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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 8:37 pm
Time: 8:37 pm
Results for pregnant inmates (new york)
1 results foundAuthor: Kraft-Stolar, Tamar Title: Reproductive Injustice:The State of Reproductive Health Care for Women in New York State Prisons Summary: each and every visit the Correctional Association of New York (CA) conducts to women's prisons in New York, we meet women who tell us about the serious problems they face in accessing appropriate health care and the particular challenges of securing women-specific care during their incarceration. The consistency and intensity of these concerns over the years led us to undertake this study, the most extensive study of reproductive health care in a state prison system to date. Shining a light on this topic is critical because access to quality reproductive health care is a basic human right, as is a woman's ability to control her own reproductive decisions. Prison infringes on those rights, exposing women to substandard reproductive health care and denying women the right to choose when to have children and the right to be full-time parents to the children they already have. Prisons fuel social and racial injustice, undermining the conditions necessary for women to have reproductive autonomy, and to live safe and fulfilling lives. Reproductive health also serves as an important lens onto the unique experiences of incarcerated women and the dehumanization that defines life in prison. It illuminates the specific degradation that accompanies being a woman in prison, from shackling during pregnancy to the separation of mothers from their newborns to the denial of sufficient sanitary supplies. Finally, reproductive health care in prison is fundamental to the well-being of families and communities as almost everyone in prison eventually goes home. Despite this, state prison officials do not pay adequate attention to reproductive health care and neither do public health authorities when this care happens behind prison walls. The lack of oversight is alarming considering that the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) is responsible for providing reproductive health care to more than 2,300 women on any given day, and to nearly 4,000 women over the course of one year, about 40 of whom are pregnant. Women in prisons across the country face similar problems in accessing adequate reproductive health care and humane treatment, and the explosion in the number of incarcerated women over the past few decades has only exacerbated these problems. The U.S. women's prison population rose from about 11,200 in 1977 to about 111,300 in 2013, an increase of nearly 900% over a 36-year time span. As a result, the U.S. currently incarcerates more women per capita than any other country in the world: we have less than 5% of the world's women yet nearly 33% of the world's incarcerated women. This massive overuse of incarceration does not affect all women equally. Women in prison are overwhelmingly from low-income communities, and a vastly disproportionate number are women of color. Many have had little formal education, and many struggle with serious health conditions, including substance abuse and mental illness. Almost all have brutal histories of abuse. A majority are mothers, often of small children, and many were caring for their children on their own before prison. Most women are in prison for crimes related to addiction, poverty, mental illness, domestic violence and trauma. These realities reflect the criminal justice system's racism and targeting of marginalized communities, and our society's destructive over-reliance on incarceration as a response to problems that are, at their root, social and economic. Details: New York: Women in Prison Project, Correctional Association of New York, 2015. 233p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 19, 2015 at: http://www.correctionalassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Reproductive-Injustice-FULL-REPORT-FINAL-2-11-15.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.correctionalassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Reproductive-Injustice-FULL-REPORT-FINAL-2-11-15.pdf Shelf Number: 134657 Keywords: Female InmatesFemale PrisonersHealth CareMedical CarePregnant Inmates (New York) |