Maybe pregnant women should stop committing crimes.
> “The women we surveyed arrived in prison with a variety of complex needs stemming from poverty, homelessness, domestic violence and substance misuse,” she said. “The prison environment only adds another layer of trauma for these women and can be dangerous for the unborn child.”
For the sake of the unborn children these mothers need to be looked after, and I doubt that letting them back into the community will provide the best outcomes. These people live very chaotic lives. My guess is that children will have the best outcomes if mother is in a secure environment, away from drugs, alcohol, violence, and where their health is properly monitored.
Whether pregnant women are imprisoned or not, it’s clear from the article that the standards of care in prison are, unsurprisingly, not good enough:
>Data collected by the Observer found that jailed women in the UK are five times more likely to have a stillbirth as those living in the community.
>One woman, Jodie, who was in prison for the first time on drug offences, wrote: “I was ignored and not believed that I was in labour. I was not responded to when I rang my cell bell… I was left from Saturday night to Monday morning in labour alone in my cell. The whole experience was traumatising.”
>Louise Powell, who did not know she was pregnant, spent several hours in labour “begging” for help on 18 June 2020. But a prison nurse failed to visit her despite three emergency calls, including one from a guard saying she “looked six months pregnant”. Her baby girl was unresponsive after a breech birth in a prison toilet.
There clearly needs to be an overhaul of prison healthcare and attitudes to complaints of pain or illness from prisoners.
Stopping pregnant women from going to prison is not going to fix the problem. That’s just avoiding the issue. The problem is with how prisons accommodates pregnant women. You can’t fix a problem by just sidestepping it completely.
The judges who send them to the prisons should be ashamed of themselves.
Maybe this is too radical a thought, but if it’s a concern, we could maybe improve the care around pregnant inmates?
What’s stopping women getting pregnant to avoid jail?
It happens alot in the military, women get pregnant to not be deployed.
Maybe we could improve health checks and care, but it’s not like we can take the child off the parent as it’s born.
Or we could ensure the minimum legal health and safety procedures in prisons…
House arrest until they give birth then straight to prison?
Can I stab someone and then identify as a pregnant woman? I reckon I’d look good with long hair
10 comments
Maybe pregnant women should stop committing crimes.
> “The women we surveyed arrived in prison with a variety of complex needs stemming from poverty, homelessness, domestic violence and substance misuse,” she said. “The prison environment only adds another layer of trauma for these women and can be dangerous for the unborn child.”
For the sake of the unborn children these mothers need to be looked after, and I doubt that letting them back into the community will provide the best outcomes. These people live very chaotic lives. My guess is that children will have the best outcomes if mother is in a secure environment, away from drugs, alcohol, violence, and where their health is properly monitored.
Whether pregnant women are imprisoned or not, it’s clear from the article that the standards of care in prison are, unsurprisingly, not good enough:
>Data collected by the Observer found that jailed women in the UK are five times more likely to have a stillbirth as those living in the community.
>One woman, Jodie, who was in prison for the first time on drug offences, wrote: “I was ignored and not believed that I was in labour. I was not responded to when I rang my cell bell… I was left from Saturday night to Monday morning in labour alone in my cell. The whole experience was traumatising.”
>Louise Powell, who did not know she was pregnant, spent several hours in labour “begging” for help on 18 June 2020. But a prison nurse failed to visit her despite three emergency calls, including one from a guard saying she “looked six months pregnant”. Her baby girl was unresponsive after a breech birth in a prison toilet.
There clearly needs to be an overhaul of prison healthcare and attitudes to complaints of pain or illness from prisoners.
Stopping pregnant women from going to prison is not going to fix the problem. That’s just avoiding the issue. The problem is with how prisons accommodates pregnant women. You can’t fix a problem by just sidestepping it completely.
The judges who send them to the prisons should be ashamed of themselves.
Maybe this is too radical a thought, but if it’s a concern, we could maybe improve the care around pregnant inmates?
What’s stopping women getting pregnant to avoid jail?
It happens alot in the military, women get pregnant to not be deployed.
Maybe we could improve health checks and care, but it’s not like we can take the child off the parent as it’s born.
Or we could ensure the minimum legal health and safety procedures in prisons…
House arrest until they give birth then straight to prison?
Can I stab someone and then identify as a pregnant woman? I reckon I’d look good with long hair