Realms Of The Correctional System
The correctional system for women in America leaves much to be desired. There is many realms of the prison system that need to be evaluated and remedied in order to better service those who require reprimanding in society, especially considering a situation as delicate as being pregnant and incarcerated.
Women in prisons are often neglected and looked over for their basic health and mental needs in favor of the more prominent issue of incarcerated men. Policies and new legislation should be implemented to mitigate the dilemma of women’s health and the way pregnancy is handled in the correctional system.
Approximately 33% of all female prisoners in the world are held in the United States.
Latino women are incarcerated at twice the rate …show more content…
of white women, and African-American women are incarcerated at four times the rate of white women in the US. Women make up 2% of death row inmates, and offenses that women are incarcerated for are usually relating to drugs. ⅓ of all offenses are linked to obtaining, consuming, or selling drugs. The incarceration of women went through three stages before full separation from males was implemented in the United States. These stages include general population, partial separation, and full separation. First, women prisoners were imprisoned alongside male prisoners in "general population," where they were subject to sexual attacks and daily forms of degradation. Then, in a partial attempt to address these issues that female prisoners were experiencing, women prisoners were removed from general population and housed separately, but then subject to neglect wherein they did not receive the same resources as men in prisons. A major issue in female incarceration that has materialized since women were first detained for delinquent societal behavior has been that they were always looked at as an afterthought to male detention since their numbers were so drastically smaller. In the third stage where full separation was finally achieved, women in prison were then housed completely separately in fort like maximum security prisons, where the primary goal of correctional behavior was to mold females into the traditional feminine gender roles of domesticity society had ordained for women.
The first female correctional facility in the United States with specifically dedicated staff and buildings that were engineered towards women was the Mount Pleasant Female Prison in Ossining, New York. Until the Equal Employment act in 1972, prison guards were exclusively female. After this act was passed, more male guards were integrated into the system. This has proved through reports to be problematic due to abuse and maltreatment that has occurred from male guards. Up until the 1970s, there were reports of women being held in men’s facilities, one notorious account being Assata Shakur in 1973 where she experienced isolation and solitary confinement due to her incessant lack of submissiveness in an exclusively male correctional facility.
Being pregnant in penitentiary is an afflictive situation both mentally and physically for any woman who has to endure it.
Finateri describes pregnancy in her article as what people refer to as “the normal illness” (Finateri). People do not view pregnancy as a serious medical condition due to the common occurrence of pregnant women, and even less so in the situation of incarceration. Finateri also goes further to illustrate the “multiplication of inferiority” pregnant women in prison experience from being seen as a criminal, as society subconsciously “denotes "criminal" bodies as ontologically inferior to "law" abiding bodies” (Finateri). As well as on top of that being pregnant. Reproductive health care in prisons is less than ideal. As stated earlier, prison systems are built to accommodate male inmates, and females are often a second thought when regulations are being made. After the Supreme Court ruling Estelle v. Gamble in 1976 declaring entitlement to basic health care for all people who are incarcerated, more efforts have been made to remedy this dilemma but inconsistently. Prison pregnancies are exceptionally high risk, prenatal care is often neglected by prison officials with little to no medical expertise, and prison meals are less than sufficient for adequate mother-child nourishment. In a jail in Arizona, prisoner Regan Clarine experienced unimaginable maltreatment when prison officials, instead of properly sealing her cesarean section wound which had become infected due to insufficient medical care, filled her wound with sugar from sugar packets used at fast food restaurants. Situations such as these are incomprehensible and should be met with legal repercussions for a violation of basic human
rights.
In 30 states, shackles are still allowed on pregnant inmates who are in the process of giving birth to their offspring, and often times directly after the birth of their children many are immediately returned to incarceration. In 9 states, a prison nursery system has been implemented where the new baby can stay with it’s mother until her sentence is complete
If a prisoner is pregnant and desires an abortion, even if she has the funds to get it often it will not be granted to her because of her incarceration and if she does not have the money to get it she is forced to have an unwanted child because the government will not fund it. Approximately 2.4 million children have a parent in prison, and 1 in 10 children have a parent under criminal justice surveillance including parole, probation, or in jail or prison. The Adoption and Safe Families Act, passed in 1997, “authorizes the termination of parental rights once a child has been in foster care for 15 or more months of a 22-month period.” Considering the fact that women in prison serve an average of 18 months behind bars, a vast number of them lose the legal right to be reunited with their children after incarceration due to the time they are behind bars surpassing the time allotted for the system to terminate parental rights. The Women’s Prison Association (WPA) is actually the oldest advocacy group for women in the US, and rallies to "create a national conversation on women and criminal justice in relation to families and communities”. The WPA has made valiant strides towards reforming the regulations of female incarceration. From requiring mandatory pregnancy tests to pioneering the legislative movement to make female oriented health and wellness exams compulsory in each women’s prison for each inmate, the WPA is making headway in the right direction.
In Preungesheim, a maximum security prison in Germany, mothers are allowed to stay with their children until they are three years old. The children go to a preschool during the day while the mother works. Studies that have followed up with the children and mothers in this program in Germany have shown that most participants return to normal healthy family life after the mother is released from her incarceration. Due to the importance of a mother child bond a policy like this is a great idea. More legislation should be implemented as well as enforced pertaining to women’s reproductive and prenatal health in prisons. Often legislation pertaining to incarcerated individuals is slow moving in the political system due to preconceived biases people hold concerning people who are in prison. These biases should be voided when regulations are on the table because every person has basic human rights that regardless of what they might have done in their past.
Pregnancy in prison is a delicate situation that should not be taken lightly. The officials in prisons should be required to be more diligent and routine in prisoner pregnancy checks and medical care. Regardless of why a prisoner is incarcerated, their health and wellness should always be a priority and change is compulsory to remedy this epidemic.
