After reading "How to End Criminalization of America's Mother's" written by Jaffe, Kaba, Albelda, and Geier, I had an intense feeling of curiosity. My curiously stemmed mainly from the blunt fact that I am a white female, who has grown up in a "well off" family, where privilege was almost handed to me. All of my life I have always had a hard time relating to friends and peers about financial issues or money situations, and that is why I was confused about the topic of poor mothers being thrown in jail. However, after reading this particular article, and more specifically the section suggesting poor women to not have children, I can say I feel a little more personally towards those of us who are not “well off” in today’s society.
The section from the article that I chose to analyze is under the subtopic “Our public policy suggests that women shouldn’t have the audacity to parent while poor”, which at first I could almost agree with before proceeding to read the rest of the article. I thought to myself, maybe poor people shouldn’t have kids if it is going to lead them to continuous poverty, or more debt. However, after reading the rest of the article, thinking about the issue on a personal level, and putting myself in the shoes of these poor mothers, I had completely shifted my gears. The author Jaffe writes, “[I] cannot write about inequality without writing about the vast criminal punishment system. Putting people in jail and violently policing their communities, is a substitute here in the United States for social policy...Policing did nothing to help Lesley McSpadden raise her son. All it did was ensure that she found him dead in the street on his way to visit his grandmother” (3). After having read this section, I thought a lot about the racial discrimination within the criminalization system we have in the US, and having read The New Jim Crow, it ties together with this reading very well. This section also mentions the death of Michael Brown who was shot for no “good” reason, AKA because he was an African American, and the police feel entitled to do whatever they please.
The article as a whole discusses the Ferguson issue with Michael Brown being shot down by police officers on his way to visit his grandmother. This correlates with the single, African American mothers who are doing all they can to protect their children, because they are also being targeted as Michael Brown was, yet they are being thrown in jail to die for their actions. Single mothers are targeted by authorities because they are considered “welfare queens”, who do not do enough to stimulate the economy. The pressing issue with this skewed picture of single mothers however, is that they can try as hard as they can to get a job, but if there is no good place for them to have their children stay while they work then they are not being quality mothers. I broke the issue down into two pressing questions: should single mothers care more about their children at home and try to live off of welfare/childcare (if they are even applicable for it), or do they risk not “caring” about their children at home, and get a job so that they can provide for their children? In my opinion there is no good decision between the two options, however those are the choices the government offers to society today. The reading gave some options that could make this issue easier for single mothers, however there is still a long wave of action that has to occur for some real changes to arise.
The article brings up childcare services offered for single mothers to place their children, however the issue with that is a lot of the time they simply cannot afford said services. Another issue with children being separated from their mothers, if mothers are thrown in jail for such incidents, is that once a child is no longer with their primary caregiver, the outcomes for their future does not improve, as the government would like to think it would.
I personally believe this is an issue that has been around since slavery was abolished. Instead of making African Americans white people’s slaves however, the government simply rigged the justice system so they can throw them in jail with ease. If you check out websites with data from jails and reports of violence and drug use, it is clear to see that white people are as guilty as black people for using drugs (if not more so), yet they are incarcerated at a far less rate than black people. The system is unfair and unjust. Another case brought up in the article pertained to a black single mother signing her kids up for a school district she didn’t reside in. She was put in jail and got parole for 3 years because of this. I know many cases as such that happened in my school district where white students were never taken from the school, and also never got fined for such a large amount of money either. This was so ridiculous for me to read, yet so relevant to the article content.
All in all, the issue of single black mothers being incarcerated for such misdemeanor crimes, which in most cases were to better they/their children’s lives, is something that needs to be dealt with now before the matter gets worse. In my opinion we need to change the system so poor mothers have more help with childcare assistance so they can get a job and therefore provide for their kids. I believe a step in the right direction would be universal free childcare as mentioned in the article, however knowing that my sister works in a day care and makes little money to begin with, could hurt other people's lives financially. However, making it cheaper could be a first step.
https://trggradio.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/93-hands-mother-child.jpg
This chart displays the incarceration rates by race and ethnicity...Black having the highest number of people in jail shows that there is something wrong with out criminal justice system.
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