Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer
A RECENT study on the social impact on children of imprisoned 'drug mules', has found the Jamaican Government wanting in its responsibility to them, leading to recommendations for a more proactive stance by the state.
In the study entitled Children of Convicted Drug Mules Do they have rights too? the authors (Dr. Aldrie Henry-Lee, and Mary Clarke) found that there was "no definitive policy with respect to children of incarcerated women."
It says Government officials report that some incarcerated mothers refuse to reveal that they have children and some are too ashamed to contact support groups, leaving their children "technically abandoned".
It is then left up to community members to identify and bring these children to the attention of the state, which would then provide for them, according to the research findings.
Dr. Henry-Lee, Research Fellow at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Study, Mona, presented the findings on Friday at the University of the West Indies' International Conference on Crime and Criminal Justice in the Caribbean.
In doing so, she highlighted instances of desperation with the women saying that they became "drug mules" because of economic privation and the resulting social fallout.
In one instance, an unemployed mother of nine, with a history of spousal abuse, saw this as her last chance at a new beginning for herself and her children.
Another woman, desperate to raise enough money to treat a child with a hole-in-the-heart and her mother diagnosed with colon cancer, boarded the fateful flight to London, with the illegal substance, only to be caught and cut off from her loved ones for 30 months.The resulting impact on the children left behind is the focus of much of the study.
Already they were in deprived circumstances, but with the loss of their mother, they often have to live with an elderly grandmother or with some neighbour and they are usually a burden to whichever caregiver they are with.
"It often is a case of absolute neglect and abuse," Dr. Henry-Lee told The Sunday Gleaner in a subsequent interview.
The authors of the study on Jamaican drug mules relied significantly on interviews with various state agencies and NGOs.
One NGO, Hibiscus Jamaica, an organisation based in the United kingdom and Jamaica, is dedicated to assisting incarcerated women and their dependents left behind.
There are currently about 2,000 Jamaican women in UK prisons, mostly for drug-related offences, according to Bula Grizzle, Jamaican-based coordinator/development officer with Hibiscus. (In 2002, 34 per cent of all female prisoners in England and Wales were Jamaicans).
These women, she estimated, have an average of "four to five" children, most of them left in precarious circumstances. Hibiscus, she explained, was directly involved with approximately 200 of those children, seeing mainly to their physical and educational needs, while other institutions are called in at times to assist with psychological interventions.The Sunday Gleaner
