“This program is going to give women the building blocks to live a better life, and then that is going to overflow into their children,” one caregiver said.
VANDALIA, Mo. — Tara Carroll gave birth to her daughter in 2022 while serving a 22-year sentence in the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic & Correctional Center. Shortly after she finished laboring in the hospital, the baby was sent home with her husband while she returned to her prison cell.
She didn’t leave her bed for a week. Back in an environment where she felt she always had to be strong, she wrestled with postpartum depression.
Now, nearly three years later, Carroll is helping to care for other pregnant incarcerated women through a prison nursery program — the 10th of its kind in the country — unveiled last week in Vandalia by the Missouri Department of Corrections.
“This program is going to give …