Victims of fate: The sorry plight of children jailed with their mothers

Behind the high concrete walls of Nairobi’s Lang’ata Women Maximum Prison, past the wrought iron gates, razor wire and armed prison warders, sprightly toddlers run about on a grassy field outside what seems to be a nursery school with brightly coloured surroundings, a maze of swings and slides.

Every morning, their mothers walk along the concrete hallways to the nursery where they drop them off to allow them to enjoy a few hours of normal childhood. In the late afternoon, they pick them up and take them back to their cells where they sleep with other inmates.

It is a routine Marceline Mideva, who is serving a life sentence, knows too well. It is also the only routine her one-year-old son has known since he was born.

“He doesn’t know it is a prison,” she says. “He thinks it is our house.”

Ms Mideva and her boyfriend were arrested in 2014 after police raided their house in Eastleigh, Nairobi, on suspicion of being involved in a robbery that had taken place in the neighbourhood. They were both found guilty and sentenced to life, with her boyfriend being sent to Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.

However, during the trial, she discovered she was pregnant. By the time she gave birth, she had already been sentenced and, as dictated by the law, the child was detained.

“It is not easy. The best thing for my son would be for him to be outside with his grandmother. But what can I do? The law is the law,” she says.

Her child is among hundreds of children born to women convicted of various crimes, who have to be locked up. The women say raising a child in prison presents its own special problems despite provision of free services by the government.

Those who lack financial help from relatives seek odd jobs in the prison industries to care for their children as the government provides only the basics.

“An infant of a female prisoner may be received into prison with her mother and may be supplied with clothing and necessities at public expense,” says Cap 63 of the Kenya Prisons Standing Orders.

Virginiah Wambua, who is serving a six-year sentence, says it is a struggle to keep her child from getting sick in the damp, cold cells.

“It is scary. Right now it is raining, the clothes are not drying and the cells are at their coldest. Any mother is willing to die if that would make her child comfortable. You wish that if you were out there, you would have done something," says Ms Wambua.

She says: "When a new inmate comes and they don’t have clothes, other mothers donate whatever they can as it takes time for the welfare office to offer a solution".

Worse, despite not being considered as prisoners, the children, just like their mothers, have to follow the unvarying prison timetable designed to punish and rehabilitate adult offenders.

The cell doors open at 6am followed by a routine roll call where inmates are required to squat in a straight line. As guests of the State, the children are also counted before porridge is served for breakfast.

As their mothers go to work in the prison industries, the children are taken to a daycare centre where ugali and sukuma wiki is served for lunch and rice and beans for supper before they are locked up in the cells for the night.

According to psychologists, a child who spends the first years of life in this torturous routine will have a difficult time leading a normal life.

“The first five years are particularly important for the development of the child’s brain. Early experiences provide the base for organisational development,” says Dr Philomena Ndambuki, a psychologist and director of mentorship at Kenyatta University.

She explains that having been cut off from society and being treated as criminals, such children are likely to develop emotional distress, behavioural and attention difficulties and general mistrust of the world. “It will not be surprising if they end up being criminals because that is the world they know,” says Dr Ndambuki.

With 38 women living in cramped cells with their children at the Lang’ata Women Maximum Prison, tensions can escalate, insults exchanged and brawls can break out.

“A child belonging to a fellow inmate came to me the other day and told me I was a criminal and it is good I am in prison. I didn’t know whether to cry or reprimand him,” says Mercy Luma, who is serving four years for stealing from an M-Pesa shop she was working in.

While the mothers are always under watch, with restricted movement, the children are allowed to walk freely. This is worrying to some inmates like Grace Wangari, who says children pick up bad behaviour in the process.

“You can tell by the way your child speaks to you that whatever they are saying or doing they did not learn it from you. Let’s be honest, this is a prison not a hotel and there are all kinds of people in one space,” says the mother of a two-year-old who is serving three years for obtaining goods by pretences in 2014.

Two years ago, authorities at the prison had to give up a child for adoption and charge the mother afresh after it was discovered the baby was being used to smuggle cigarettes from one point to the other of the compound. The contraband was stuffed in his pockets and, because the officers would rarely search a child, he moved it around easily.

Nevertheless, women who want to give up their children to relatives say they are discouraged by the long and bureaucratic procedures involved.

“God knows I have tried. I would want my child to go home because it kills me to know that he is suffering for what I did,” says Ms Wambua.

She says that in the past one year, she has interacted with many other inmates who have tried but failed to complete the process.

To give up a child for adoption, a willing mother first has to apply to the prison where she is serving her sentence, through a welfare officer. The officer then forwards the application to the Children’s Department, which in turn takes it to court.

The court then orders the Children’s Department to access the home of the inmate to ascertain whether it is conducive for bringing up the child. Its findings are then presented to court and, if accepted, a procedure to release the child to foster care is initiated.

It is a back and forth process that takes months or even years to be complete.

“The rights of children of incarcerated parents remain largely unacknowledged within the criminal justice system. Such children are victims of lack of clarity in law because they are denied liberties to the extent that their right to freedom is inalienable, although a child is entitled to the same rights as any other person,” says Karen Nyamu, a lawyer.

She says that the process of moving children to relatives after the age of four years is “unnecessarily long and involving”.

After turning four years, this gruelling procedure of transferring a child is repeated, with a number of children being sent to children’s homes.

“I don’t even want to think about it. Giving up my child to strangers would be the worst thing to subject a mother to. All of us here have relatives and they would want to take care of these children. The government should be reasonable,” says Ms Luma.

At the Nest Children’s Home in Limuru, where some 80 children released from the Lang’ata Women Maximum Prison have been adopted since the government decided their homes were not fit for them, the management says transition is not easy. “They lack basic mannerisms, cannot cope with other children, talk like adults and are used to an environment where everything is done through ordering or fighting,” says Lucy Nduta, head of social work at the organisation.

The signs are apparent, she says. “For instance, you can tell a child it is time to go to school and he says No,” she says.

Senior Superintendent Olivia Obell, the officer in charge of the Lang’ata Women Maximum Prison, says: “These children are innocent; they are here only by default of their mother’s mistakes.”

Statistics show women are getting increasingly involved in crime, something that was previously male dominated.  Kenya had 31,695 prisoners at the end of last year, 8.3 per cent lower than the previous year, according to data released recently by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.

“Males account for 80.3 per cent (20,597) while females represent 19.7 per cent (1,847) which is 12.3 per cent higher than the previous year when it was 1,644,” said the report.

The Kenya Prisons Service says the disturbing trend is piling up pressure on an already stressed system with at least 400 mothers currently serving time with their children.

“These children are innocent; they are here only by default of their mother’s mistakes. As innocent children, they have a right to all that is accorded other children out there,” says Senior Superintendent Olivia Obell, the officer in charge of the Lang’ata Women Maximum Prison.

She says the government does not provide enough for the children; “So we are forced to depend on well-wishers for basic amenities such as diapers”.

A United Nations report released in 2014 titled “Violence Against Babies and Small Children Living in Prison with their Mothers” was concerned that jail was not a healthy environment. 

“The mother is inevitably under stress, prisons tend to be noisy, and privacy is difficult. Stimulation is severely restricted. Many prisons holding babies and young children have few specially trained staff, poor play and exercise facilities, and the development of movement skills is restricted,” the report noted.