Prisons Often Shackle Pregnant Inmates in Labor

Prisons Often Shackle Pregnant Inmates in Labor
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: March 2, 2006

Shawanna Nelson, a prisoner at the McPherson Unit in Newport, Ark., had been in labor for more than 12 hours when she arrived at Newport Hospital on Sept. 20, 2003. Ms. Nelson, whose legs were shackled together and who had been given nothing stronger than Tylenol all day, begged, according to court papers, to have the shackles removed.

Though her doctor and two nurses joined in the request, her lawsuit says, the guard in charge of her refused.

"She was shackled all through labor," said Ms. Nelson's lawyer, Cathleen V. Compton. "The doctor who was delivering the baby made them remove the shackles for the actual delivery at the very end."

Despite sporadic complaints and occasional lawsuits, the practice of shackling prisoners in labor continues to be relatively common, state legislators and a human rights group said. Only two states, California and Illinois, have laws forbidding the practice.

(snip)

"We found this was going on in some institutions in California and all over the United States," Ms. Lieber {a Democratic assemblywoman from Mountain View} said. "It presents risks not only for the inmate giving birth, but also for the infant."

Continued @ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/02/national/02shackles.html

Women's Human Rights
Abuse of Women in Custody: Sexual Misconduct and the Shackling of Pregnant Women

An Updated State-by-State Survey of Polices and Practices in the USA

http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/custody/


(Excerpt from the Introduction)

Shackling of Pregnant Women
Amnesty International is extremely concerned by the continuing lack of legislation and policies to protect pregnant women from being restrained or shackled when it could be harmful to their pregnancy and child. Lack of mobility may hamper a woman’s ability to move during contractions to alleviate pain and can be dangerous during transportation due to the risk of falling and an inability to break the fall when restrained. Of most concern is the delay restraints may cause if complications arise during delivery and an emergency C-section must be performed. In such a situation, a delay of even five minutes could result in brain damage for the baby. Postpartum, restraints may also prevent women from breast-feeding and from recovery best accomplished by walking.

International standards restrict the use of restraints to situations where they are strictly necessary to prevent escape, to prevent prisoners from injuring themselves or others and to prevent property damage. International standards further provide that chains and irons shall not be used as restraints. In its 1999 report “Not part of my sentence”: Violations of the Human Rights of Women in Custody, Amnesty International reported that restraints are routinely used on pregnant women in transport and during medical care, although this is not essential to prevent escape or protect people and property. Amnesty International is concerned that these practices continue in many states.

Amnesty International welcomes the heightened awareness of this issue among a small number of departments of corrections that have adopted policies prohibiting restraints during labor and delivery, as well as those that reported that they do not restrain women “in practice.” However, other states still do not have a written policy or even a stated practice guiding correctional staff in this matter. AI believes that only written policies, training on the policies and ultimately legislation prohibiting the use of restraints can adequately and comprehensively protect women from this human rights violation.

Amnesty International considers the routine use of restraints on pregnant women, particularly on women in labor, a cruel, inhumane and degrading and practice that rarely can be justified in terms of security concerns.

Amnesty International is concerned that the shackling of women in the third trimester and during labor endangers the woman and her child and also constitutes a violation of international standards.

Continued @ http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/custody/introduction.html

Human Rights from Texas to Abu Ghraib

(Excerpt)

Others from the U.S. penal system were involved in Iraqi prisons. In May, ABC News reported that four of the six former state prison commissioners chosen by the Bush administration to help set up prisons in Iraq had left their previous posts after allegations of neglect, brutality and prisoner deaths.

One of the four, Terry Stewart, was sued by the Justice Department in 1997, when he ran Arizona's Corrections Department. The lawsuit charged that at least 14 female inmates were repeatedly raped, sexually assaulted and watched by corrections workers as they dressed, showered and used the bathroom.

(snip)

Another former state prison commissioner was "Lane" McCotter, who resigned as head of the Utah Department of Corrections after a mentally ill inmate died after spending 16 hours strapped to a restraining chair.

(snip)

Those incidents {in a Brazoria County, Texas, private prison} of alleged prisoner abuse did not occur in a vacuum. Months before the scandal broke Missouri state Rep. "Quincy" Troupe, a Democrat, wrote to then-Gov. Bush to alert him to the Brazoria incident. "There were red flags going up all over Missouri that our inmates were being brutalized by prison guards in Texas," Troupe told the Fort Worth Star Telegram. "Texas was lax in responding, and so was Missouri. We had an obligation to take action, too, because they were our prisoners," having been shipped to the private Texas facility.

A spokesman for then-Gov. Bush said that he had received Troupe's letters in December 1996 and January 1997. Bush referred the letters to James Crump, executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, which conducted a two-day investigation into the matter and ultimately let it drop.

Continued @ http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/news.jsp?key=563&t=

Exporting America's Prison Problems

In 1997 a 29-year-old schizophrenic inmate named Michael Valent was stripped naked and strapped to a restraining chair by Utah prison staff because he refused to take a pillowcase off his head. Shortly after he was released some sixteen hours later, Valent collapsed and died from a blood clot that blocked an artery to his heart.

The chilling incident made national news not only because it happened to be videotaped but also because Valent's family successfully sued the State of Utah and forced it to stop using the device. Director of the Utah Department of Corrections, Lane McCotter, who was named in the suit and defended use of the chair, resigned in the ensuing firestorm.

Some six years later, Lane McCotter was working in Abu Ghraib prison, part of a four-man team of correctional advisers sent by the Justice Department and charged with the sensitive mission of reconstructing Iraq's notorious prisons, ravaged by decades of human rights abuse.

(snip)

It's bad enough that the Justice Department picked McCotter--whose reputation in Utah was at best controversial and at worst disturbing. But further, the Justice Department hired him less than three months after its own civil rights division released a shocking thirty-six-page report documenting inhumane conditions at a New Mexico jail, run by the company where McCotter is an executive. Here was a man whose prisons had been plagued by reports of inmate mistreatment for nearly a decade. "Lane McCotter's administration here had a horrifying record on human rights" said Carol Gnade, who was executive director of the ACLU in Salt Lake City between 1992 and 2002.

Continued @ http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040524/frosch