Pregnant in Prison

How should we be treating imprisoned pregnant women? Perhaps we could start by not shackling them to the hospital bed during labor.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Bridget and this is Emily, and you're
listening to stuff Mom never told you. Now, today's topic
is a heavy one, just to warn you. It's not
something that is a ton of fun, but it's actually

(00:27):
really really important. Today we're gonna be talking about women
in prison, how they are treated when they are pregnant,
and what it looks like when they go into labor
behind bars. And if you're looking for a podcast episode
of ours to run to or to have a very
intensive workout too, this one will get your heart rate up,
no matter whether or not you're engaged in cardio activity.

(00:47):
So y'all are about to be pissed. This topic is enraging, definitely.
So I first sort of got interested in this topic, um,
like most things, because of a of a trumpler. So
peep trumpell um. You may have remembered a couple of
weeks ago, Donald Trump pardoned this terrible awful sheriff in Arizona,
Sheriff Joe Arpio, who is known for a laundry list

(01:10):
of really really awful and cruel and dehumanizing acts. But
one of those acts is forcing a woman to give
birth in one of his prisons while shackled to her
bed when she actually filed a lawsuit. She ended up
losing her lawsuit, but the lawsuit did find that she
was inappropriately shackled during childbirth. But you're not supposed to
do so. It's even more awful to me that Trump

(01:33):
pardoned this guy, because that seems like such a dehumanizing
act to do to a woman, even even a woman
behind bars, right and my, I mean, we're gonna unpack
all of the nitty gritty behind how this is still
a policy being utilized in lots of prisons in our country,
and some of the reasons behind that are the reasons
why that injustice persists unfortunately. But the biggest thing that

(01:57):
I'm left scratching my head thinking is where the hell
do they think these women are really going to go?
I mean, what is the what is the intent here?
Because anyone who's given birth, and I, for one have not,
but I have witnessed a few live births, and my
mom is a labor and delivery nurse, so I've seen
I've been around a lot of babies being born. Let
me just put it that way. First of all, you're

(02:19):
not going anywhere, and second of all, you need to
be able to have body autonomy, because that is one
of the most physically taxing moments of any woman's life.
And to think that these women can't move about their
hospital bed freely disgust me. Well, actually, Emily Um, there
have actually been zero documented cases of pregnant inmates attempting

(02:40):
to escape during prenatal checkups, postpartum recovery, or labor, So
it really doesn't seem as if it makes any sense
at all logically to be doing this. And furthermore, they
shackle these women regardless of whether they have histories of violence,
regardless of whether they have you know, made attempts to
escape in the past. It seems completely divorced from the
actual necessity of what's happening in this situation, right, And

(03:03):
there's really no personal consideration there. It has nothing to
do with how compliant a prisoner this person has ever been, exactly.
So let's just level set for a minute and look
at this from a bird's eye view. One thing to
know about this issue is that it's actually really difficult
to find out information about pregnant women inmates, and that's
because we are not collecting that data at the state

(03:24):
or federal level. So in this episode. A lot of
the research that we've compiled comes from advocacy organizations like
the Sentencing Project, Women in Prison Project, and the National
Women's Law Center. And you might be thinking that there
aren't that many women in prison, right, prisons in our
country are predominantly filled by men. But the reality is
that over the last quarter century there's been a steadily

(03:45):
increasing number of women in prison do in no small
part to the rise of non violent drug offenses landing
people in jail, and women are more likely than men
to be arrested for those non violent drug senses. So
the fact that we're locking people up who are no
violent threat to society but have landed themselves in hot

(04:07):
water and broken the law when it comes to drug
policy in the United States means we're filling prisons with
more women than ever. Yeah, and that's that's so sad
to me. I have to say one thing that gives
me a little bit of optimism, and this optimism might
be sort of unearned, but I'm a little optimistic anyway.
I feel like the tide is kind of turned in
terms of how we think of non violent drug offenders

(04:29):
in this country. I think that when you had the
crack epidemic um and most drug offenders were folks of color.
People had a very very hard line stance like locked
them up the way the key. I think these days,
as the demographics are shifting culturally and racially, I've seen
people taking new stances on this issue. So I'm a
little bit optimistic in that I hope that we get
to a place where drug offenses and addiction issues are

(04:52):
not treated just as crimes, but they're treated as public
health and health concerns, and that we are not just
putting people in jail where a lot of times, if
you are someone who is struggling with drugs, that does
not get you away from those drugs. That we're thinking
about it in terms of alternative sentencing that actually can
help these people change their lives. I think that calls
for an episode on the opioid epidemic defining it will

(05:15):
that does have the potential to change how we look
at drug offenses. I think you're right now. Unfortunately, I'm
still pretty pessimistic on this issue. And here's why the
female prison population currently is eight times higher than it
was in which was I would say, what the start
of the crack epidemic or sort of a hat I
think of it. Yeah, And on top of that, more

(05:35):
than sixty of those women in prisons have a child
under the age of eighteen. So if you really think
about the sort of ramifications of that, and not that
men don't have children to be fathers for either, but
those are I don't know, it just feels like this
domino effect that leaves me feeling quite hopeless. To be honest,
it does. I mean, it does seem like a hopeless situation.

(05:58):
It does seem like a situation that is perhaps not
going to get much better. Um, and I can understand
feeling quite depressed about it. It's true. I mean, I
hate to be a downer on this, but I think
that the numbers really call for that. Here. Between the
years of fourteen, the number of incarcerated women increased by
more than seven hundred percent. And tragically, just like you

(06:22):
mentioned at the top of the episode, Bridget, even though
we know how many women are in prison these days,
there's no real data kept on women who are pregnant
or women who give birth while serving out their sentences.
So this is a fraud issue that's not even really
well understood when it comes to how prisons are tracking
their own inmates, And how can we even begin to

(06:43):
tackle an issue like this if we're not keeping data
around it, we're not analyzing any kind of research. If
it wasn't for these advocacy organizations, so you wouldn't have
half of this information that we do have. Ectly, So
according to these advocacy organizations, why is in case it's
not obvious immediately to all of us. Why is shackling
pregnant inmates so dangerous? So one of the things that
when I came into this issue, I was thinking of

(07:05):
it purely as you should not be shackling pregnant women
during labor because it's dehumanizing, it's awful. It's just, on
its face seems terrible. But it's not just that it's
dehumanizing and it's you know, no one should give birth
that way. It's actually really, really physically dangerous. Restraints make
it difficult for doctors to adequately assess the condition of
the mother and the fetus, and it makes it difficult

(07:26):
for them to provide prompt medical intervention if necessary. Um
restraints also make labor and delivery just more painful, and
so if you're already in a painful, uncomfortable, trying situation
that's physically demanding. Being shackled, and a lot of times
shackled for no real reason. Might I add, makes that
situation that much more uncomfortable. I know my mom has
told me how her patients will go from the bed

(07:48):
to the bathtub, to the plio ball to turning over
on their side on there on all four. Sometimes you
have to like move your body to make labor move
along smoothly, and it's already such an uncomfortable, painful experience
for so many of us to take away your body
autonomy in that moment when you're already trying to bring

(08:08):
a new life into this world, which does often require
moving your entire body around to make labor and delivery
more safe for the fetus. Like if you have a
baby that's breached and you have to get that baby
to flip or you're gonna be brought into an emergency
c section, or you've got a umbilical cord around the
baby's neck type situation. By strapping women and restraining women

(08:28):
to the bed, we're putting both the life of that
child and mother at risk. So for all the hard
right wingers out there who are you know, thinking so much.
She's a prisoner, she's lost those freedoms, strap her down.
If you're super pro life, you want that baby to
be okay, you've got to recognize that strapping women and
shackling women to the bed, Uh, it's putting that baby's

(08:52):
life at risk too. And that baby didn't do anything
to deserve that crappy deck of cards pre life like
for their life even begins. And it's just so so
sad to me. I could almost understand if they had
some sort of data that showed that women who go
into labor are flight risks or something like that. They're
doing it for no reason at all. It's it's putting

