Let’s talk about giving birth behind bars

Corrections officials deal with rising population of women

• Joseph Darius Jaafari
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Joseph Darius Jaafari was a staff writer for the PA Post. His work covering crime, the military and LGBTQ issues has been featured in The Marshall Project, Rolling Stone Magazine, The Atlantic and The New York Times. He is a graduate of the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and an award-winning documentary filmmaker who has produced for VICE and The New York Post. He is a native Arizonan and infamous for his love of tacos.

Anne from York asked us what prisons and jails are doing about women who give birth during incarceration. I hate to start your day off on a bit of a downer, Anne, but let’s go ahead and dive into what the numbers tell us about how many women are locked up, what happens to them and their children if they give birth, and where there have been policy changes.

First off, let’s discuss the population size of women in county jails. Nationally, the number of women in jails or prisons grew at a significantly faster rate than men, a trend that started in the 1980s. In a report released last fall, the Prison Policy Initiative and ACLU found that 101,000 women were locked up in jails, slightly more than the 99,000 held in prisons. Out of those women held in county jails, more than half are there without a conviction and are just waiting for a trial or sentencing.

(In case you didn’t know, the difference between jails and prisons has to do with crimes and sentences. By and large across the country, prisons house people with felonies who have sentences of 12 months or longer, while jails house people awaiting a trial date or they’re serving a sentence of less than one year. Pennsylvania is odd in that county “jails” are called prisons because people who are serving up to two years for a crime will be housed in them.)

The Prison Policy Initiative also found that the women’s incarcerated prison population in Pa. grew from 15 per 100,000 people in 1990 to 42 people in 2015. Currently, about 2,500 women are incarcerated in Pennsylvania — roughly 6 percent of the total prison population.

And with a long history of correctional facilities catering to men, corrections agencies can struggle to accommodate women. For example, many women held in prisons or jails don’t have easy access to feminine hygiene products. One woman I spoke with said she and other inmates would have to cut up used underwear and wrap toilet paper around the cloth to make DIY panty liners.

But what about something as complicated as giving birth?

For a broader national perspective, I spoke with a former coworker, Alysia Santo at The Marshall Project, who reported for a year on this issue and produced the documentary “Tutwiler” alongside the Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon (“Heroin(e)”, “Recovery Boys”), which will begin streaming this year.

Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation:

Joseph: Alysia, tell me what you were doing in Alabama’s Julia Tutwiler Prison?

Alysia: We wanted to document the experience of women who are pregnant and incarcerated in one of the most notorious women’s prisons in the country. For context, in 2014 the Department of Justice did an investigation and found some really shocking findings about what was going on there and the amount of sexual abuse happening with women in custody there. Since then, they’ve done a lot to try and turn that around, which is one of the reasons they opened up the door to us and allowed us to show a program they were proud of, a prison doula program. A couple years ago they started to provide each pregnant woman incarcerated there with a doula, who would support them through the entire pregnancy and be there for them during labor, which the women used to have to go through alone.

J: Tell me about the patterns nationwide. Nationally, we’ve seen female incarceration rates skyrocket. There are more women incarcerated now than ever before. So, it stands to reason that there will be more pregnant women. How have prisons handled that?

A: Well, I think the interesting thing is that there is no mandatory national standard for the care of women who are pregnant and incarcerated. So states do it all in different ways. When you think about nutrition, for example, many state departments of correction do not have guidelines for their women’s prisons to follow in terms of what is required for those in their care who are pregnant. So, you’ve got babies in stomachs growing, needing particular nutrients, and you have prisons that don’t actually have a policy that requires them to provide that nutrition.

J: Do we know what happens to the babies?

A: One of the things that stands out about this topic, in particular, is it’s not tracked. The most recent data from the Bureau of Justice statistics was collected 15 years ago. We don’t know exactly how many pregnant women go to prison or jail, and we don’t know what happens to those babies, either. Some children are taken by the state, and this is one of the more traumatizing outcomes because at least for the women I spoke with, they don’t know where their children are. So they spent nine months carrying a baby in their belly. And then all of a sudden within a day of giving birth, they actually have absolutely no idea where their child is. And it’s something that’s hard to imagine.

