By Lizzie Tribone, Talk Poverty, October 5, 2021
When Jennifer Brown left Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee on a work-release program, it had been six-and-a-half months since she had seen her son, Elijah. The last time they’d been together was when she gave birth to him, under the watch of two prison guards, in a hospital near the prison. Brown had forty-eight hours with her newborn before she had to hand him over to a family chosen by Together for Good, a religious nonprofit that places vulnerable children in foster care.
When Brown and her son met for the second time, the baby cried and did not immediately warm to his mother. Brown said she initially thought “he does not like me,” before conceding that, in reality, “he did not know me.”
Until this summer, incarcerated people who gave birth in Minnesota had a maximum of 72 hours with their newborns before they were separated. (The length of time depended on the type of birth.) In many other states, the parent and child have as little as 24 hours. As Alysia Santo wrote in PBS Frontline, “giving birth means saying goodbye.”
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