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SA should design child-friendly prisons

Sep 16, 2014
The Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge - a correctional facility for First Nation Women. Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan Canada. Photo: supplied.

The Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge - a correctional facility for First Nation Women. Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan Canada. Photo: supplied.

If you bring this up at a dinner party, you can expect some animated conversation.

“Should mothers be able to keep their children with them when they serve out a prison sentence? Or fathers, for that matter …?”

Many people believe that if you do the crime, you forfeit the right to a majority, if not all, of society’s privileges and responsibilities. This includes raising your own children – after all, prison is no place for a child.

But we rarely stop to think about the long-term impact that incarceration of mothers has on their children – and by extension, on society.

Worldwide experience, supported by British research[i], indicates that the risk of anti-social and delinquent behaviour is about three times higher in children whose parent or parents are in prison.

These children are more than twice as likely to have mental health problems during their lifetime.

Sadly, 65 per cent of boys with a convicted parent also go on to offend.

Herein lies the challenge for communities around the world.

If I were at your dinner table, I would argue that mothers in prison should be able to keep their children and we need to do more to provide appropriate accommodation that helps integrate parenting as part of prisoner rehabilitation.

Parent Infant Family Australia (PIFA), an independent not-for-profit organisation that offers services to incarcerated mothers in NSW correctional facilities, writes on its website:

“All parents, including women in gaol, experience the birth of a child as a time of new beginnings, of hope for the future and connection to a bigger picture. For this reason, pregnancy and early parenting can be seen as a window of opportunity for parents to begin to recover from past traumas and make positive changes in their lives…”[ii]

This reflects the positive contribution to rehabilitation that parenting can provide to offenders.  The innate mothering instinct – when unclouded by alcohol and drugs, and other negative influences – may ignite for the first time in a woman, and become the impetus to change offending habits.

I acknowledge that some might baulk at the idea of “using” children to help rehabilitate their mothers. But if it can be shown that it is also in the best interests of the child to remain with their mother, in appropriate accommodation, then I suggest that the negative connotations are outweighed by the increased potential for positive outcomes.

High Security Women’s Facility in London, UK. Photo: supplied.

High Security Women’s Facility in London, UK. Photo: supplied.

In 2010 I had the opportunity, via the Catherine Helen Spence Memorial Scholarship, to visit 18 women’s correctional facilities in Australia and around the world.

In Australia, I observed that all other states are doing more for mothers and children than we do in South Australia.

Of all the facilities around the world I visited, the best facility I saw was the Perth-based Boronia Women’s Pre-Release Centre. There, women are housed in self-care residential units on a suburban site.

There is an on-site supermarket, and a huge market garden and plant nurseries; women are able to have their children live with them up to the age of five.

I also saw excellent residential programs in England, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, Canada and the US.

In Denmark, the prison facilities are mixed gender, and it is considered a right for parents to have their child reside with them.

In the UK, I visited two privately run prisons, both of which provided Mother Baby programs within a high-security prison environment.

In Washington State, I saw a remarkable Residential Parenting Program being run in a large mixed-security women’s prison, out of basic cell accommodation.

In Copenhagen, I visited the highly successful Engelsborg Family House, designed to accommodate entire families who were damaged by the incarceration of one of the parents, and who needed help and support to rebuild upon the return of the parent.

The common factor in all these facilities was the belief that parenting programs made a positive difference, and that it was important to support family relationships.

Crucially, the political will was there – despite public criticism and funding pressures.

The Boronia Pre Release Centre - A residential accommodation facility for low security female prisoners in Perth. Photo: supplied.

The Boronia Pre Release Centre – A residential accommodation facility for low security female prisoners in Perth. Photo: supplied.

When I returned from my journey 2012, I delivered the Catherine Helen Spence Oration to an audience notably including Premier Jay Weatherill. He assured me that the mother and baby program for South Australia would be re-opened later that year.

Recent discussions with Correctional Services representatives indicate it is still in the planning stages.

I have offered my design services pro bono to help them come up with a concept for a potential facility, drawing from the best examples I have been privileged to visit[iii].

Let’s hope SA finds some political will so that future dinner party conversations can tell a positive story of hope and rehabilitation breaking the cycle of generational imprisonment.

Sarah Paddick is an Adelaide-based architect and director of Totalspace Design. She has some 20 years experience in the design of secure facilities. In 2010 she was the Catherine Helen Spence Memorial Scholar and undertook research into Residential Parenting programs in Australia and overseas. Her research is available here.


[i]  SCIE (2008) Children’s and families research guide 11 : Children of Prisoners – maintaining family ties. SCIE, London

[ii] http://www.pifa.org.au

[iii] http://www.totalspacedesign.com.au

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