Disir
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In a four-bedroom, white house by the airport in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 2-year-old Jacob squirmed around in Mickey Mouse pajamas, his explosion of poofy black hair pulled into a topknot. He smiled shyly, pushed a red toy car back and forth, and shoved his fingers into his mouth. He appeared to be a typical toddler. Meanwhile, his mother, Amber Briana Smith, was 40 miles away in Taft, Oklahoma, sharing a prison dorm with dozens of other women after having pled guilty to neglecting Jacob by using meth while she was pregnant with him. Three of her other six children were also born with drugs in their systems. She’s seen Jacob just a handful of times in the past year, she says, and some of her other offspring even less frequently. (I changed the names of all the children in this story to protect their privacy.)
Smith, who is African American and Native American, is 33, petite, and pretty. She considers herself curious and impulsive—the kind of person who will do something all the way or not at all (a quality which, perhaps, helps explain both the quantity of her children and the depth of her drug habit). When she was 10, both of the adults in her own life were sentenced to prison—her mother’s husband for abusing her and her mother for failing to protect her from him. Smith was sent to live with her aunt, Jammie Smith, for a five-year period she describes as “wonderful” and full of “life lessons.” Still, medical records show that she cut herself as a teenager.
After dropping out of high school, she successfully completed a phlebotomy course at Career Point College, a local vocational school. However, she and her family say Smith was never able to actually obtain her license because she owed $1,000 in student loans for the course. For money, Smith bounced between stints at Waffle House, McDonald’s, and Arby’s. Occasionally, she stripped.
Smith, who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and says she also has bipolar disorder, began using drugs around 2007—first crack and, later, meth. She already had three children by then, and between 2008 and 2011, she gave birth to three more. Hospital workers tested them for drugs as soon as they were born, and all three samples came back positive for cocaine. Social workers suggested that Smith take parenting classes. She says the social-services agency ran out of bus passes, and she couldn’t find other transportation. Her mother says she would have given Smith a bus pass if she had asked. In 2010, she says, the Department of Human Services began to remove her children from her care. (DHS workers would not comment on her case, citing privacy laws.)
One weekend in 2011, Smith tried to kill herself by choking herself with a sheet, cutting her wrist with a dull knife, and locking herself in a hot car. In 2012, she was caught stealing clothes from a Walmart, a misdemeanor for which she was given a deferred sentence, meaning if she stayed out of trouble for one year, her guilty plea would be expunged.
It was Jacob, Smith’s seventh child, who would be the final straw for Tulsa authorities. The day before her deferred sentence was up in February of 2013, Smith delivered Jacob at Tulsa’s Saint Francis Hospital. Both mom and baby tested positive for meth, and the next day, a DHS investigator interviewed Smith. She confessed to using drugs while she was pregnant, and Jacob was whisked into state custody.
Into the Body of Another - The Atlantic
WARNING. That is a lengthy article.
One of the things that I wish the author would have been more careful with is the 2013 study plus numbers. What it does not mention in there but is included in those numbers are cases were someone used cocaine ten years before and has a miscarriage and is then incarcerated.
When we talk about addiction it is very easy to say go to rehab. The question is does it work? What is your success rate? Records are not kept for longer than 3 months. Why not? I am not in favor of women being incarcerated for this but I am also not in favor of BS.
Smith, who is African American and Native American, is 33, petite, and pretty. She considers herself curious and impulsive—the kind of person who will do something all the way or not at all (a quality which, perhaps, helps explain both the quantity of her children and the depth of her drug habit). When she was 10, both of the adults in her own life were sentenced to prison—her mother’s husband for abusing her and her mother for failing to protect her from him. Smith was sent to live with her aunt, Jammie Smith, for a five-year period she describes as “wonderful” and full of “life lessons.” Still, medical records show that she cut herself as a teenager.
After dropping out of high school, she successfully completed a phlebotomy course at Career Point College, a local vocational school. However, she and her family say Smith was never able to actually obtain her license because she owed $1,000 in student loans for the course. For money, Smith bounced between stints at Waffle House, McDonald’s, and Arby’s. Occasionally, she stripped.
Smith, who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and says she also has bipolar disorder, began using drugs around 2007—first crack and, later, meth. She already had three children by then, and between 2008 and 2011, she gave birth to three more. Hospital workers tested them for drugs as soon as they were born, and all three samples came back positive for cocaine. Social workers suggested that Smith take parenting classes. She says the social-services agency ran out of bus passes, and she couldn’t find other transportation. Her mother says she would have given Smith a bus pass if she had asked. In 2010, she says, the Department of Human Services began to remove her children from her care. (DHS workers would not comment on her case, citing privacy laws.)
One weekend in 2011, Smith tried to kill herself by choking herself with a sheet, cutting her wrist with a dull knife, and locking herself in a hot car. In 2012, she was caught stealing clothes from a Walmart, a misdemeanor for which she was given a deferred sentence, meaning if she stayed out of trouble for one year, her guilty plea would be expunged.
It was Jacob, Smith’s seventh child, who would be the final straw for Tulsa authorities. The day before her deferred sentence was up in February of 2013, Smith delivered Jacob at Tulsa’s Saint Francis Hospital. Both mom and baby tested positive for meth, and the next day, a DHS investigator interviewed Smith. She confessed to using drugs while she was pregnant, and Jacob was whisked into state custody.
Into the Body of Another - The Atlantic
WARNING. That is a lengthy article.
One of the things that I wish the author would have been more careful with is the 2013 study plus numbers. What it does not mention in there but is included in those numbers are cases were someone used cocaine ten years before and has a miscarriage and is then incarcerated.
When we talk about addiction it is very easy to say go to rehab. The question is does it work? What is your success rate? Records are not kept for longer than 3 months. Why not? I am not in favor of women being incarcerated for this but I am also not in favor of BS.
