(WOMENSENEWS)— Can you imagine a more dangerous and degrading practice than shackling incarcerated women and adolescents during pregnancy, childbirth and recovery? Can you imagine that happening in the United States?
I know, it’s shocking, bordering on appalling, that pregnant women in 28 states can be restrained as they walk from their cells to their prenatal appointments or chained as they deliver a new life into this world and hold their baby for the first time.
And among these states, the following 13 have no restrictions at all on the indiscriminate shackling of pregnant women in their criminal justice systems: New Jersey, Montana, Utah, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.
Shackling is not only humiliating, it poses serious health risks to the mother and her baby. Restraining a woman from moving freely during delivery can cause extreme pain and serious medical complications in the mother and life-threatening risks to her child, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. It likely also produces mental distress or exacerbates pre-existing emotional problems.
All of these factors cause some to decry the practice as “birthing barbarism” and declare it unconstitutional
It’s a sad fact that on any given day in the United States our prisons and jails hold more than 200,000 females. This population has incredibly high rates of trauma, predominately in the form of sexual abuse at the hands of caretakers. Imprisoned women often struggle with depression, substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. Further, most incarcerated women are non-violent offenders. They are being punished for property or drug crimes. And disproportionately they are women of color. Clearly this is a vulnerable and preyed upon population. The last thing they either need or deserve is to be chained like rabid dogs.
In addition, these women give birth under the supervision of a correctional officer, who is not always a female, and no family member or friend is allowed in the delivery room with them to assist.
‘Non-Loving Eyes’
Even if you’re not a woman who has given birth, you likely love or have loved a woman who has; your mother, your sister, your daughter. Could you imagine her chained during this process, watched in the most intimate of situations by non-loving eyes, with no person of meaning in her life to hold her hand or wipe her brow?
The federal government does not keep official records of the number of pregnancies and births in our nation’s prison systems. But the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that up to 20 percent of our nation’s incarcerated women are pregnant. And the rates are likely higher in urban settings.
I’ve given birth and it’s a beautiful and taxing experience. Knowing the pleasure and the pain, I don’t think it’s fair for one woman to be shackled. Not one.
The reason for restraining these women, I think, is that they might escape. But have you ever been or seen a full-term pregnant woman run? Not impossible. But a highly unlikely flight risk.
As a trauma psychologist on faculty at Yale I want to promote human and civil rights for all.
Even traditional law-and-order organizations such as the U.S. Marshals Service, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agree and bar this kind of shackling except under extreme circumstances, such as when a woman is a danger to herself or others.
How do we, as informed, empathic, caring souls, put an end to this cruel, inhuman practice? It’s likely that the Department of Justice is only going to be able to move state prisons and local jails by carrots and sticks—additional funding or threatened loss of funding—and for this, we need congressional action.
Send a message to Congress that they need to prohibit the use of restraints for incarcerated women and adolescents during pregnancy, labor and recovery in every state as part of their efforts to reform the federal criminal justice system. And to make annual reporting on pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes mandatory for every prison and jail across our great land.
This is appalling. I had no idea this was happening. Thanks for shedding light on this topic.
Women beung shackled while giving birth is humiliating and senseless. They have already been convicted and sentenced, so is this practice a petty level of “So there, I have power over you”? Trauma survivors already feel powerless and not shackling them could actually be a “jumping off” place for building a relationship of trust. When our society practice these type of inhumanity it only gives those of us who survive a reason to hit other systems to get care. This cost millions of dollars. This is not tax payers dollars at work but at play. Keep kicking butt Dr. Cook we need your voice!
Dr. Cook is a true advocate for women’s issues and has put light on areas seldom discussed. I too found it appalling that women are shackled before, during and right after childbirth. The prison system should be working on rehabilitation not desegregation of its incarcerated women. I understand that state representatives have a lot of issues to deal with but a bill protecting incarcerated women and children during childbirth needs immediate action. Hopefully this article will bring about change.to a barbaric situation.
The word shocking comes to mind. Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s 2016.
Utterly awful but also completely unsurprising. So many aspects of American life are truly barbaric, not least of which is its criminal justice system.
Thank you, Dr. Cook, for educating us on this important human rights issue. It truly is shocking, yet unfortunately not surprising. Let’s take any action we can against this practice.
Thank you for shedding light on this. I will be sure to include this in our work in re-entry. My staff had no idea that women experienced this during incarceration.
Thank you for writing about this from your perspective as an expert on trauma. Your timing is perfect: Exactly two years ago, Massachusetts enacted a law to prevent the shackling of women during labor and birth and strictly limit shackling at all other times. But a new report documents widespread problems. Read Breaking Promises: Violations of the Massachusetts Pregnancy Standards and Anti-Shackling Law by the Prison Birth Project and Prisoners’ Legal Services (available at both websites). Without oversight and enforcement, these laws don’t give women the protection they are intended to provide.
Dr. Cook, Thank you for writing about such an important human
rights issue. You are such a great advocate
for women!
This is outrageous. Psychiatric patients who require seclusion and restraint are regularly monitored by clinical staff and removed from these restraints as soon as they are no longer a danger to themselves or others. The regular shackling of female inmates during labor and birth harkens back to the dark days of mental health institutions when indiscriminate use of restraints were a matter of course. I thought that this was era that we had left far behind us…