(09:14):
the life of the woman and the baby at risk,
really for no reason. Well, I mean, I think the
hard liners argument would be that these are prisoners, they're dangerous,
they could grab a syringe and try to kill someone
to escape, And I just don't think that that argument
that possibility outweighs the very real health risks and realities

(09:35):
that we're putting mothers and their unborn children at because
of this kind of policy. Yeah, I mean, one of
the stories that I've had on l dot com was
this woman who was arrested because do you know how
when you're traveling, maybe you have a work purse and
go out purse. She had one oxy pill in a
purse that was in the bottom of her purse, and
she had switched out her purses. She was arrested for

(09:56):
some some low level offense and they found that oxy pill.
So you know, she was arrested, got a heavy sentence,
and then was shackled during childbirth. And again keeping in
mind that so many of these women are non violent
drug offenders who are being arrested very non violent crime,
a crime that I think a lot of folks might
argue they don't even really belong behind bars because of
thinking that you would have to have a baby that

(10:19):
would be at risk because of that, I think is
unfathomable and it just to me this falls under the
Cruel and Unusual department. This is cruel. This is not
part of equal sentencing or equal justice under the law.
And so when we talk about, okay, should we treat
men and women the same in this case or should
we make exceptions for women because this penalizes women in

(10:43):
a cruel and unusual way. I think to me, it's
very clear that there's no equivalent on the male side
of this argument. There's no equivalent to how we're punishing
men that could even amount to being shackled during childbirth.
So this should by all means be unconstitutional because of
its cruel and unusual nature in my opinion. Well, you

(11:03):
know who agrees with that opinion. Pretty much the entire
medical community. The American Medical Association says that the practice
of shackling pregnant women is quote out of line with
the ethics of the medical profession. And that's not all.
There's an entire host of medical organizations that have pretty
much come down on a hard line stance against this practice.
We're talking in the American Public Health Association, the American

(11:25):
College of O b G y NS. All of these
organizations directly opposed shackling during childbirth as due to organizations
that are focused specifically on correctional health care, so health
care for imprisoned folks. So it's one thing to put
people in prison, it's another thing to dehumanize them, and
this absolutely crosses the line in my opinion. Yeah, the

(11:46):
American College of O B G by n S had
this to say about the practice, the use of restraints
on pregnant, incarcerated women and adolescence may not only compromise
health care, but is demeaning and rarely necessary. So to me,
that is so clear, it's so clear that we shouldn't
be doing this. And beyond the physical risks and the
very real health risks that we pose to the unborn

(12:06):
children and mothers during child birth, this practice also imposes
psychological stresses that are particularly acute for inmates, many of
whom have already been an abusive intimate relationships. For instance,
over ninety five per cent of incarcerated women have been
found to be prior victims of sexual trauma, and that's

(12:27):
according to a two thousand two Family Crisis Services study.
So if you think about being restrained while you are
in the most you're being examined and touched in the
most intimate parts of your body by medical necessity. If
you have any kind of sexual trauma in your background,
that alone can be incredibly triggering and psychologically dangerous for

(12:50):
rape survivors or folks who've who have been survivors of
sexual assault. I mean, it's just like it's just I'm
so I get so enraged thinking out how dangerous this
is beyond what the average male correctional officer, whoever the
hell is behind these policies, can even comprehend. Definitely. And

(13:11):
if you've ever seen the movie Knocked Up, Katherine Heigel's character,
she's in the bathtub, she's trying to calm down because
she doesn't want her baby to be quote born into
the world wired for stress. And I think about it
is if the prison system makes it so that if
you're a child born from from a woman who was incarcerated,
you don't even get the option of how you enter
the world, You're already marked and set up to have

(13:32):
a worse life than anyone else. Right, That's so unfair
to me. And there's a component of this which is
really troubling to me because it's not their choice. Some
parents will bring children into this world in an incredibly
stressful and horrifying environment. That is a reality of the
world we live in. This is depriving a woman like

(13:54):
the woman you describe who was incarcerated after one oxy
pill was found in the bottom of her purse, of
even and having the choice of trying to give her
child a better life. And you know, from moment one
and I just think there has to be longer term
research done on what kind of an impact that has
on those children as well. Considering the U S locks

(14:15):
people up at a higher rate than any other country
in the world, you would think would be invested in
what impacts is having on our country and our citizen rate. Yeah. Absolutely, Well,
the United States has only about four point four percent
of the world's population. It houses of the world's prisoners. Well,
a big reason behind why this practice is still in
place in so many prisons in the United States is

(14:36):
because the whole system was geared towards men. Amy Fedig,
the Senior Staff Council of the National Prison Project at
the a c l YOU, says, men are always shackled
when they're transported out of a correctional facility to receive
medical care, and that policy has been applied across the
board without considering the unique needs of women. And furthermore,
it really sounds like most correctional officers haven't really been

(14:57):
given much training or protocol around how to be sensitive
toward pregnant female inmates. And I just think this is
one of those issues where the entire system is set
up with men in mind, and women are just sort
of getting the short end, and it can really be dangerous.
Patriarchy strikes again. As always, we're gonna talk more about
where we're at with this issue after this quick word
from our sponsors, and we're back. And I know this

(15:27):
issue is pretty depressing and awful. I'm my blood is
boiling over here. But we do have a little bit
of good issue news on this issue. In September of
two eight, the Federal Bureau of Prisons otherwise known as
b OP, formally ended the process of shackling president inmates
as a matter of routine and all federal correctional facilities.
That's awesome, that's great, so federal prisons, but not necessarily

(15:52):
state prisons. Is that right, That's exactly right. So basically, federally,
no one is supposed to be shackled during childbirth, but
at the state level it varies. And so again, since
we're not really collecting this data at a state level,
it's up to advocacy organizations to really fill in the
gaps about information that we have around how states are
using this practice or not using this practice, and furthermore,

(16:14):
again to be even more of the bearer of bad
news on this subject. Unfortunately, just because it was banned
doesn't mean that that's actually what's happening. A recent study
published earlier this year by the Correctional Association of New York,
a nonprofit advocacy organization, found that twenty three of the
twenty seven inmates who had given birth while incarcerated in

(16:35):
New York had been shackled in total violation of the law.
So it's they postulate that it's not uncommon for shackling
during childbirth to persist to continue as a practice even
when it was already outlawed. When you think about prisoners,
that makes perfect sense. You're taught to comply. You don't
want to run the risk of facing some sort of
intense consequence if you don't comply. Um. According to Amanda Edgar,

(16:59):
an advocate with the Incarcerated Women's Project, she said that
one woman told her that if she didn't keep the
shackles on, she wouldn't be able to go to her appointment,
and that other women have been denied access to prenatal vitamins,
And so if you're pregnant in prison, I can imagine
it's this really really scary thing where you don't want
to rock the boat too much because you don't want
to put your baby further at risk when she's already
at risk. Oh my god, it's that's just like what

(17:22):
a horrifying choice to have to make as an imprisoned
pregnant woman of trying to figure out what move is
best for your child. And what I was also just
disgusted to find out is that when we talk about shackles,
I've been thinking, you know, risked to bed, right, like
shackles around your feet and maybe around your ankles, all
of which is definitely part of this practice. But what

(17:45):
we can't forget is that there's also laws on the
books about other kinds of restraints, including belly shackles, which
were commonly used to constrict the stomach area of pregnant women,
regardless of the trimester of pregnancy that they were in,
unless they can show a legitimate security justification. So I

(18:05):
want to hear from women who have given birth on
this front. Can you imagine being shackled bonding your ankles,
on your wrists and potentially around your belly. Well, you
are trying to bring another life into this world, where like,
what what kind of crazy regime would do that, like,
would have that kind of torture on the books. Oh wait,

(18:27):
the leader of the free world, United States, this is
happening in our country, and it's it's like we would
we wouldn't want this to happen. Like it just feels
like a violation of the Geneva Convention. How is this okay?
How is this being practice? It just blows my mind.
I think when I read that they were getting rid
of the practice of belly shackling, I tried to make
myself feel optimistic. But that means that before October two seven,

(18:51):
if you are a woman who was pregnant in prison,
you could be shackled by your belly, which is absurd
and enraging and bloody ailingly upsetting to me. So let's
talk about how things are going on a state by
state basis. Spoiler alert, it's not going great. The Rebecca
Project for Human Rights teamed up with the National Women's
Law Center here in DC to publish a report card

(19:13):
ranking different states and how they treat pregnant prisoners and mothers.
Um The criteria they use is whether or not states
require pregnant women to have access to prenatal care, do
they restrict the use of restraints on pregnant women during labor,
and whether or not they strengthen the mother child bond
through the use of things like alternative sentencing. Um, oh right,
because even after you give birth to which a baby
you're newborn as an imprisoned mother, perhaps while shackled to

(19:36):
the bed, that's it, you say goodbye, and it's unclear
how much time you have with your infant child before
you're back in prison without them exactly. It's it's awful.
It's so awful. The Rebecca Project on the National Women's
Law Center is very, very careful to point out that
even if a state gets an a that does not
actually mean they're doing all they can, because it sounds like,

(19:56):
just in general, we're not concerned for the very thing
that you just mentioned, mother child bonds, whether or not
a child is set up to have a healthy attachment
to their mom, whether or not they're being set up
to have a healthy childhood, all of those things. We
don't seem concerned about that. And again, it feels like
a multi generational penalty. It feels like we're taking women
who have been penalized in the eyes of the law,

(20:18):
have been found guilty, have been sentenced to serve and
and basically serve their time for their crime. Now we
are saying your child, potentially you're unborn child is not
getting the prenatal care that you would have otherwise been
able to give them outside of prison. And then the
child that's being ripped from you without access to the
lactation option that mothers might otherwise have for them. We

(20:42):
are penalizing these babies because of crimes committed by their mothers.
I'm just at a loss. And furthermore, the the numbers
on this report card are pretty dismal. Thirty eight states
received failing grades for their failure to institute adequate policies
or any policies requiring access to prenatal care for imprisoned

(21:04):
mothers or imprisoned pregnant women. Thirty four states do not
require screening and treatment for women with high risk pregnancies.
That sounds like you're just setting them up to have
a potentially life threatening pregnancy, which pretty much every pregnancy
is potentially life threatening, and we're talking about women who
are already high risk pools. It's just it seems above

(21:25):
and beyond what is humane. It just seems cruel and unusual,
and and it's like it just doesn't seem like they
should exist in our first world justice system, or really
any justice system. Yeah, and listen to this. Forty nine
states at a fifty fail to report all incarcerated women's
pregnancies and their outcomes. That means that only one state

(21:47):
is even invested at all in terms of keeping records
around pregnant inmates and what happens when they give birth
in jail. So we don't even know what the infant
mortality rate is for imprisoned women, but I would venture
to guess it's not great. And furthermore, despite the federal
outlawing of this practice on a federal level in federal prisons,

(22:07):
thirties six states received failing grades for their complete failure
to limit the use of restraints on pregnant women during transportation, labor,
and delivery, as well as postpartum recuperation. So despite it
being on the books as not a thing, that is
clearly not what's happening in real life in practice, and
that has to change. It does have to change. And

(22:29):
again I have to say, as awful as this issue is,
this report from the National Women's Law Center actually does
lift up the Federal Bureau of prisons as taking some steps.
You know that we said earlier that they've banned shackling
of women in labor. They also have a program called
Mothers and Infants Nursing Together or MINT that provides alternative
community based sentencing for women who have recently given birth

(22:51):
and have less than five years left off their prison terms.
So I will say, I mean, as awful as it is,
I'm hopeful that federally, these federal prisons can continue to
show some kind of leadership in terms of turning the
tide on this issue. And I'm hoping that the early
success of that program, even though it only currently serves
a very small portion of mothers in federal prison, can

