Pubdate: Fri, 18 Apr 2008
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2008 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  http://www.mercurynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Author: Edwin Garcia
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/women.htm (Women)

A PAINFUL CHOICE FOR MOMS IN PRISON

Some Have Teeth Pulled To Live With Kids

SACRAMENTO - Sarina Borg had a tough choice to make.
She could wait for months, maybe more than a year, to have her
rotting teeth repaired by a dentist. Or she  could get them pulled to
be reunited with her baby  daughter.

In California women's prisons, dozens if not hundreds of inmates like
Borg are faced with the same wrenching  decision: To gain access to a
host of  vocational-training and drug-rehabilitation programs  for
non-violent offenders - including a course that  teaches them
parenting skills while living with their children in special housing
- - they must be cleared of any pre-existing health problems.

Just one badly damaged tooth will block them from entering a
program.

"It's unconscionable," said Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Mountain
View, who has proposed legislation to  shorten the waiting list for
women wanting to get their  teeth fixed by a prison dentist, a measure
that passed its first committee hearing last week.

"We have women who are getting 16 and 18 out of 34 teeth pulled, and
that really destroys their future job  prospects," Lieber said. "We
have to change the  situation."

She introduced AB 2877 after learning that a court settlement
agreement, which calls for vastly improved  dental care in all state
prisons over the next three  years, had left the three women's
institutions near the  bottom of the implementation schedule.

Relatively few inmates qualify for the program that allows mothers to
serve their sentences with their infants because of the strict 
dental-clearance and other reasons, such as a requirement that the
prisoners retain legal custody of  their children.

So when the opportunity to enroll was presented to Borg, 31, who is
from Daly City, it didn't take long to  make her decision: "I said
hurry up and pull it," Borg  recalled of her meeting with a prison
dentist, "I want  to be with my baby."

She ended up having four teeth removed to earn her the coveted
transfer to a minimum-security, dormitory-like  prison in Oakland, the
East Bay Community Recovery  Project. There, she could bond with her
3-month-old  daughter, Kamaleia, and learn how to become a better 
mother, in a setting that costs less to taxpayers than a traditional
prison. Borg is expected to serve the  remainder of her two-year,
eight-month sentence for  robbery at the program.

Officials with the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation say the dental and health clearances  are necessary
because the specialized programs are based at smaller community
prisons and don't have  dentists or doctors on site. Thousands of men
also must  pass the same screening to get into specialized  programs
scattered across California.

"We don't want to send offenders out to these facilities and have
major dental issues or medical  conditions that would put them at
risk," said Wendy  Still, who oversees the state's three mother-infant
 community prisons, which house 71 women.

About 900 women are enrolled in all of the specialized programs,
which cost the state as little as $90 a day  per inmate, Still said, a
taxpayer bargain compared  with the $121 daily tab of a traditional
prison bed.

But as helpful as the programs may be in preparing women for life
after prison - and as useful as they are  at reducing California's
notoriously high recidivism  rate - they also have a major downside on
the personal  lives of the inmates.

Mothers who undergo extractions to live with their  children in the
community prisons, and who learn job  skills there, have difficulty
finding work upon their  release because employers would rather not
hire someone  whose mouth has more gaps than teeth.

"It's probably almost as big a deal as having a criminal record,"
said Allyson West, director of the  California Reentry Program, which
prepares inmates for  their release from San Quentin. "They're going
to be  pigeonholed because of their appearance."

Inmates with missing teeth also suffer from low self-esteem.

"I'm still young and now I have no teeth down there, you know what I
mean?" said Borg, who doesn't smile as  often as she used to; she's
missing three bottom teeth  on the right side of her mouth. She also
finds it hard  to chew. "Being a woman, I just feel degraded, really 
bad."

Prison dental clinics don't typically offer dentures, implants or
other cosmetic work.

Another inmate in the Oakland program, 31-year-old Michelle Filby, is
self-conscious about a gap on the  top row of her mouth, and other
missing teeth, which she hopes to fix after her release, assuming she
lands  a good job.

Still, she has no regrets. "I'd rather lose a tooth than not have my
baby, so to me it was worth it," Filby  said. "But it would have been
nice to maybe get a root canal or fillings."

Rachel Roth, an independent scholar and national expert on the health
issues of women in prison, said the  dental-clearance policy "just
shows how desperate women  are to get out of the big prisons and be
with their  children that they would allow themselves to be treated 
in such an inhumane way."

Prison statistics don't track how many women with severely damaged
teeth, often caused by methamphetamine  use and poor hygiene, have
requested extractions to get  into the programs.

About 9,000 teeth are pulled each year in California's three female
institutions, according to prison system  records. More than 12,000
women are housed in those  prisons.

It's also difficult to determine how California's dental-clearance
policy compares with the rest of the  country, because not all states
have similar women's  housing programs; some institutions run
nurseries  within large prisons where health services are readily 
available.

Advocates for female inmates who are familiar with prison policies
nationwide say California's  dental-clearance requirement seems rare.

"That's extraordinary," said Tamar Kraft-Stolar, a director with the
Correctional Association of New York,  a non-profit agency with
authority to inspect that  state's prisons. "I've not heard of
anything like  that."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin