Destiny Doud thought she had just 48 hours to be a mother.
Like most of the hundreds of pregnant women who give birth while serving time each year, Doud was slated to give up her newborn to a relative just days after the baby was born last May.
Doud recalled hugging Jaelynn close at the hospital, waving off nurses’ offers to take the girl to the nursery. She wanted every minute to hold her daughter ahead of that wrenching separation.
But just before handing off the baby to her own father, Doud learned she had qualified for a radical alternative. She could raise Jaelynn behind bars.
On June 2, 2017, Doud cradled her newborn as she passed through a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, through heavy steel doors to a cell outfitted with a crib. A sign on the door reads: “Doud: Y21214 Baby: Jaelynn.”
The Decatur Correctional Center is the only home the girl with wispy blond hair and ice-blue eyes has known in her 11 months.
Prison nursery programs remain rare nationwide, but eight facilities in as many states have opened them amid dramatic growth in the number of incarcerated women. The bold experiment in punishment and parenting has touched off a fierce debate.
To read more of this article by Justin Jouvenal, please click here. Photo by Whitney Curtis.
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