(23:14):
be used as inspiration for widening access to that kind
of slightly more compassionate approach to incarceration. I agree with you,
and I think it is a little bit optimistic, or
slightly slightly optimistic, that is, until you look at our
immigration system. Now, granted, immigration and customs enforcement is different
than federal prisons, but they are also operated federally, and

(23:36):
so I think it makes sense to look at how
pregnant inmates are being treated in those facilities, and ice
facilities are used for housing undocumented residents who are basically
being rounded up and potentially deported correct correct, so spoiler alert,
they're not being treated very well. According to this report
from the National Women's Law Center, conditions for women in

(23:58):
ICE detention centers are pretty crappy. There is currently no
prohibition on shackling pregnant detainees. ICE officials have been largely
unresponsive to advocates requests to implement a policy of restricting
shackling that mirrors the federal policies that prisons have. And
I really think that even if you are the hardest
of hardliners on immigration, even if you truly believe that

(24:20):
Donald Trump should round up every undocumented immigrant and immediately
deport them, I would be surprised if even that hardcore
and anti would include shackling pregnant immigrants during childbirth in
a detention center, particularly if these inmates have not been
shown to be flight risks. All right, we need to
take a break or I'm gonna flip over the table

(24:40):
in our studio right now, So right after this quick
word from our sponsors, will be back with hopefully some
better news and what the heck is being done to
change this. And we're back, and if you are feeling
the way we're feeling, your blood is probably boiling right now.

(25:02):
The good news is this is one of those problems
that seems to have some very clear solutions this. No
one needs to be throwing their hands up in exasperation
and trying to figure out how to solve an unsolvable
problem here. So what does some of these solutions or
proposed alternatives are out there bridget for making this less horrific? Well,

(25:23):
the first one I would say is pretty common sense,
and that's follow the freaking law. If you're a correctional
officer at a state where the law says that women
should not be shackled during childbirth, don't shackle them during childbirth.
I know it surprises me that an institution known for
its respect for the chain of command doesn't seem to
be hearing that. For federal prisons, it has been outlawed

(25:45):
to shackle women during childbirth. So just training an actual
implementation of the law on the books there would be
a great place to start, definitely, I think. Furthermore, keeping
track of data, keeping track of the numbers. We track
a lot of things when it comes to our inmate
population in here in the United States, and we have
to do a better job of actually knowing how big
of a problem this is. But we can't do that

(26:07):
until there's more transparency and reporting, an accountability on the
behalf of our federal institutions to be clear about who's pregnant,
how they're being treated, what kind of care is being
provided for them, and what the outcomes are. Any country,
especially democracy, would want to know how their prisons are
actually being run and how prisoners are being treated, because

(26:29):
that is a reflection of the values of your nation.
And so we here in the United States, especially if
we're gonna be locking up more people than any other country,
we need to take seriously how that population of citizens
is or is not being treated with the same equal justice,
dignity and in personhood and being seen as a human

(26:50):
being even while serving time for their crime. Totally, I'm
so glad that you said that, because a pet peeve
of mine when it comes to how we think about
incarcerated in visuals is that we think of them all
as a monster, so they're not even really human. They've
probably done something awful to be behind bars, and once
they're behind bars, we don't even need to think about
what's going on with them. We don't even need to

(27:12):
think about what kind of conditions they're facing. And I
think if we can begin to remember that this is
really supposed to be about rehabilitation and what it will
be the best course of action to get these people's
lives back on tract because they're re entering society. How
do we want to treat people who are going to
be re entering our society and those underlying issues or
how they've been treated while serving their time. That's just

(27:34):
not going away. These are our neighbors, these are our
community members. How do we believe that we should be
treating in prison folks knowing that they have rights too.
I don't know how else to say it, but well,
there's actually a lot of data that shows that we
really do need to be rethinking how we are treating
inmates when they are incarcerated. So the Rebecca Project actually

(27:54):
suggests that things like family based treatment can be a
great alternative to incarceration, particularly for folks who are behind
bars for a non violent offense. So check this out.
When a father is incarcerated of the time, if they
have a child, that child lives with their mom. But
when a mother is incarcerated, only twenty percent of the
time will the child live with the father. So basically
what they're saying is that maternal incarceration is really really

