Prison Moms: New Documentary Shows Struggles of Being a Mother Behind Bars

By Ray Downs, Christian Post Reporter Friday, October 21, 2011

In the opening of a trailer for the new documentary, "Mothers of Bedford," viewers are hit with a cold, hard fact: "Women are the fastest growing population in today's U.S. prisons. Eighty percent of those women are mothers of school-aged children."

The increase of women being imprisoned and the effect it has on their children is a statistic that does not get much media attention, but thanks to the new documentary by filmmaker Jenifer McShane, the often tragic ripple effects of mass incarceration will get some much-needed attention.

"Mothers of Bedford" tells the story of five incarcerated women in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in upstate New York and "explores the effects of a long-term prison sentence on the mother-child relationship," the film’s website says.

The five women each have children who participate in the "Children's Center of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility," a program that helps incarcerated mothers maintain and improve their relationship with their children.

The program was founded by Sister Elaine Roulet over 30 years ago after she realized that many children whose mothers go to prison often lose contact, which can cause untold damage to a mother-child relationship, no matter how strong the positive effects of the rehabilitation program is for the incarcerated woman.

At one point in the film, Roulet tells of a poem she wrote about a child who needs to study for a vocabulary quiz and asks his father what the word "prison" means.

"Prison is a place where bad people go when they do bad things," the father tells his son.

The son responds: "Where do good people go when they do bad things?"

Roulet does not intend to paint the mothers as innocent victims. Yes, they have committed crimes and people need to pay for their crimes. However, being guilty of a crime does not make that person a bad mother, she believes.

"Nothing is black and white in life; life is contradictions and gray areas," Roulet told the New York Times in a 1996 profile of her organization. "Many of the women in this prison might have been bad citizens at some point in their lives, but they are good mothers. The bond with their children is unbreakable. We all know people who are exemplary citizens - people who never have gotten so much as a speeding ticket - who treat their children miserably. The women inside this prison - the women I know through the Children's Center - love their daughters and sons very, very much."

Tanika Dickson, one of the mothers featured in the documentary, was sentenced to 15 years to life for stabbing to death a man in a barroom altercation. Many believed that her sentence was a result of racism and police privilege: Dickson is black and the victim was white, as well as a well-known racist who repeatedly harassed Dickson by calling her the "N-word" and attempted to assault her when she tried to leave the bar, according to the North County Gazette.

Favoritism was also claimed to be a factor in the sentencing, since the victim, who was the brother of a local police officer, had a criminal past and had recently been fired from Wal-Mart for making racial slurs, whereas Dickson had no criminal history yet was given the maximum sentence.

When she was first arrested for the murder in 1999, Dickson had two sons: one in first grade and the other in pre-school, the film's website says. She is still incarcerated, having watched her kids grow up to young adulthood from behind prison bars. "Mothers of Bedford" depicts how she has managed to be a part of that experience, despite being locked up.

"Initially, being a mother from here, I was burdened with guilt. I was fighting depression. I was struggling…I was broken," Dickson says in the film. "In a way, every woman who enters these gates is struggling or broken – or else we wouldn’t be here."

Dickson's lawyers are currently petitioning for clemency.

The filmmaker, Jenifer McShane, said in a recent interview on the blog, Life of Reily, that her goal in making the film was to “humanize a segment of population that is largely forgotten," and to show that, as Sister Roulet once told her, that "bars can not separate a child from their mother's love."

She added: "If as a society we claim to be rehabilitating people rather than warehousing them, we must give inmates the opportunity to strengthen family relationships so that they have someone to return home to. A loving relationship of some type is something we all need whether we are incarcerated or not and it is vitally important for someone behind bars."

The film is currently in screenings around the country. Go to http://mothersofbedford.com/screenings.php for more info or contact mothersofbedford@documentaries.org for more information about organizing a screening in your area.