THE STORY UNTOLD
Rhetoric of the Rescue
We came to Nepal to study female prisoners; to hear their stories, and to share those stories with the hopes of humanizing, empathizing and overall de-stigmatizing their status. There’s another story that’s not being told in Nepal, however. It’s being whispered with darting eyes, shoved to the corner, under the table, out of sight. Everyone who knows the story has something to say, but no one’s saying it. The prisoners aren’t, the guards aren’t, the jailers aren’t, and the journalists, researchers and reporters most certainly, aren’t.
The story begins with what’s not here. The lived reality is that Nepal doesn’t have a foster-care system, or child protective services to govern the placement and care of children without the resources to pay for a hostel, or a family to look after them after their parent’s incarceration. There is no uniform entity defining or enforcing the parameters for these children’s care. Of course there are laws meant to regulate such things, but as we’ve seen in prison after prison, children’s home after prison home, in practice these laws are severely disregarded. Nepal’s Prison Act, 1963, clearly states;
“if any imprisoned woman gives birth to a child in prison or has a minor child under the age of two, she can keep the child with her even if there is a person outside who could look after the child. However, after the child reaches the age of two, the custody of the child must be given to another person outside of prison, except in the event of necessity. If there is no one outside prison to look after the child then all the care, education, maintenance and subsistence of such a child shall be carried out at the expense of the Government of Nepal as prescribed until that Detainee or Prisoner remains detained or imprisoned.” [1]
Why then, did we meet eleven children, aged 2 months to 12 years in the Central Jail; located at the heart of Kathmandu? If the jail consistently referred to as having the most resources, the strictest regulations, and a close proximity to children’s homes and organizations currently has approximately children above the age of two living within its walls, providing just 10 extra rupees to their mothers for their care, one can only imagine what’s happening in the jails in more rural Nepal. In 2017, there were a total of 97 children living inside of Nepal’s prisons. [2] What we saw in each prison we visited throughout our month of research was the reality Pushpa Basnet of Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) explains, after working 14 years with these very children. [3] She states,
“If no local guardian is able or willing to care for the children other than their incarcerated parents, children are often forced to live inside prisons with their mothers. The law clearly states that the government is liable to bear the cost of raising and caring for these children until their parents complete their jail sentences. In reality, no system of services exists to accomplish this task.” [4]
Instead, the responsibility of care is passed on to NGOs. These NGOs are left to act largely on their own accord, deciding for themselves which children are taken from prisons, the conditions of which they provide for the children, and deciding which mothers are “reintegrated” enough to care for their own children again. It’s not that the regulations for these organizations doesn’t exist, but rather that there isn’t an effective system of enforcement and accountability. NGOs are required to register their organization and any new children with their District Child Welfare Boards. They also have to pass yearly inspections, conducted by the same board members who have been “reported to demand undue money for these services.” Even if the organizations weren’t operating up to code, the government wouldn’t necessarily be able to effectively intervene. The need for such NGOs in the first place, afterall, comes from the government’s own lack of resources to care for the children of prisoners.
INCONSISTENCIES IN CARE
In course of our visits to prisons and NGO-run children's homes, we saw the ramifications of such little regulation on the children in terms of their health and living conditions. We met one 12 year old boy who was returned for the third time to prison due to contracting hepatitis b, and heard of another children’s home’s young girl who was found to be infected with the very same virus after having spent the month in prison with her mother for the Dashain festival time. In this case, both NGOs took very different approaches to the issue at hand; one continuing to send sick children back to prison to be with their mothers, and the other now implementing a strict health policy wherein children are given thorough check-ups before and after entering prison for long-term visits, and must meet certain health criteria in order to visit. [6] The distinction to be made isn’t necessarily to distinguish “better” from “worse” practices, but rather to draw attention to the distinct discrepancies.
These inconsistencies seem to dominate every aspect of these children’s homes. Some had over 100 children while others had less than 10. Some sent their children to private schools to “provide the best opportunities” for their children, while others opted for public to “give them a normal life.” [7] Even different homes within the same organization addressed these issues differently. Children’s homes had a variety of mental health services, some providing it weekly with mental health professionals, others providing it thrice each year in group settings by program staff, and others still providing it once a year or not at all. It appears as though each organization has established its own system of decision making, and yet none has been established across organizations.
One implication of such stratified decision making is that individuals at these NGOs are enabled to make life-altering decisions on behalf of the mothers and their children on a case-by-case basis. In some ways this could be argued to be a positive result from the lack of regulation; as the human condition can’t necessarily be put into a single formula. Potential for problematic decisions arise, however, due to the fact that humans are inherently emotional. When deciding which mothers are capable of caring for their children after their release from prison, we’ve heard allegations that one NGO has kept multiple children despite the mother’s demonstrated capability and desire to care for her child again, and rumors that another NGO has demonstrated a history of “carelessly releasing their children back to their mothers” to cut costs and “serve” more children. [8]
NON-GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS AREN’T THE LONG-TERM SOLUTION
In place of establishing a system of care of its own, the government, and more specifically, the prison system, has learned to rely upon these NGOs as a long-term application of a short-term solution. At each prison we visited while accompanied by the founder of one such organization, we witnessed the devastating reality of the extent to which the jailers and prisoners rely on outside aid. We saw entire structures within the prison built with the money of NGOs to provide a separate space for children and mothers, saw books and baby-care supplies that wouldn’t be there without outsiders having brought them in, heard jailers request for certain children to be taken by the organizations or even for pads and sewing machines; things distant yet still related to the care of the children and their mothers.
