Major: Sociology

Thesis title: “A Good Mom Could Be Anybody: The Use of Prison Nurseries in Increasing Parenting and Community Reintegration Success for Inmate Mothers”

“My thesis was a case-study of the Residential Parenting Program, which is the prison nursery at Washington Correction Center for Women in Gig Harbor.”

“When women get pregnant in prison they generally give birth and then their children are removed from them  and placed in the care of a family member or foster care.”

“Prison nursery programs are a solution to this problem––nonviolent offenders can keep their children with them in the prison and raise them as long as their sentence is shorter than 30 months postpartum.”

“I did interviews with women in the program and also administrative staff, correctional officers and the director of the program. I also did interviews with women who were released from the program and were successfully living in the community.”

“What I found was that these women had very little pro-social support. What they really needed was more transitional programs that gave them emotional and physical support.”

“My eventual plan is, I want to go to graduate school for public health, specifically infant or maternal health.”