THE man who happened to answer the telephone at the Social Welfare Department (SWD) laughed in disbelief. 'There are no babies in prison here,' he cried. But he was wrong. At the moment, there are 10 infants serving time, concurrent with their mothers, at Tai Lam Centre for Women. The youngest child is six weeks old. Although batches of immigrant babies also pass through Victoria Prison in Central, they tend to be processed fairly quickly so that they can be sent back to their parents' country of origin, and the system does not include them in its statistics. So it is the long-termers who spend their formative years confined within those walls, perched on an exposed hillside in the New Territories.
If you are gripped by a feeling of outrage about this, it should be pointed out that no one in authority is exactly rejoicing at the scenario either. 'Please make one thing clear,' asks Eric McCosh, commissioner of the Correctional Services Department (CSD). 'We do our best not to have any children in prison at all. We don't want them to be there. We keep them up until the age of three and then they have to leave.' The children in Tai Lam are there because no one else wants them or can cope with looking after them, and for the last 20 years the reluctant conclusion of the CSD is that it is better that such infants are looked after by their incarcerated mothers than not looked after at all.
Tai Lam Centre for Women is at the end of a narrow road which winds past abandoned cars, dusty shacks and a long, depressing smear of dirty water. At the head of the valley there is a huge wall, built like a fortress, which helps to confine the Tai Lam Chung reservoir. A smaller edifice below holds back more than 500 women from a society which has passed sentence on their crimes. Some acts are not so very heinous - forging travel documents to gain entry to the territory, for example. But in one cell there is a woman who threw her child out of a window; in another, a woman who locked her two step-daughters into a flat and then set fire to it. These children did not survive. Even in the brittle blue light of a winter's afternoon, it is not a cheerful place; during the claustrophobic humidity of the rainy season, it must feel utterly godforsaken.
The babies and their mothers live in the hospital wing which is called, with what might be thought a sad inappropriateness, Orchid House. And yet these rare infants, whose existence is barely known in the outside world, do seem to be as nurtured and coddled as any prized bloom. They are with their mothers 24 hours a day because no mother has to do the tedious work - laundry, gardening, tailoring - which is expected of other inmates. They sleep at the foot of their mothers' beds. They have constant medical supervision. They are doted upon by the warders, who often have their own children. In some cases, frankly, they are probably better off inside than they would be if their mothers (some of whom are drug addicts; there is a drug addiction centre at Tai Lam) were struggling to exist beyond the walls. The situation in Orchid House, therefore, is far from being a tragedy.
But it is not ideal. 'These prisoners are privileged,' agrees Philomena Kwok, who is chief officer at Tai Lam. 'They are not in a dormitory with hardened prisoners. But even if it was heaven here, it would not be as good as outside.' A tour of Tai Lam with Kwok and Lau Shuk-fun, the hospital wing's principal officer, illustrates the problems. The security checks, jangle of keys and thicket of iron barriers are to be expected but it is disconcerting to walk into a room full of women and to see them rise in silent unison, still dandling the infants in their arms, until the warders bid them to sit. There is a television fixed high on the wall, showing afternoon cartoons; the inmates sit opposite on what looks like a long park bench, as if they are waiting for a bus.
The other prisoners at Tai Lam do not mix with the mothers except when they are required to visit the hospital. There is no overlap at mealtimes or during the hour every day when the children are taken outside for exercise. They are effectively kept within a sealed unit within the prison. The mothers are such a varied linguistic group - currently two Filipinas, two Vietnamese, two mainland Chinese and four Cantonese - that they can hardly be expected to have significantly bonded with themselves. As a result, their offspring are not good at playing with each other. 'These children are usually loners,' observes Kwok. 'They don't mix very well and they tend not to be as open as a child outside. They are very much loved, but they keep a distance.' What is more apparent, however, is not so much the distance observed by the children but the gap between mother and child. When a warder leans over to pick up a baby - and the prison officials genuinely seem to enjoy contact with their tiny charges - the mothers immediately stand back, acting as if they themselves were children in the presence of a headmistress. It would be an exaggeration to say that these women are cowed by officialdom but they are certainly watchful, with the nervous alertness of trained dogs in front of a strict master. And it is perfectly obvious, even to a child, that these mothers, traditional figures of authority, are not in control.
'The children recognise the difference. They see that we wear uniforms, that we are serious with the adults and that we are disciplinarians,' says Kwok. 'Unconsciously, they know what is going on, so despite everything we can give them they are limited, handicapped. They smile at us, but they rarely speak.' 'They don't know how to fight,' muses Lau, who is a mother herself. 'I wonder about that ...' TWO of the local mothers have agreed to a photo session and an interview in the chilly, white-tiled children's room. Taking photographs raises obvious confidentiality problems. One mother, touchingly, agrees in order that the photographer will send her a picture of her child. She does not want to be named but her four-month-old daughter is called Kei-kei. The other, a boy named Fai-chai, is 18 months. Both babies were born after their mothers had started their sentences and neither mother knew that she was pregnant until she was admitted to Tai Lam and given a medical check by the prison doctor. This is fairly common, especially among drug addicts who are unlikely to be in the habit of consulting the calendar every month. Abortion is an option which is usually availed of by single inmates, but Kei-kei and Fai-chai's mothers are married and both decided to go ahead with the birth.
