Women, who constitute the fastest growing prison population in the United States, face a dim outlook when their jail term coincides with pregnancy.
Prisons, which were built to house men, are not necessarily equipped to handle women’s health and reproductive needs. Prenatal care is often limited, confounding the fact that pregnant prisoners are without the support of relatives or friends.
Labor is an anxious time for most expecting mothers, but even more so for prisoners. Women are sometimes forced to remain in shackles during labor; only two states (Illinois and California) regulate the use of restraints on pregnant women. Even though most women are in jail for non-violent offenses, shackles are used during transport to outside medical facilities.
The Web site Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance helps chronicle the plight of incarcerated mothers. Kebby Warner, a twenty-five-year-old woman, writes about her experience of being pregnant while incarcerated: “In order to leave the prison for a “medical” run, you are forced to go through a period of humiliation each time with a MDOC [corrections] guard. You are strip searched completely upon leaving and returning to the prison. You are placed in belly chains and your hands are cuffed … the strip searches become a difficult task beginning at the six or seven months of pregnancy. By this time, my emotional state was up and down, and most of the time I left the ‘strip room’ in tears from shame and humiliation.”
Most women will only have twenty-four hours with their newborn. After that, they will be taken back to prison and the child placed in foster care, or, if possible, with relatives on the outside.
However, as the number of women in prison continues to rise—according to the Bureau of Justice, the number of incarcerated women is up 71 percent since 1996—some are trying to make life better for the soon-to-be moms.
The Birth Attendants, a nonprofit organization, runs the Prison Doula Project, a program that provides pregnancy, labor, and post-partum doula services and education to women incarcerated at the Washington Correction Center for Women.
The Prison Doulas visit the prison once a week for prenatal and post-partum support, one-on-one support, and a childbirth class. Health education is often lacking for women who are in prison, so the prison invited the doulas to teach a family planning class, which covers birth control, safe sex, and fertility. The Birth Doulas also help women deal with the emotional struggles of maintaining a relationship with their kids or postpartum stress—an outlet they are not traditionally given.
Zimryah Barnes, a program coordinator with the Birth Attendants, acknowledges that despite their best efforts, pregnant women in prison have the cards stacked against them. The first time some women meet their labor provider is at three months—extremely late compared to outside births. There is increased pressure for women to have Caesareans and some are given misinformation about their pregnancies.
Given these challenges, the doulas seek to make a woman’s experience as positive as possible.
“We’re concerned with people’s health and want the women to feel as in control and empowered as possible,” says Zimryah.
The Prison Doula Project, though small and unique, is an attempt to make pregnancy and birth a better situation for incarcerated women. Similarly, The Rebecca Project, a non-profit, is sponsoring legislation to get rid of the practice of shackling pregnant women in all state and federal correction facilities. But what about the children? Evidence suggests that keeping newborns with their mothers reduces recidivism rates for the parent and provides critical healthy development for the child, including bonding, breast-feeding, and trust. However, few prisons have programs that allow children to stay with their mothers. One innovative program, also at the Washington Corrections Center for Women, is a residential parenting program that allows minimum-security inmates the ability to keep their babies with them in prison. The mother and child live together in a special unit with other inmates and their children. In addition to staying with their children, they are also given parenting classes, life skills, and job resources.
However, this program is the exception rather than the rule. The half a dozen or so residential parenting programs across the nation are controversial. Some are not convinced that prisons are an acceptable place for toddlers; funding for these programs, as for prisons in general, is limited. Competition to be placed in the programs creates rifts within communities and many people feel that “if you do the crime, you should do the time.” But as the number of women in prisons increases, leaving behind young children on the outside and giving birth on the inside, the ones that really may be paying are the children. And as a new generation of at-risk children are born, it is unlikely the prison rates will go down any time soon.
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