MOMS BEHIND BARS

A government program that houses incarcerated women with their children was created to keep families together and reduce recidivism. But some participants say it set them up for failure.

- Simon Rolston AND Charlotte Fertey

A MANDA LEPINE woke at 5 a.m. sensing that something was wrong. House 8-her minimum-security living unit within the Fraser Valley Institution for Women, a federal prison in Abbotsford, B.C.-was silent and calm on that September 2020 day. Her three-month-old son, Ryland, was sleeping quietly in his crib nearby. Amanda had given birth to Ryland while incarcerated. Before he was born, and after considerable lobbying on her part, she received permission from a special governmental program for him to remain with her in prison.

Peeking into the crib, Amanda found Ryland labouring to breathe, his eyes and face grotesquely swollen. Though she knew it wasn't possible, she initially thought somebody had beaten her son.

She used the phone in her living unit to call the prison's main control. She tried to speak in a measured tone as she explained the situation to the guard: Ryland was having trouble breathing, and he needed immediate medical attention. The guard, seemingly uninterested, told her someone would be down in 20 minutes.

"It felt like my son was going to die," Amanda says. "I couldn't leave. I couldn't just walk out the gate. I couldn't just call a cab. I couldn't call an ambulance myself."

Amanda roused the women in her residential-style living unit. They took turns at the house phone trying to persuade guards to help. One of the women who was in House 8 with Amanda that morning says she considered running outside of the unit to attract the guards' attention. The front door was unlocked, but exiting the house without approval would have been a serious infraction with grave consequences. "You just feel so helpless," she says. "It's really sad that if I run out of the house, they're there within 30 seconds, right? But, if a baby needs help, it takes 20 minutes for somebody to saunter over."