Suchergebnisse

In the past decade, the number of female prisoners in New York state and city jails has risen dramatically. Currently, there are 1,890 women incarcerated in New York State prisons, and an additional 1,626 women confined in New York City jails. Approximately seventy- two percent of the women in state prisons are parents, and, according to one informal study, nearly sixty percent of the women in city prisons are single parents with minor children. While some of these women can make formal or informal child care arrangements with relatives or close friends, many others must turn to state-regulated foster care. An incarcerated mother whose children are in foster care must maintain contact with her children if she wants to retain her parental rights while in prison and to regain her custody rights upon leaving prison. She faces many unique legal and personal challenges, however, if she wishes to maintain such contact. An incarcerated mother must attempt to care for her children and at the same time negotiate a large social services bureaucracy ruled by a maze of foster care laws. If she is not able to meet these challenges, she will lose her parental rights through a permanent "termination of parental rights proceeding." If the state terminates the incarcerated mother's parental rights, her children will be adopted without her consent, and her relationship with her children will be permanently severed. Recognizing the unique predicament of incarcerated parents with children in foster care, the New York Legislature amended section 384-b of the New York Social Services Law in 1983. These amendments made it more difficult for the state to terminate incarcerated mothers' parental rights. Despite this reform, however, two problems persist. First, incarcerated mothers lack effective access to court proceedings involving their children. Second, the 1983 amendments misallocate parental duties with respect to planning the child's future and visitation: the amendments allow incarcerated mothers to maintain their parental rights only if they fulfill a strict duty to cooperate with social service agencies in planning for their children's futures and in visiting with their children, but the amendments do not require agencies and prisons to provide the mother with the adequate planning resources and visitation that will enable her to meet this duty. This Article examines the parental rights of incarcerated mothers under New York's foster care and termination of parental rights laws. Part II describes the foster care system in New York and details the grounds for a termination of parental rights proceeding. Part II also discusses the parental rights of incarcerated mothers that existed in New York prior to the 1983 amendments, and analyzes the effects of that legislation on these rights. Part III addresses the two problems that persist despite New York's legislative reforms. After examining these problems, Part IV proposes several legislative solutions, which include: (1) improving incarcerated parents' access to court proceedings; and (2) requiring social services agencies and prison officials to provide the services necessary to maintain and strengthen the parents' parental relationships. This Article concludes that, while New York has enacted legislation that recognizes the special needs of incarcerated parents whose children are in foster care, further legislation is necessary to address the problems that remain unresolved.

Competing narratives about incarcerated parents and their children are provided by the Adoption and Safe Families Act ("ASFA") and the Children of Incarcerated Parents Bill of Rights ("Bill of Rights"). Both the "child‐at‐risk" narrative of ASFA and the "good mother" narrative of the Bill of Rights are stereotyped and oversimplified and contribute, in opposite ways, to misperceptions about incarcerated parents and their children by suggesting a uniformity of situations and appropriate responses that does not actually exist. The time‐driven approach of ASFA—and many state termination of parental rights statutes—is overly rigid, while the Bill of Rights overlooks important differences among families, as well as tensions and trade‐offs among policy choices. In actuality, the situations of the parents and children involved vary widely and defy easy analysis and solutions. We should therefore be taking an individualized, qualitative approach that is nuanced and based on actual information about incarcerated parents and their children, rather than a quantitative, categorical approach based on generalized and simplistic assumptions. Only if we recognize and grapple with the complexities of parental incarceration can we develop sound legal and social policy to meet the needs of these families.

An independent legal profession is said to be "the bulwark of a free and democratic society." It is also said that a high measure of independence of mind and action by legal actors is necessary for the maintenance of the rule of law. However, too often, there is the allegation (within the sociological literature in particular) that the legal profession has used the concepts of independence and the rule of law as a shield or cuirass rather than as a sword. The image of lawyers representing unpopular clients fearlessly and advocating on behalf of unpopular causes, so as to uphold legal rights, is replaced with images of lawyers using these self-same concepts to preserve the status quo, favor those with high social status and pursue self-regulation for self-interest rather than for any so-called public interest. It is against this contested terrain that this Article looks at, from a comparative perspective, regulatory efforts in both the United States and South Africa in untraditional and controversial ways to address what these countries perceive as societal failings.

Interrupted Life is a gripping collection of writings by and about imprisoned women in the United States, a country that jails a larger percentage of its population than any other nation in the world. This eye-opening work brings together scores of voices from both inside and outside the prison system including incarcerated and previously incarcerated women, their advocates and allies, abolitionists, academics, and other analysts. In vivid, often highly personal essays, poems, stories, reports, and manifestos, they offer an unprecedented view of the realities of women's experiences as they try to sustain relations with children and family on the outside, struggle for healthcare, fight to define and achieve basic rights, deal with irrational sentencing systems, remake life after prison; and more. Together, these powerful writings are an intense and visceral examination of life behind bars for women, and, taken together, they underscore the failures of imagination and policy that have too often underwritten our current prison system