Hose is a friendly, four-month-old boy who lives in the Central Women’s Correctional Institution in Lat Yao. While a cool breeze blows outside the prison building in the afternoon, Hose, along with about 20 other babies, is tucked warmly inside a small blanket and towel. They lie side by side on a long cushion on the nursery floor. Nurses watch over the babies, and guards in turn watch over them, since they are all prisoners, too.
Life in jail: Children in Lat Yao spend most of the time with their mothers, but between 9am and 3pm are cared for in the prison nursery.
The babies were born to inmates. With about 45,000 women in jail in Thailand, every year hundreds of babies start their lives with mothers who are serving time. In 2013, about 50 women were pregnant in Lat Yao, the country’s largest women’s prison with about 5,000 inmates. About half of the babies born are raised by family members in the outside world.
But for Hose and the other babies, the first 11 months of their lives are in prison.
They are also the lucky ones, since Lat Yao prison is the only one in the country with a nursery. They spend most of the time with their mothers, but between 9am and 3pm they are cared for in the prison nursery. At night, they sleep beside one another in a hall inside the compound.
This routine continues until they reach 11 months old, when decisions have to be made about where the child will go next. Little Hose faces an uncertain future. While none of the nurses knows much about his mother, they don’t believe his father wants anything to do with him, having married another woman. He has visited a few times but has not been seen for the past month. The father’s family has no knowledge of Hose and cares nothing for his mother, one of the nurses said.
There are still seven months before a decision has to be made about Hose’s future, but until then the nurses promise he will be cared for.
Sunthorn Sunthorntarawong.
FOLLOW THE RULES
Kanjarat Keawchantra is chief of the medical centre at Lat Yao women’s prison and oversees the nursery. She said there are currently 22 inmates with children aged under 11 months.
She explained that the mothers are not allowed to be with the babies all day, so nurses are assigned to take care of them for six hours a day. She said the rules were designed to prevent conflict.
“We have trained inmate nurses here, we do not need all mothers crammed up inside this space,” Ms Kanjarat said. “They can stop for a breastfeed before going back in. If they are here all day, there could be confrontations which we do not want to see.”
A female prison guard explained that having the nurses ensured a sense of order and routine. “Since all the mothers would want, for example, to feed the babies all at once, or to put all the babies on the cushion at once, that kind of thing could lead to fighting among inmates.”
Ms Kanjarat said pregnant inmates are taken to a nearby public hospital for delivery because the facilities within the compound were suitable only for general check-ups and basic treatments. The inmates’ welfare and social security fund the deliveries.
When the baby is born, the mother can ask her family to take the baby home. If she desires to raise the baby for the first 11 months, or if there are no relatives to care for it, both mother and newborn will return to the prison.
Some mothers have relatives who are keen to take the newborn home, but choose instead to raise their child in prison. They would rather spend every moment possible with their child, despite the bleak start to life. However, many of the inmates, like Hose’s mother, have no choice and no one to turn to.
Safe and warm: Newborns at the Lat Yao prison nursery, the only one of its kind.
A DAY IN THE LIFE
Ms Kanjarat is assisted by one of the senior inmates, who now acts as the head nurse. Auntie Aua, a woman in her fifties, is a figure prison guards and inmates rely on after helping out in the nursery for the past 12 years. Being with children seems to give her peace of mind.
Every morning, Aua arrives at the nursery to prepare for her daily errands.
She puts water on the boil and makes sure milk is ready. She checks that every nurse reports for duty and counts the babies when they are brought in by their mothers. Her keen eye watches to ensure all goes smoothly during those six hours before the babies are returned.
“The babies that are one to six months old will be breastfed for the most part,” she said. “The milk will be provided only after the baby is six months old. They get milk three times a day; that is two times in the day and once at night.
“Inmates wake up at 5am, take a bath and are counted. They bring the babies to the nursery for feeding around 9am. After they drop the babies at the nursery they will return to their section to do daily chores like washing clothes.
“Here, the baby will have lunch by 11am, during which time the mother can come in to breastfeed. At this time, the nurses will wash the baby’s clothes and air them. By 2-3pm, the mothers come to pick up the babies and do the feeding inside the facility.”
Lat Yao is the only women’s prison in Thailand with such a system, which is a pilot programme run under to the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Female Prisoners and Non-Custodial Measures for Women Offenders, known as the “Bangkok Rules”, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2010.
In other prisons, the babies are raised in confinement with their mothers and do not enjoy the luxury of a nursery.
Helping out: Former inmate Lek has become a staff member at the House of Blessings.
WHO’S LOVING YOU
Almost 80% of the inmates are serving time for drug-related offences. Prison staff are all too familiar with their stories, which seem like a never-ending cycle.
At Lat Yao, Spectrum met Tom, a 24-year-old mother incarcerated for drug-related crimes.
After breastfeeding her almost one-year-old baby boy in the corner of the nursery, she sits down and talks.
“When I had him, I had a pain in the middle of the night. I had to shout out to the guard, and they took me to the hospital for the delivery,” she said. “I was already five months pregnant when I heard the verdict. They found drugs inside my house, but my boyfriend was not charged.”
This is Tom’s third baby, but her first from her current boyfriend.
