By Lisa Pevtzow
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — Darlene Horton’s arrest for shoplifting 12 years ago was a nightmare for her children.
The police were shouting, remembered Horton, who lives on the South Side. Her children, then 7 and 12, were crying hysterically. And as she was led handcuffed out of the Peoria Kmart, she yelled out instructions to them about who to call to come get them. Her children, she said, were left behind, and a stranger ended up giving them a handful of change to call a teenage sister.
“The police did not protect these little children,” said Horton, who has gone through a drug treatment program and is now a coordinator at the Chicago Legal Advocates for Incarcerated Mothers and a student at Harold Washington College.
On Friday, Horton and dozens of other formerly incarcerated parents, children whose parents have been arrested and their caretakers will testify at a fact-finding hearing convened at the State of Illinois Building by the state legislature’s Youth and Family, Juvenile Justice and Judiciary II Committees. They will speak about arrests like Horton’s that leave kids alone, the difficulty of maintaining contact once a parent is in prison and the lack of any kind of system to track the children to make sure they’re in a safe place, say several people who will be testifying.
State Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago), chairman of the Youth and Family Committee, said he has heard many stories like Horton’s about children left alone after an arrest. He said the hearing will help determine whether the existing laws and programs that help children of incarcerated are sufficient, and whether there is a failure in police arrest protocols, which do exist.
“We should not put children in these awful predicaments,” Harris said.
The hearing is being spearheaded by the Chicago-based Community Renewal Society, and a loose coalition of faith-based groups and non-profits that provide service to incarcerated people and their families.
An estimated 60,000 to 90,000 children in the state have parents in jail, said Rev. Calvin Morris, executive director of the Community Renewal Society. The forceable separation from their parents, in many cases for years, has a searing effect, he said. They are at high risk for bad grades, behavioral problems, the inability to form relationships and trouble with the law.
“The potential for a kid being in the criminal justice system within 10 or 15 years is very high,” he said.
What’s needed is new arrest protocols, alternative sentencing guidelines that keep children with their mothers as much as possible, counseling and policies that would make it easier for children to keep in contact with parents. He would also like to see some kind of system in place that can make sure that a child is in a safe environment after a parent is arrested.
L. Williams, a far South Side resident of Chicago, still feels anger toward her mother, a substance abuser who was in and out of prison throughout most of her childhood.
Williams, who is in her 30s, spoke with quiet, incisive rage about the embarrassment and humiliation she felt at her mother’s periodic arrests for shoplifting, the subject of neighborhood gossip and finger-pointing. She was raised by a former girlfriend of her father’s after her father moved on to a new woman, she said.
But Williams said the system seemed to give little thought to making it easier on her. She, too, was left to make her way home after her mother was taken away in handcuffs for stealing a pair of shoes from a Downtown Chicago store.
“I don’t say they shouldn’t have arrested her,” Williams said. “But don’t leave a child alone in Downtown Chicago. Where was their heart.”
Sgt. Karla Chaplin, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Police Department, said the department requires officers arresting a parent or guardian for a crime other than abuse or neglect to allow the parent to make arrangements for a child. If that’s not possible, the child will be taken to a police station, where a youth officer will work with DCFS to place the child. Chaplin said she wasn’t aware of any case in which a child was left behind during an arrest.
Terry Solomon, the executive director of the Illinois African American Family Commission, said that arrests should be made in such a way as to reduce trauma for children.
“They only see police coming in, arresting and taking away parents,” she said. “That picture is there always.”
Parents testifying Friday know they played a huge role in creating the situations in which their children end up. But they also say they system is flawed.
Craig Townsend, a recently released inmate, said he was prepared for the difficulties of re-entering society -- finding a job and staying off drugs -- but not for the intense resentment of his two teenage daughters.
“I used to be pretty much their world, their superman,” said the Niles resident who spent more than two years at the Vandalia Correctional Center for burglary.
Now, Townsend said his daughters have trouble bringing themselves to spend time with him. He has lost his moral authority over them as a parent. Even while he was in prison, his daughters sometimes refused to read his weekly letters.
Townsend, who will testify Friday, wishes counseling was available to help his daughters overcome their anger and shame. Transportation to bring children to visit their parents, as well as some sort of video conferencing system to help parents and children keep in touch might have made his incarceration easier on them, he said.
“My poor choice led them to be alienated from me,” he said. “I am struggling to win back their trust.”
Copyright 2009 Chicago Tribune Company