THE question of children living with their parents in prison is a human rights issue which should be addressed as a matter of urgency.
In the past two weeks deputy Minister of Justice Obert Gutu toured prisons in the capital city in his attempt to appreciate the conditions prisoners were living under.

Prisons the world over have never been hotels and it is generally understood that they have to have the most austere conditions in order to enforce some kind of punishment of undesirable members of society.

The most painful aspect of the tour however was the presence of dozens of children living with their errant mothers in the cells. The children’s ages ranged from mere infants to four-year olds.

According to Prison Fellowship International there is considerable debate, and no firm consensus, about whether children should stay in prison with their parents and if so the age at which they should have to leave. Clearly the conditions in prison and what alternative care arrangements are available are significant considerations. Where there is agreement is that while children remain in prison with their parents, their lives should be as similar as possible to how it would be on the outside and they should not be subjected to the restrictions on their freedom that other residents of the prison are.
It seems unavoidable that there will be children accompanying their mothers to prison. Often this is because they would not have anyone on the outside to look after them. Also some are born in prison since their mothers would have been incarcerated when pregnant.

But is it possible that these children can afford the kind of life children with free mothers live?
Zimbabwe is facing a food crisis, and this is worse in prisons. The rations are meagre and the mothers with children in the cells are not given extra rations having therefore to share the little they have with their children. This is not only grossly unfair but it leads to the malnutrition of both mother and the child. It makes both vulnerable to disease.

It is also difficult to imagine whether these children and their mothers have ready access to health care. Zimbabwe’s health-delivery system is bad enough for free people, let alone those in penal institutions!

An important consideration is how these children will be integrated into society when they leave prison. They have not lived normal lives since they have lived among criminals. How do these children on growing up deal with the stigma that their mothers are criminals?

They are also susceptible to sexual abuse. Studies in other countries have shown that some of the women in the cells are child abusers. Prison officials have also been seen to be guilty of this offence.

In the recent tours it has been revealed that some of the pregnant women who will eventually deliver and live with their babies in the cells are HIV-positive. They do not have access to anti-retroviral treatment and they are not on programmes that prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus. So what we have is a group of children who are condemned to death for the sins of their mothers.

But there must be some humanitarian interventions in this emotive issue. Prison cells are never the place to raise children; incarcerated mothers would be the first to testify to this. For the sake of their children they should be given amnesty. It is difficult to see how a mother raising a child can relapse into her criminal past. In cases where this is highly likely, open prisons should be the place to hold these mothers.

Further, there are children’s homes to which these children should be sent. There they would be looked after by experts and they wouldn’t have to grow with the stigma that they are prison babies.

Zimbabwean indigenous culture frowns on adoption but this is an idea that must be pursued. Some prisoners might find adoption a better alternative to keeping their children in the prisons where they will never lead normal lives.

Children’s rights organisation must lobby for the fair treatment of children living in prisons; not to do so is to neglect a serious human rights issue.

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