Remorse Fills Prison Moms
Mother’s Day festivities inside Geiger Corrections Center begin and end with strawberry pancakes for breakfast.
The splash of color is meant to brighten the day for moms doing time in this low-security prison, eight miles west of downtown Spokane.
It’s also one more gut-wrenching reminder to these women of how crime has ripped their families apart.
“There’s so much loneliness,” says Pam Ridley, a 36-year-old mother of two boys - Jesse, 14, and Toby, 9 - who is doing five years on a drug charge.
“Every day you have feelings of being left out, of not being a part of their lives any more. You still have communication, but it’s not the same.”
Ridley pauses. “It’s really depressing at times.”
Geiger is a hybrid prison, housing both local and federal inmates. The campus-like complex is run by Spokane County, which rents space to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
Of the 385 prisoners, 220 are in on federal charges. Only 30 of those inmates are women, many of whom have children waiting on the outside.
On a recent sunny morning, Ridley and two other inmates agreed to share the agony of being in prison, separated from their children.
They talked about what they did to get here, blaming no one but themselves.
But their message was strong and loud: It’s the kids who pay the heaviest price for a parent’s crime.
Corrina Harless is a 34-year-old Tacoma woman who will be out in the year 2000. The six years she received for being a felon in possession of a handgun scattered her three kids.
Justin, 13, is living with his grandmother in Tacoma. Melanie, 15, is with an aunt in Moses Lake.
Seeing mom head off to the slammer had the most dire effect on Harless’ oldest son, Jamie. The 17-year-old is doing his own stretch for armed robbery.
“He was an A student, on the honor roll,” says Harless. Jamie grew angry after his mother’s conviction. He started hanging around a rougher, older crowd.
Mother and son now exchange letters from prison to prison. They get a telephone call every six months.
Harless advises other mothers who dabble with drugs and commit crimes to consider what they stand to lose. “In here you have a lot of time to think,” she says. “You wish you could have woke up long ago.”
“It’s the kids who get punished for our crimes,” adds Shawn Hamilton, 36. The Tacoma woman is nearing the end of a five-year sentence for conspiring to deliver methamphetamines.
Hamilton’s three boys - Brian, 17, Jeremy, 14, and Jason, 5 - are also living in three different homes. The oldest boy, she says, was raped while in foster care.
Motherly ties are difficult to maintain for women in the federal penal system.
Ridley and Hamilton both served part of their time in a Dublin, Calif., prison before being transferred to Geiger. Harless’ journey was a bit more serpentine: from Phoenix to Dublin to Geiger.
If anyone has seen the emotional wear and tear on mothers behind bars it is Kris Oberg, a federal case manager at Geiger.
After 10 years, the day-to-day strain has gotten to her.
Oberg plans to retire at the end of the month to work in her church and to care for her own two teenage daughters.
She is disheartened by cuts in educational services for inmates. Another blow came last year, when an attempt to set up overnight visitations with mothers and children was shot down by the Bureau of Prisons.
“So many women need more help than we can provide,” says Oberg. “After awhile, you either get eaten up or you change.”
It’s Mother’s Day behind the high fences that surround the Geiger Corrections Center. It will take more than a plate of strawberry pancakes to cheer up the women who are missing their children.
“At some point your kids have to be the priority in your life,” says Pam Ridley. “At some point you have to realize that it’s not your life you’re playing with, it’s your kids’ lives.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo