JAQWAN DYE would be nuzzling her infant daughter right now, feeding her and changing her diaper, watching her drift off to sleep. She would probably be studying to earn a high school diploma, attending parenting sessions with other new moms and bonding with her baby in the weeks before her release from the Baltimore City Detention Center.
That's how the 20-year-old inmate, serving time for a drug charge, would be spending her days now if Maryland prison officials hadn't delayed the launch of an innovative program for pregnant women serving short sentences. Twice now, the opening of Tamar's Children has been canceled, first in March, then in May. Each time public safety officials came up with another reason. Money. Medical staffing. Liability.
It's not as though prison bureaucrats hadn't been briefed on the project, for which organizers have raised nearly $3.5 million in federal and local grants. Monthly meetings with project leaders, prison reps, the University of Maryland Medical System and mental health professionals have been ongoing for a year.
The reasons for the holdup are sounding more and more like excuses for state officials, however well intentioned, who didn't do their homework. The issues of staffing, funding and liability are legitimate ones, but now is not the time to raise them, long after project coordinator Joan Gillece got a thumbs-up from Stuart O. Simms, secretary of public safety and correctional services. Is it bad faith, poor planning or promises that can't be kept? It may be all three.
And in the muddle and confusion, a unique opportunity for women inmates and their newborn children may be lost. The clock is ticking on those federal grants. What a loss it would be.
Named for Tamar, a biblical figure who was raped and shunned, the project would give eligible pregnant women a new start for themselves and their unborn children. Various studies have identified inadequate bonding between mother and baby and poor parenting skills as risk factors for trouble later in a child's life. The Tamar's Children project is expected to give children a strong emotional footing and reduce the recidivism rate among women prisoners.
Now pregnant inmates surrender their infants to a relative or foster family after delivery. While they may see their babies on visiting days, mothers are not permitted to hold them for security reasons. Jaqwan Dye cradles a photo of her baby girl instead.
The project would offer prenatal care, trauma counseling and a variety of treatment services, even housing aid, to about 30 women a year held in a facility more conducive to developing that essential bond between mother and child. Pregnant inmates would arrive there in their final trimester and stay as long as six months after delivery. They would deliver their babies at the University of Maryland Medical Center, as they do now, but follow-up care would be provided for mother and child at the center.
The beauty of the Tamar's Children project is that it uses outside grants to pay for new services while relying on the state prison's medical contract to cover the inmate's health care costs. It sounds like a win-win partnership, especially in these tight budget times. The project has a host of supporters, from women judges to state health workers to students at the Key School in Annapolis.
Project coordinators say they won't give up. They have already received a commitment for $200,000 to $300,000 in federal funds to meet the state's latest request, a round-the-clock nurse at the site. But prison officials are still searching for a place to house the project.
The children of the Tamar project deserve a chance; they should not be shunned.