A Powerful Look Inside… Aid to Inmate Mothers (AIM) in Montgomery, Alabama

Exclusive Interview by Karen Beishuizen
Photos courtesy of Aid to Inmate Mothers (AIM)

Aid to Inmate Mothers (AIM) Inc., was founded in 1987 by Church Women United, The Alabama Prison Project, The Alabama Department of Corrections and a group of committed volunteers who discovered that many women in prison never saw their children. AIM’s founders recognized that children of incarcerated parents needed regular contact with their mothers, yet often couldn’t visit because their guardians were unwilling or unable to take them. In 1990, AIM separated from the Alabama Prison Project and became an independent nonprofit agency. In the past 25 years, AIM has provided over 5,000 monthly visits. Fifteen children attended the first AIM visit. Today, through the development of a statewide volunteer network, AIM is able to offer visits to as many as 50 children.

KB: Describe to the RSR readers how Aid to Inmate Mothers was founded and by who?

AIM’s first visit was a day of tearful reunions and celebrations. Prior to that day, the majority of mothers at Julia Tutwiler Prison did not receive visitors due to the inability or unwillingness of their children’s guardians to transport them to the prison. The Alabama Prison Project developed Aid to Inmate Mothers (AIM) to offer mothers a monthly visit, and other support services. Modeled after the successful program, Aid to Incarcerated Mothers in Boston, MA, AIM was developed cooperation with the Alabama Department of Corrections, Church Women United, officials and inmates at Tutwiler Prison, and volunteers from around the state.

Since 1987, AIM has grown significantly. In 1990, AIM separated from the Alabama Prison Project and became an independent, incorporated nonprofit agency. In the past 25 years, we have provided over 5,000 monthly visits. Fifteen children attended the first AIM visit. Today, through the development of a statewide volunteer network, AIM is able to offer visits to as many as 50 children. Twenty-five years ago, AIM expanded to promote the success of inmate mothers and their families in the transition from institutional to community life.

KB: How many women from prison come to your shelter on a monthly basis?

The Parole Board has not been paroling many people (8% in 2023) so our residents are coming to us through Dept of Corrections early release program. Our shelter is small, so we don’t get more than 2 per month, until we are full.

KB: How long can they stay and what help are they getting?

We opened the Genesis House to offer women safe, structured living and to provide help transitioning from institutional life to community life. Many of the other transitional homes that we worked with previously promise a lot of help, but do very little apart from providing housing. We felt that this set the women up for failure, so we decided that we would open our own program.

Residents can stay for up to one year, after which they are placed in permanent housing. We provide wrap-around case management for each resident, tailored to fit the individual. When they arrive (we often pick them up from the prison) new residents meet with the case manager to set short (first three months) and long-term (to be completed or at least addressed by the end of the year) goals. Examples of short-term goals are starting a bank account, obtaining an ID and SS card, creating a resume and applying for and obtaining their first job. Examples of long-term goals might be to obtain a car, save enough money for a deposit on an apartment, finish GED or enroll in college.

We provide the women with basic clothing (including underclothes and shoes) hygiene supplies, work equipment (eg.steel toed boots) help finding medical, dental and eye care, referrals to counseling, financial assistance to obtain essential documents, and a bus pass. We will pay for their first dental appointment, and within reason dental repairs and dentures. We will purchase them a pair of glasses if needed. We make sure that they are connected with a doctor to fill their prescriptions, and mental health meds. We help them apply for emergency food stamps which will see them through the first three months. Residents must abide by a curfew and submit to random drug testing as well as attend regular AA/NA meetings. We encourage them to connect with their families, and will allow them a pass to visit family after the first month.

The agency has a house car which is used to transport our residents to and from work when needed, to medical appointments, or to the grocery store. We have live video surveillance inside and outside the building.

After a year, we help them find an apartment and connect them with resources in the community to obtain basic furniture. We continue to stay in contact with them to help them make the adjustment and to quickly address any barriers to their successful transition to community life.

KB: You also have a program which helps children to visit their mums in prison?

Each second Saturday of the month, we transport children to the prison for a 3-hour visit with their mothers. Transportation is provided through a network of churches across the state, using church vans and volunteer drivers. Families meet in a central meeting place in their area, where they board the vans. Vans return the children to the meeting place after the visit, and the guardians must be there to meet the van.

The visits are “child-friendly”, held in a room where the mothers and children have plenty of room to play games and do arts and crafts together. We take photos, which we print on site. Each child and mother leave the visit with a photo of themselves with their mother/child.

We celebrate the children’s birthdays during their birthday month. The group sings Happy Birthday to the child, and the child is presented with a gift (which has been suggested by the mother, provided by us), and we have a cake.

Holidays such as Christmas are always made special, with Christmas projects (making ornaments, icing cookies, we serve a special meal and provide a Christmas present for the child—once again picked out by Mom).

