine print of terms and conditions of downloadable
apps.
Finn Myrstad from the Norwegian Consumer
Council says the idea was to point out the “absurdity”
and even illegality of some of the conditions. The
Runkeeper apologized to its 45 million users after the
council revealed that it was tracking and sending user
information to a third party even when not in use.
Myrstad said the team decided to read and analyze
the small print of some 20 apps over six months,
discovering that many of them broke the law.
“We got the idea from slow TV, and we wanted
to expose the absurdity of the terms and conditions
of when you download an app,” he told the AP. “You
usually don’t read them because either too long or
complicated, and many of them breach consumer law
and data protection laws.”
The show began on Tuesday morning, with the team
reading through the terms of around 30 popular apps.
It ended 32 hours later. The council later tweeted a
12-second recap of the broadcast.
Norway has popularized “slow television,” putting
ive hours of knitting, a ire burning itself out and
minute-by-minute salmon ishing live on TV.
A pup named Potato? 15 were
registered in NYC last year
NEW YORK (AP) — Bella and Max are top dogs in
New York City.
The city Health Department announced Wednesday
that it registered 1,127 dogs named Bella and 1,073
named Max in 2015.
Bella has been the city’s most popular dog name
since 2008. That’s when the last of Stephenie Meyer’s
vampire-themed “Twilight” novels featuring heroine
Bella Swan was published.
But some dog owners took their inspiration from the
pantry and the garden.
The Health Department says it licensed 27 dogs
named Bean, 17 dogs named Raisin and 15 dogs named
Potato last year.
Names that were popular with certain breeds
included Snoopy for beagles and Tyson for boxers.