Rattling the Bars: Cutting incarcerated mothers off from their families hurts everyone
As Wendy Sawyer and Wanda Bertram recently wrote for the Prison Policy Initiative, \u201cOver half (58%) of all women in US prisons are mothers, as are 80% of women in jails, including many who are incarcerated awaiting trial simply because they can\u2019t afford bail\u2026 And these numbers don\u2019t cover the many women preparing to become mothers while locked up this year: An estimated 58,000 people every year are pregnant when they enter local jails or prisons.\u201d In this edition of Rattling the Bars, Mansa Musa speaks with Debra Bennett-Austin of Change Comes Now about the shocking number of incarcerated mothers in the US today, the barriers keeping incarcerated mothers from staying connected with their families, and the irreparable damage those severed connections cause for everyone involved.
Debra Bennet-Austin is the president and co-founder of Change Comes Now, a nonprofit \u201cfocused on assisting those who have been, are in danger of being, and who are currently impacted by the criminal legal system.\u201d Bennet-Austin was formerly incarcerated for 19 years in the Florida Department of Corrections and has been home for four years.
Read the transcript of this interview: https://therealnews.com/cutting-incarcerated-mothers-off-from-their-families-hurts-everyone
Pre-Production/Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
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