J: Anything being done — good or bad — in regard to addressing this growing population?

A:  Somewhat. There’s been some more attention paid to this than in the past, for one. There was recently a national survey conducted by an independent researcher to try and put a number on how many people in prison are pregnant. That’s important because it’s really hard to get people to think about solutions when we don’t know how many people this is affecting. I think a lot of people assume that pregnant women don’t get sent to prison, but it’s estimated that about 12,000 pregnant women experience incarceration every year in this country. It’s also becoming more and more of a topic at correctional conferences. and, there’s the growth of prison doula programs, not just the one we documented in Alabama, but there’s a doula program in Minnessota’s prison system. These doulas are trying to spread their work across the country and they’re getting some traction on it. So, I think there are more people understanding that this is something that happens in prison, and it’s something that should be paid attention to.

Thanks for the question, Anne. If you want to learn more about other efforts legislators have made, here’s an article by WHYY and Keystone Crossroads about a package of bills that were aimed to help pregnant inmates. And here’s a quick explainer on what we do and don’t know about the issue, nationally. And thank you to everyone who submitted their questions to us in the past week. Keep them coming. Enjoy the weekend, and we’ll see you on Monday. — Joseph Darius Jaafari

Best of the rest

• The rumors were true: One of the state’s most powerful Republicans, Rep. Mike Turzai (Allegheny), officially announced that he won’t run for reelection this year. Turzai took over as speaker of the House five years ago and his known for being at the helm of trying to turn the state more fiscally and socially conservative. During his speech on Thursday he became emotional, especially at moments when discussing his record attempting to curb abortions. Capitol Bureau Chief Katie Meyer has our story.

• Welcome to Philadelphia: Pope Francis on Thursday appointed Cleveland Bishop Nelson Perez as Philly’s new archbishop. According to The Inquirer, the news “sparked joy and hope in Latino communities in the region as they expected his appointment to have a significant impact on people here and abroad. The 58-year-old of Cuban American background will be the first Hispanic to lead the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and one of three Hispanic archbishops in the country.”

• Get off the stage, Mikey: Former Lt. Gov. Michael Stack has hung up his three-piece suit and traded in his coiffured hair for a seriously blonde blowout and pastel dress-shirt affair. It’s all part of his new persona as Los Angeles’ freshest up-and-coming (way down) stand up comedian, Mikey Stacks. And he’s bringing back his infamous angry fits to the stage. What’s Mikey got to be angry about these days?  “F**king teenagers,” of course. Mikey Stacks, everyone.

• Shooting the messenger: Last fall, Spotlight PA discovered that the Pennsylvania State Police stopped tracking racial data from traffic stops a decade ago. Now, we know a little bit more about why, as Spotlight PA followed up with a story on Thursday showing that the traffic stop data collection was stopped after the agency was warned that some stations were stopping and arresting African-American drivers at higher rates, a  potential sign of racial profiling. Read the new story here.

• Longest. Game. Ever.: John Baer’s most recent column says that Republicans, just like Democrats, are playing a long game with voting rules. He argues that the changes to the state’s voting rules enacted last November to expand absentee ballots and registration deadlines amounted to a “coup” for Democrats. In contrast, he said that a bill currently going through the legislature that dictates how people elect judges would substantially benefit the Republicans, especially when districts are drawn after the Census. You can read his take (behind a paywall) here.

• Little School in the Valley: A teeny-tiny school in the Lehigh Valley supported by the Allentown Diocese is focusing its efforts on helping teenagers who have problems with alcohol and drug addiction. The school only has seven students, and is one of 45 so-called “recovery schools” across the nation that have been proven effective due to their smaller class sizes and individualized attention. Jacqueline Palochko has the story for The Morning Call.

• She got them boots with the furs: Starting Feb. 6, former State Rep. Movita Johnson-Harell will start serving jail time for her stealing $500,000 from her nonprofit. Johnson-Harell spent the money on lavish vacations and furs, and is expected to surrender her property on Tioga Street as part of a restitution agreement. Johnson-Harell, a Democrat from West Philadelphia, resigned from her position in December after state prosecutors charged her with the theft. She is expected to serve three months in a county jail.

---