Women in prisons are often neglected and looked over for their basic health and mental needs in favor of the more prominent issue of incarcerated men. Policies and new legislation should be implemented to mitigate the dilemma of women’s health and the way pregnancy is handled in the correctional system.
Approximately 33% of all female prisoners in the world are held in the United States.
Latino women are incarcerated at twice the rate …show more content…
of white women, and African-American women are incarcerated at four times the rate of white women in the US. Women make up 2% of death row inmates, and offenses that women are incarcerated for are usually relating to drugs. ⅓ of all offenses are linked to obtaining, consuming, or selling drugs. The incarceration of women went through three stages before full separation from males was implemented in the United States. These stages include general population, partial separation, and full separation. First, women prisoners were imprisoned alongside male prisoners in "general population," where they were subject to sexual attacks and daily forms of degradation. Then, in a partial attempt to address these issues that female prisoners were experiencing, women prisoners were removed from general population and housed separately, but then subject to neglect wherein they did not receive the same resources as men in prisons. A major issue in female incarceration that has materialized since women were first detained for delinquent societal behavior has been that they were always looked at as an afterthought to male detention since their numbers were so drastically smaller. In the third stage where full separation was finally achieved, women in prison were then housed completely separately in fort like maximum security prisons, where the primary goal of correctional behavior was to mold females into the traditional feminine gender roles of domesticity society had ordained for women.
The first female correctional facility in the United States with specifically dedicated staff and buildings that were engineered towards women was the Mount Pleasant Female Prison in Ossining, New York. Until the Equal Employment act in 1972, prison guards were exclusively female. After this act was passed, more male guards were integrated into the system. This has proved through reports to be problematic due to abuse and maltreatment that has occurred from male guards. Up until the 1970s, there were reports of women being held in men’s facilities, one notorious account being Assata Shakur in 1973 where she experienced isolation and solitary confinement due to her incessant lack of submissiveness in an exclusively male correctional facility.
Being pregnant in penitentiary is an afflictive situation both mentally and physically for any woman who has to endure it.
Finateri describes pregnancy in her article as what people refer to as “the normal illness” (Finateri). People do not view pregnancy as a serious medical condition due to the common occurrence of pregnant women, and even less so in the situation of incarceration. Finateri also goes further to illustrate the “multiplication of inferiority” pregnant women in prison experience from being seen as a criminal, as society subconsciously “denotes "criminal" bodies as ontologically inferior to "law" abiding bodies” (Finateri). As well as on top of that being pregnant. Reproductive health care in prisons is less than ideal. As stated earlier, prison systems are built to accommodate male inmates, and females are often a second thought when regulations are being made. After the Supreme Court ruling Estelle v. Gamble in 1976 declaring entitlement to basic health care for all people who are incarcerated, more efforts have been made to remedy this dilemma but inconsistently. Prison pregnancies are exceptionally high risk, prenatal care is often neglected by prison officials with little to no medical expertise, and prison meals are less than sufficient for adequate mother-child nourishment. In a jail in Arizona, prisoner Regan Clarine experienced unimaginable maltreatment when prison officials, instead of properly sealing her cesarean section wound which had become infected due to insufficient medical care, filled her wound with sugar from sugar packets used at fast food restaurants. Situations such as these are incomprehensible and should be met with legal repercussions for a violation of basic human
rights.
In 30 states, shackles are still allowed on pregnant inmates who are in the process of giving birth to their offspring, and often times directly after the birth of their children many are immediately returned to incarceration. In 9 states, a prison nursery system has been implemented where the new baby can stay with it’s mother until her sentence is complete
If a prisoner is pregnant and desires an abortion, even if she has the funds to get it often it will not be granted to her because of her incarceration and if she does not have the money to get it she is forced to have an unwanted child because the government will not fund it. Approximately 2.4 million children have a parent in prison, and 1 in 10 children have a parent under criminal justice surveillance including parole, probation, or in jail or prison. The Adoption and Safe Families Act, passed in 1997, “authorizes the termination of parental rights once a child has been in foster care for 15 or more months of a 22-month period.” Considering the fact that women in prison serve an average of 18 months behind bars, a vast number of them lose the legal right to be reunited with their children after incarceration due to the time they are behind bars surpassing the time allotted for the system to terminate parental rights. The Women’s Prison Association (WPA) is actually the oldest advocacy group for women in the US, and rallies to "create a national conversation on women and criminal justice in relation to families and communities”. The WPA has made valiant strides towards reforming the regulations of female incarceration. From requiring mandatory pregnancy tests to pioneering the legislative movement to make female oriented health and wellness exams compulsory in each women’s prison for each inmate, the WPA is making headway in the right direction.
In Preungesheim, a maximum security prison in Germany, mothers are allowed to stay with their children until they are three years old. The children go to a preschool during the day while the mother works. Studies that have followed up with the children and mothers in this program in Germany have shown that most participants return to normal healthy family life after the mother is released from her incarceration. Due to the importance of a mother child bond a policy like this is a great idea. More legislation should be implemented as well as enforced pertaining to women’s reproductive and prenatal health in prisons. Often legislation pertaining to incarcerated individuals is slow moving in the political system due to preconceived biases people hold concerning people who are in prison. These biases should be voided when regulations are on the table because every person has basic human rights that regardless of what they might have done in their past.
Pregnancy in prison is a delicate situation that should not be taken lightly. The officials in prisons should be required to be more diligent and routine in prisoner pregnancy checks and medical care. Regardless of why a prisoner is incarcerated, their health and wellness should always be a priority and change is compulsory to remedy this epidemic.