From Prison Policy Initiative:
In the confines of an unsanitary jail cell, a woman delivers a baby alone: This is a typical news article about a jail birth. But when it comes to the 1.5 million women cycling through jails each year, what more do experts know about jail births on a larger scale? The answer: Nothing — there is no regular data collection on pregnant or postpartum people held in local jails. (As for those in prisons, there is some limited data collection. )
Given the lack of transparency from jails about pregnancies, birth outcomes, and other facets of reproductive care, a team of student researchers is drawing attention to this data blind spot. The Birth in Jails Media Project, which draws entirely from local news coverage of jail births, provides a rich picture of how some pregnant people experience incarceration, labor, and childbirth, with more detail about jail conditions and staff responses than a national dataset can typically provide.
In this briefing, we present the first-ever published findings from the Birth in Jails Media Project, one of many indispensable efforts from Advocacy and Research on Reproductive Wellness of Incarcerated People (ARRWIP), a reproductive justice-oriented research group at John Hopkins University led by researcher and obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Carolyn Sufrin. (We’ve previously lifted up ARRWIP’s important work on contraception, abortion, breastfeeding, and medication for opioid use disorder policies for pregnant women in custody.
Continue reading the brief here.
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