(28:17):
disruptive to a family unit. And so when you have
a mom who's behind bars, who's not able to see
her child, that only is that bad for the mom,
it's also setting that child up to have a higher
risk life in terms of things like uh, encountering violence,
being a drug offender themselves. And so if you were
really really interested in the most effective ways of making

(28:37):
sure that everybody is going to get back on track,
things like community based or family based therapy where mothers
have access to their children as an alternative to incarceration,
have actually been proven to not only be more affected,
but also more cost effective. And that alternative can include
access to community based programs, therapy, parenting classes, and substance

(28:59):
abuse treatment. So, if I'm thinking about prison as this
underlying theory of change, right, the theory behind prisons in
the United States is that we are taking people out
of society because they were a danger or a problem
to society, and before we put them back into society,
they need to prove that they have been rehabilitated or changed.

(29:19):
This to me seems like a much better avenue to
that kind of rehabilitation and for setting mothers up and
their children up for more successful and sustainable outcomes. I
think the reality here is that this is a complex issue.
This is a small, relatively small percentage of prison inmates
who are going through this situation of childbirth while in prison.

(29:40):
But we cannot ignore their unique needs, and we cannot
turn a blind eye pretend like treating them the same
as every other prisoner is going to cut it. And frankly,
even some of the proposed solutions are a little bit complex.
For instance, instead of ripping newborns from their imprisoned mothers,
we can start to look at prison nurse series as
a potential part of the solution here. Studies do show

(30:04):
that children who are pulled away from their mothers very
very early on due to maternal incarceration risk suffering significant
attachment disorders. They become more likely to be addicted to
drugs or alcohol, engage in criminal activity, manifest sexually promiscuous behavior,
and dangerously lag behind in educational development and achievement. But again,

(30:26):
in terms of how nuanced and complicated this issue is
even prison nurseries as a solution comes with its own
set of drawbacks. According to the National Women's Loss Center report,
they've actually heard from mothers with children and prison nurseries
who have said that their baby's close proximity has allowed
prison staff to coerce and manipulate them by threatening to
deny access to their own children. So, even in this

(30:47):
situation where it's presented as a solution, because prison can
be such a toxic place, having your baby close by
can sometimes even be an just another way that you
can be manipulated by prison staff, right, which is outbly
cruel but not surprising for you know, I think if
Orange is the New Black taught me anything that it's
really these prison wards lording over the prisoners and using

(31:11):
a complex array of both carrots and sticks to control
the population. And at the end of the day, we
have to keep in mind that it's our taxpayer dollars
that are going to pay for our prisons. Even the
private ones are supported at least in part, if not
in total, by taxpayer funds. So this is our money

(31:31):
that's going to the shackles that are being used on
pregnant women during labor. This is our money that's going
to pay the salaries of the wardens who are implementing
policies that might be not in compliance with federal law.
So we have to stay vigilant on paying attention to
these issues. And I have to give a shout out
to the National Women's Law Center and supporting organizations like

(31:52):
the NWLC and other advocacy organizations who are fighting on
behalf of prisoners rights. Yeah, just to add to that,
even if you're someone who is the most hard line,
you know, if you're in jail, you deserve to be there,
blah blah blah. If if this is your tax money,
don't you want to make sure that your tax dollars
are being spent in the most cost effective way. Let's
say that you're just someone who is concerned about the

(32:13):
bottom line. Yeah, prison is going to be spending your
tax money in more cost effective ways and reducing recidivism
at the same time, and they might not be doing that, right.
I love when you make a conservative argument for anything, Rida.
It's fun to watch. In my heart of hearts, I'm like,
we should get rid of all prisons. Yeah, I love

(32:35):
it though. Um, all right, well, I'm glad. Thank you
for making me laugh at the end of this blood
boiling episode. Smithy listeners, we want to hear from you.
Feel free to rage with us on Twitter at Mom's
Stuff podcast, send us your more nuanced thoughts the email
at mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com, and
keep this conversation going with us on Instagram at stuff

(32:57):
Mom Never told you to. Pat b and Per