The mothers and their families, they said, then often fall prey to corrupt officials.
A report from the organisation Licadho, based on 96 cases of women charged with minor crimes, found all were jailed before trial even though most had no criminal history.
One-third of the detainees receive no visits from their children, and 94 percent of those who did had to pay corrupt officials for the privilege.
The report denounces the devastating psychological, educational, and economic effects of imprisonment of mothers on their children and highlights the dramatic improvement in the lives of the children that could be achieved simply by implementing existing procedures to avoid unnecessary detention.
“We do not expect all mothers to be released, only that judges use the legal mechanisms established by the ministry of justice last year to assess each case,” Phung Chiv Kek, the director of Licadho, told Efe.
Mothers interviewed revealed that visitors pay around $2.5 for 15-minute visits, and up to $15 for private visits, adding to the cost of transportation to and from jails, and hours away from work, costs that many families cannot afford.
According to Licadho, 70 percent of women imprisoned in December 2014 were still awaiting trial, held in overcrowded prisons lacking sanitation and services, sometimes with as many as 20 inmates in one cell.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced in February the creation of a committee to grant amnesties to pregnant women and those with children, in the wake of other reports on prisons.