Mums Behind Bars (2004)

A relatively new law that permits some female inmates who give birth while in prison to keep their babies with them for the first six months is investigated in this New Zealand documentary. The law change, which is still in its trial stage, resulted from international studies that showed keeping the babies led to a dramatic change in the mothers' attitudes. From Lower Hutt's Arohata Women's Prison, two women talk about their experience of having babies while locked up, and a mother forced to leave her four children behind while serving her sentence tells her story.