Her two older boys from a previous relationship, eight and four years old, are being raised by her mother, a janitor at a public hospital in Bangkok.
Three days after her baby was born and both the mother and child were back in prison, the father visited, for one last time.
“Now my mother is preparing to take him to live with her since the baby is now already 11 months old. She did not take him from the start because she’s not doing financially well herself.”
Tom’s mother is 48 years old and struggling to provide for Tom and her 17-year-old sister after their father died a couple of years ago. Her sister has also recently had a baby and decided to drop out of school.
“My mother told me to think it through. She assures me that she can still keep on for her grandchildren but she wants me to see the fact that nobody but her has ever visited me here, not even my boyfriend.”
Keeping comfortable: Yoga training is provided for pregnant inmates in Lat Yao under a pilot programme for women’s welfare.
BRIDGING STATION
Ms Kanjarat explained that the Lat Yao prison once had a house for inmates’ babies that were aged over a year old. However, it was closed down a few years ago due to a lack of funding.
Since then, the facility has worked with Sunthorn Sunthorntarawong, a protestant priest who has been working in the social service field for 30 years through the foundation he chairs, Christian Prison Ministry Foundation (CPMF).
Every month or so, Ms Kanjarat will call Mr Sunthorn and tell him there are babies who have reached the age they have to leave prison. Mr Sunthorn takes them to Ban Pra Porn, or the House of Blessings, where they are raised until their mother’s release or they can stand on their own feet.
Currently, there are 18 children aged under five, and another 23 children aged five to 18 under CPMF’s care. From the age of three, the children will be enrolled in kindergarten with CPMF support. The foundation operates mainly through donations and is independent of the corrections system, Mr Sunthorn said.
Mr Sunthorn, 63, is very active in the foundation’s work, and takes a personal interest in ensuring children remain in contact with their mothers.
“We take the children for a visit once a month, taking care not to hurt their feelings,” he said. “However, when the children turn six or seven, we start to explain to them how their parents made mistakes in the past and caused them to end up in prison and how many years are left before they can be reunited.
“Most of the time, inmates are released but never come to pick up their children. Many of them just get married and get on with life. We are trying to provide as much love for the children as we can, but we do not tell lies here.”
Now, with seven in-house staff and 10 volunteers, the CPMF continues to take on more children and makes sure they are cared for and have a future.
Early education: A Christian Prison Ministry Foundation staff member teaches children who were born to inmates and since moved to the House of Blessings.
RECALLING HARDSHIP
At the CPMF, Spectrum met Lek, a 33-year-old former inmate who was released about three years ago.
She now works at the House of Blessings and lives with Arm, her five-year-old son who was born while she was incarcerated.
Lek discovered she was pregnant on the first day of her imprisonment, after a urine test. It was then she learned that pregnant inmates would be treated differently to the others.
“After learning I was pregnant, I was given a little more space on the floor of the prison cell to sleep, which I shared with another 60 or so inmates. The others were given no more than a 30cm-wide space to sleep. In the morning, pregnant women take a bath before other inmates, but the rule of sip khan applies: you cannot scoop up water more than 10 times per person — the guards will be watching and counting and will tell you to stop.
“Pregnant women also get to eat one egg a day until they give birth, which is different from the others.”
Lek was a drug mule who was arrested after making a delivery to an undercover policeman. Arm’s father worked with her in the drug business, but has never visited Lek or the baby. While in prison, she was also cut off from her mother, who disapproved of how she made her living.
“Inmates without visitors face the most difficult ordeal as you cannot provide for yourself, much less your baby,” Lek said. “Inmates usually fight over a can of Coca-Cola or a bag of chips when someone gets it and doesn’t share it. These things become very special in there and are not everyday things.
“At the time, I offered to do some cleaning for the nurses in exchange for more nappies and some more milk powder for my baby as I had no visitors who could bring me these things.
“It was harder emotionally than physically in the prison because I could not properly take care of my child.
“When I bathed him, he got rashes from the dirty water in the shared basin. I didn’t provide him with clothes or toys. There was nothing I could do.
“Of course, babies born in prison, though they share the experience with their mothers in confinement, they are saved from not having to share the memory of those times. They are still innocent.”
Plenty of playtime: At the House of Blessings, there are 41 children, about half aged under five, being looked after by the Christian Prison Ministry Foundation.
SECOND CHANCE
For all of the hardships, Lek’s life more recently is like a vignette of blessings which have ultimately brought her life to a state where she can properly take care of herself and her child.
Near the end of her imprisonment, Lat Yao prison was visited by a group of foreign diplomats. One of the diplomat’s spouses met her and Arm in the nursery and learned that she was about to complete her sentence. She asked Lek to work as a cleaner and bring Arm to stay in their residence, to which she agreed.
She worked there for six months until the couple returned to their home country. They introduced Lek to Mr Sunthorn, who welcomed her to Ban Pra Porn more than three years ago.
Arm now goes to school with the support of the CPMF. Lek is part of the CPMF staff who take care of the nursery. She said all it takes is to carry on is a sense of self-worth.
“There is a sort of cycle. You hang out with the wrong people, do time, and go out with the wrong sort of people all over again. But since I’m here helping the foundation and taking care of my child, I do not need to go back to where I was, especially when the relationship with my mother is back to normal now. I’m just grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given.” n