Ultimately, NGOs rely on some sort of “need” to financially sustain the organization. If there aren’t people left to help or conditions left to improve, they’re out of funds, out of a job, out of a a salary. They’re therefore not entirely incentivized to help solve the root of the problem. Many of the children are separated from their mothers due to an initially unjust criminal justice system. NGOs aren’t the answer to the systemic issue of female incarceration. Prison reform is. Government accountability is. A societal shift most certainly, is. (link root causes here)
The pitfall of NGOs and their potential for lasting impact is in the name itself. Non-Governmental is synonymous with their inability to enact legislative reform, while Organization indicates their decision making hierarchy. Ultimately, NGOs are businesses. Not-For-Profit and For-Profit businesses alike have an ultimate reality of running on money. They require money to provide their services, employ their staff, and to make long term investments to continue operations year to year. Despite however genuine the social impact goals of an NGO are, the reality is that most of the time the founders, their families, and their employee’s livelihoods depend on the financial success of the organization. Unfortunately, many issues arise from this fundamental dependence on monetization and fundraising.
Foreign investment and prize money were the two the primary sources of funds for all NGOs working with female prisoners and/or their children that the researchers interacted with. This is noteworthy for the waterfall effect it has on the decision making of these organizations. Foreign investment and prize money are two especially volatile sources of revenue, as they’re typically event-based occurrences instead of a sustainable, reliable sources. We directly witnessed the dependence on event-based funds deter various NGOs’ attention from their primary missions on various occasions.
Due to the foreign origins of most investment and prizes, marketing becomes more and more important to maintaining and attracting sources of funds. Despite many organizations’ anecdotes of their children electing not to tell their classmates and friends of their parents’ status of incarceration, and explanations of the severe stigma the children and their mothers face, the same organizations still choose to share photographs of the children they help online. Chetana Lopsung from Relief Trust explains that “many children are very fearful of people knowing their identity. That is a fear they have for a long time… which makes it hard for them to go back to their families and society.” [9] In response to questions from the researchers regarding the use of photos of children on social media and organization websites, one NGO founder says “somehow we have to run,” indicating that the monetization of these children is what financially enables the organization to continue to operate and provide support to those it serves. [10] This answer unfortunately does make a lot of sense when considering the business-side of the NGO, by letting the brain rather than the heart make decisions for these social enterprises. It makes sense that for foreign investors who can’t see the day to day impact of their money in person, these pictures are necessary. It makes sense that without them, prize nominations might not be as frequent. Does this monetization of the children justify the emotional distress it might have caused, if this very monetization and emotional distress also provides more resources for this child and more?
This question of “more” is also directly linked with maintaining and attracting new sources of revenue. Without the typical monetary “return on investment” to compare it to, investors in social enterprises often look to the numbers in terms of impact. The more people “reached” with one organization’s funds is a statistic that stands out to investors and social-work prizes alike. Although it may attract more money, quantity of impact isn’t necessarily a good measure of quality impact. When investment comes so distinctly from foreign sources, additional time and resources are wasted courting said investors. We witnessed organizations choosing private cars over public transportation, heard stories of countless trips to visit donors in their home countries, of television and radio appearances. Perhaps with the current business model, these things are necessary; but they also unarguably waste time and resources.
Understanding how much work goes into attaining these funds in the first place provides context to the competitive response we observed two such NGOs take. Likely due to the fact that prizes and donors focused on the specific domains of these organizations are limited, the organizations have been described as being in a “rat race” to bring more children of prisoners to their respective NGOs. [11] In the process of this competition, allegations of bribes to guards and prison management to keep one another out of specific prisons and regions have been made by various NGOs, against other NGOs. [12] This has the devastating impact of fewer children and their mothers being helped.
IF THE NGOS AREN'T DOING IT, WHO WILL?
It is important to be critical of the work NGOs are doing; to hold them accountable to provide the best care possible for these children and their parents. However, it is ultimately impossible to conjure a perfect solution to such a difficult and complex situation. While there is much room for improvement, the organizations the researchers interacted with are certainly a better option compared to orphanages known to be shut down for child abuse, molestation and child rights violations. [13] While an ideal solution of government policy and societal shift with respect to the treatment of women and their incarceration might be theorized, the researchers conclude that this reality or ideal may only exist through the eyes of hopeful, feminist, young, outsiders from Finland and the United States. [14] Ultimately, one simply has to decide if the NGOs are making more net-good impact than net-bad, and hope to inspire change when possible.