(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) The incarceration of mothers in Cambodia has a "devastating" impact on their children, according to a report released Tuesday that urges judges to reconsider imprisoning mothers who commit minor offences.
The report by rights group Licadho, which operates a prison program, comes a year after its other study into the impact of prison on children who are able to stay behind bars with their mothers until the legally permitted age of three.
Prior to changes in legislation in 2011, children had been able to stay in prison up to the age of six.
However, not all mothers who end up in prison can keep their children with them and in these cases, many of the women were not asked about their families or were told their children could not go with them.
In its new report, Licadho spoke to 96 incarcerated mothers across 14 of the country's prisons, as well as 36 caregivers who help to look after their children.
Of the imprisoned mothers, 70 percent had no legal representation at trial, 97 percent were first-time offenders, 56 percent were convicted on drugs-related charges and all were help in pre-trial detention.
Thirty-two of the mothers said they had not received any prison visits from their children, while 94 percent said their families had to pay prison guards in order to make visits.
One case study described in the report relates to the case of a woman who said she was at home alone with her baby when police arrived to arrest her. They would not allow her time to call her husband, so she was forced to leave her baby with a neighbor before being taken away.
In another case, an incarcerated mother spoke of her despair at learning that her young son had begun skipping school and spending his days collecting cans instead, "because he doesn't have enough food to eat."
One woman, a mother of four, was arrested and imprisoned after her husband bought drugs. All the children are now under the care of her 81-year-old mother, who is of frail health and recently suffered a water burn to her leg - an injury she cannot afford to treat.
"Many of the women and families interviewed by Licadho were worried that the children's health had suffered as a result of their mothers' imprisonment, particularly those children who were still breastfeeding when their mother was arrested," the report said.
"When babies were separated from their mothers, some caregivers told Licadho that they could not afford to buy them powdered milk," it added. "For older children, several families reported that they did not have enough money to buy sufficient food for them and that, when the children were sick, they could no longer afford to take them to the doctor or buy them medicine."
Although the government has set up a working group to explore alternative sentences, Licadho found that there have been no positive outcomes. In addition, Ministry of Justice guidelines on pre-trial detention have largely been ignored, according to the report.
Licadho stressed that among its aims, the report seeks to "remind judges and prosecutors of their responsibility to properly comply with existing legal procedures in order to reduce unnecessary, harmful detention."
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