We provide school supplies and uniforms in the summer just before school starts up again in August. This can include underclothes, shoes and backpacks. We often help the guardians with utility bills, gas cards, or fees and uniforms for the children’s athletics programs. We have also helped several families in crisis (one family had a house fire, lost everything, another got evicted, another had their apartment flooded. We helped with clothing and furniture, sometimes through community agencies, sometimes with financial assistance.)

KB: What is the storybook project?

In 2000, we added a book recording program called the Storybook Project. In this program, we bring 200-300 children’s books to the prison and arrange them on a table to allow the mothers to choose one for their child. Once a book is chosen, she sits with a volunteer, who operates a video camera to film her reading the book to her child/ren. She is encouraged to read expressively (prompting the child to turn the page, or asking questions such what will happen next etc.) The mother then is allowed to include a personal message at the end—some sing a lullaby, others just say I love you, or sometimes give advice (listen to Grandma). The mothers then take the book to another table where she addresses a large envelope to her child, and slips the book inside. We later make a digital copy of the recording and send it to the guardian via email.

KB: Is your organization helping the women find accommodations and jobs in the outside world?

Yes, we help women regardless of whether they live with us or not. We will do many of the same things for them as we do for our residents. Housing is the hardest issue, but it is usually fairly easy to place someone in a job. Most first jobs are fast food or restaurant jobs—and the trouble with those jobs is that they very often don’t get enough hours to live on. Also, they are required to work late hours, and transportation is an issue. We try hard to move them into more permanent jobs as soon as we are able.

KB: What is the main reason these women end up in prison?

Many of the women who end up in prison are there because society has failed them in some way. They may have come from a family where the mother is using drugs, or where there is a lot of domestic violence, and no one helped the child. There may have been extreme poverty.

Most of the women we work with come from low-income families, but that is not strictly true. Some of the women have told us stories about living in a house with their mother’s boyfriend, who ended up sexually abusing them. This is not that uncommon, and many of the women dealt with the shame of the abuse by then numbing themselves with drugs and alcohol. Often, women are not arrested for using drugs but for crime related to their drug use, such as shoplifting from stores or credit card fraud.

About a third of the women are in prison for drugs—either possession (would have to be repeated offenses), distribution (a large amount assumed to be too much for personal use, but not for sales), or trafficking (a large amount for sales). Many of those there for trafficking are “mules” or women used to bring in drugs from other countries such as Mexico.

About a third of the women are there for property crimes, such as shoplifting or credit card fraud or some other property crime such as burglary.

About a third of the women are there for violent crimes, which can include a fatal accident while driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The other most common violent crime for women involves domestic violence, most often when the women are in an abusive relationship and she ends up killing her abuser—either while he is beating her or later when he passes out. There are also a few women there for murders not related to either of these, but they are not that common.

KB: What can a country and humans do to give women who come out of prison a second chance and a new life?

I think the first thing that the prisons need to do is to really treat prison as a place for rehabilitation. Unfortunately, the emphasis is on punishment and humiliation and this just ensures that the women will leave prison worse than the day they entered. It will just continue the cycle of abuse and poor self-image that led them to come to prison in the first place.

We need to invest money enough into the prisons to help the women lift themselves up and make it more likely that they will not return.

If it were up to me, my prisons would provide more training, offer college level classes, teach yoga and meditation, encourage the women to take responsibility for themselves, start some small businesses in the prison (many of the women are incredibly talented crocheters or quilters or seamstresses). They could make items for a baby room, put prison guard in charge of the business (this could give the guards a different role with the women) have a marketing department, a sales department, and a creative department, a financial department switching women to a new department after a while to give them experience in running a business. This could be done for very little money.

I would allow overnight visits with children and families. I would provide incentives for good behavior—real incentives. I would pay everyone in the prison for the small jobs they do—in the kitchen, in the laundry, in the office, and not make them work for free. I would make sure that the guards we hired had the right attitude, and treated the women fairly and with respect.

When women near the end of their sentences—about 9 months out—they should be put through an intensive reentry program to teach them all of the practical skills they will need when they leave. This could include how to budget, how to repair their credit, how to use a computer to search and apply for jobs, workplace etiquette, how to dress appropriately for interviews and for the job, how to find resources in the community. They should receive their state IDs and social security cards when they leave, along with a small amount of cash and basic clothing. The prison should have a good list of reputable transitional homes that they vet on a regular basis to ensure the women are going to a place where they will receive the help they need.

On the outside, we should stop treating ex-felons like pariahs. They have served their time—most of them much more time than they deserved. They should be given their rights back (voting rights, travel rights), and housing should be made available to them. One of the hardest things we deal with is trying to find permanent housing even after they have been with us for a year. This is because of their felony, and it makes it nearly impossible for the women to find an apartment on their own. Without help to navigate the many issues they face, they are unlikely to succeed.

For more information check out AIM’s website: HERE

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