Pre-adolescents in jail and nowhere to go

Knitting Peace, as a social enterprise seeks to empower its team of incarcerated women in overriding some of their limiting core beliefs with new visions of what is possible for themselves and their children.

In doing so, I am becoming more and more aware of their daily challenges within the Bolivian jail, and count on the pleasure of experiencing their trust as they share with me some of their stories and hardships. One situation which I became aware of and is of great concern to me is in regards to the children reaching the age limit to legally remain within the jail.

Legally, children of incarcerated women in Bolivia may live within the jail with their mothers until the age of six. Exceptions are made in the case of those children who don’t have family to live with outside the jail. These special cases are considered, and the children are allowed to remain within the jail until the age of 12, assuming they have no other alternative.

Once these pre-adolescents reach the age of 12, they are required to leave the jail. Fortunately by then most of these children have a family member or older sibling they can count on to support them while their mothers remain incarcerated. However, there are more than a handful of cases in which these adolescents have nowhere to go.

Picture taken by Hannah Kozak

Charo, one of my team members approached me with great concern because her daughter turns 12 next month. Charo has at least 10 more years to complete her sentence, does not have any family members she can count on to care for her daughter, and her time to decide what to do is running out fast. Charo shared with me that her alternatives are to either send her little girl to a home for street children, or rent her a little room where she can live alone. Charo says she is willing to work hard to make sure her daughters financial needs are met, but she is concerned for her daughter’s safety and well being while living on the outside without her.

To my surprise, Charo expressed much concern in sending her daughter to live in a home for homeless children, where she could count on adult supervision, discipline, schooling and food. Many of the women shared with me that in these homes their children would be exposed to street kids who have been vulnerable to drugs, prostitution and sexual abuse, and fear their children will become vulnerable to these as well while in these homes.  

For these reasons Charo and many of the women with pre-adolescents within the jail are more inclined to send their children to live alone in a rented room, without any supervision and away from the nurturing eye of their mothers.

It is in situations like this that I have a hard time understanding what the lesson opportunity is for these children. Why do some lives have to be so hard? I can’t imagine living alone at the age of 12, how I would have handled it, or what choices I may have made. It seems a recipe for disaster or at the very least another teenage pregnancy or the repetition of the cycle from which these girls were brought into.

At best, my work through Knitting Peace strives to provide opportunities to change the trajectory of the children of these incarcerated women in service to healing and empowering generations to come; however I feel I am at a loss in this situation being that the alternatives seem to lead to more of the same.  My hope is to find an alternative to bridge the gap between living with their mothers, and living in alignment with their higher purpose and well being. 

Picture taken by Hannah Kozak