When the jailhouse is far from home

Incarceration, of course, is not the only thing that takes parents from their children. Drugs can do it, too. The children, in whose name this drug war is being fought, want their mothers off drugs; but not if it means they lose them in the process. Some states and private organizations have recognized this in creating programs that work to get women off drugs and keep, or reunite, them with their children at the same time.

Seventeen states now have community facilities where mothers can do all or part of their time along with their young children, instead of in prisons hundreds of miles away from them. The "Girl Scouts Beyond Bars" program has created troops in several states that meet in the prisons, where inmates and their children can eat, make art and sell cookies together.

These programs, and others like them scattered across the country, affirm something that those who advocate conventional incarceration fail to recognize -- that the parent-child bond, in addition to its private importance to the individuals involved, is a social asset that should be valued and preserved. If 1.5 million children have a parent behind bars, it goes beyond personal tragedy; it's a community concern.

When we incarcerate a drug offender, we do so, at least in theory, not because she is a menace from whom society must be protected at any cost, but because we believe she is caught in a destructive cycle that must be interrupted. But rather than being interrupted, that cycle is being perpetuated into the next generation.

About half of all juvenile hall inmates have a parent who has been incarcerated. The Ohio boy -- who was charged with inducing panic, aggravated menace, carrying a concealed weapon and carrying a firearm in a school zone -- could, if convicted, be behind bars until he turns 21. Not every child who loses a parent to prison will express his hurt as dramatically as he did, but one way or another, they will make their sorrow known.

We say we are a nation that believes in families -- we say it with particular vehemence each election season -- but we're not. What we really believe in is individuals -- as in "individual responsibility"; as in "every man (woman and child) for himself." Mom screwed up? Make her pay, regardless of the effect it may have on her children and the communities in which those children live.

We are able to lock people up in the numbers that we do only so long as we see them as useless, extraneous individuals whom our society simply does not need. But the vast majority of female prisoners are mothers and caretakers; they are needed in the most fundamental way.

When I told the 16-year-old who had lost his mother at age 9 what the boy in Ohio had done and why, he had no comment, only a question: "Did they let him see his mother?"

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