Report Finds Few Protections for Pregnant Prisoners

According to Amnesty’s survey, 41 states and the federal corrections system permit the use of restraints on pregnant women and 23 states, plus the Federal Bureau of Prisons, allow women to be restrained during labor. Eight states have no official written policy on the practice, Amnesty said, and just two states – Illinois and California – have specific laws limiting the restraint of pregnant women.

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Protections for pregnant prisoners are not the only safeguards absent from US prison systems. Few states have laws protecting any female inmates from sexual predation by jailers, the report found. Vermont has no law against such acts, known to officialdom as "custodial sexual misconduct," but considered rape by women’s advocates Six other states do not directly address the issue, Amnesty found: Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, New Jersey and Utah.

And while many states do have laws and polices governing such relations, most fail to adequately take into account the inherent difference in power such "relationships" have rendering "consensual" sex between inmates and jailers impossible in the eyes of Amnesty.

In both Nevada and Delaware, for example, an inmate involved in sexual activity with a prison guard or other worker faces criminal charges unless she can prove the person raped her. Laws in both states call for guards and officers to be punished for sexual acts with prisoners regardless of consent.

The issue of sex behind bar is complicated and it is not always clear that in a nonviolent sexual relationship it is the guard who is the initiator - and thus a potential "rapist by default", for the lack of a better term. It is quite possible to picture a situation in which a female prisoner initiates a sexual relationship with a guard in order to solicit some favors, for example. Or to simply satisfy her sexaul needs.

It is much harder, however, to see why it should be necessary to shackle a pregnant woman about to give birth. After all, how often have there been security problems caused by women in such situations, on either side of the bars?

tags: pregnancy  rape  prison  law