Mom Let’s Talk: Moms in Prison and their Maternal Needs
By: Victoria Cipriani
Tags: Prison Reform, Psychology, Motherhood, Restorative Justice

First and foremost, an introduction, my name is Victoria Cipriani and I am a senior at Champlain College. Outside of just being a student I am also the developer and creator of Mom, Let’s Talk. The overarching theme of Mom Let’s talk is the understanding that mothers who are incarcerated need connections to their child’s life. For mothers who are in prison typically they lose contact with their children within six months of starting their sentence. Due to the trail of middle men it requires to request information from the outside, and the inconsistencies and inabilities that come from family visiting hours women are often left without any idea of what is happening in their child’s day to day life. My goal when creating Mom, Let’s Talk was to break down the barriers that divide a mother and her child when put in difficult circumstances like prison. The ultimate goal is that enough parents can use this portal and that a positive impact is seen within the prison inmates, as well as see if there is a decrease in the school-to-prison pipeline for children who have an incarcerated parent.

Website Homepage

The Idea

The idea for capstone stemmed from my love for restorative justice. I found myself immediately drawn to the idea of changing the face of prisons. Now obviously, that is a heavy task to take on so I looked to a smaller scale. One thing I have always said about my passion for psychology is that I want to change the lives of someone, and I want it to change my life in the process. I grew up in a home with two happy, and healthy parents, and I forgot that is not a guarantee. I took the idea of creating a prison program, and combined it with my knowledge of the lack of resources for incarcerated mothers, and thus Mom Let’s Talk came into the works. Some of the biggest pitfalls come from being unaware of what is happening in the child’s academic setting. Mom Let’s Talk acts as a parent portal which provides the mother access to grades, teacher contacts, and scheduled academic events. This allows a bridge to be created from inside the facility, to outside in the world.

The goal was to create a website which can implement more useful resources for mothers who are incarcerated. The website provides certain requirements to help the mothers be more in tune with their children’s life. Consider this a parent portal, which allows mothers to regularly schedule meetings with the children, as well as planning meetings between the teachers of the children. My work is to provide the resources that keep a mother as a fixture within the child’s life despite complications in the environment. When looking, the disheartening statistics regarding incarcerated mothers inspired me to develop the resource guide located within a website for my capstone, to help these mothers stay in touch with their children through better resources than they currently have. The purpose of this project is to diminish the amount of incarcerated mothers who lose touch with their children, or lose the custody of their children while incarcerated. As you look around the website you will find contacts, schedules, performance, and results.