Case Studies
Incarcerated women with young children
There is a program in California called the Community Prisoner Mother Program. It allows eligible women who are in state prison to transfer to a community-based facility and to have their child with them while they serve out the remainder of their sentence. Generally, women eligible for the program are those who have not committed a violent felony. In addition, a woman who has lost her parental rights to another child is not eligible for the program.
VW contacted LSPC in October of 1997. She was incarcerated at Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, California. VW had a three-year-old daughter who was living with VW’s friend under legal guardianship. The friend and VW had agreed that VW would receive pictures of the girl and would have visits as often as the friend was able to travel to the prison. Despite this agreement, VW had not seen her daughter since March of 1997 and had received only one letter from the guardian. VW was eligible for transfer to the CPMP facility in the Bay Area. She went to her prison counselor and filled out the appropriate paperwork and sent everything to Sacramento for processing. Sadly, VW could not proceed with her application to the program, because the guardian refused to relinquish guardianship and deliver the child to VW in the program.
Finally, in April of 1998, after numerous communications with social workers, the guardian and her attorney, and the judge, VW’s petition to terminate the guardianship was heard in court. The judge was very impressed with VW’s efforts and ruled in her favor. One month later, VW and her daughter were reunited. VW successfully completed the program and was paroled in November 1999.
