From The Marshall Project:
When the Bureau of Justice Statistics released the first-ever national look at reproductive issues in state and federal prisons in April, it answered some long-standing questions, while raising a few more, about pregnancy and maternal care behind bars.
Even though women are the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, no agency tracks vital statistics on pregnancy and reproductive care in state and federal prisons. The BJS release covered a few key data points: The number of pregnant people in state and federal prisons in 2023, the outcomes of their pregnancies over the course of the year, and the kind of maternal health services that prisons say they provide. It does not include private facilities and local jails, where pregnancies are much more common.
While the BJS data is now the most comprehensive look at what happens in our state and federal prisons, it’s missing a huge piece of the story. A quick scan of the findings may suggest that prisons do a good job of taking care of pregnant people because they offer many critical maternal care services. But without accompanying narratives from the hundreds of pregnant people in prison, it’s hard to know how these services are actually used. Continue reading >>>
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