HOw do you guys feel about this

[Marilyn]

There was an article in my morning paper regarding some recent protest against the policy of chaining women inmates to the bed while giving birth. One chain is even around the stomach and then locked to the bed.

One law enforcement official was quoted as saying "they are still felons and not to be trusted even when birthing."


This seems kind of cruel to me, what do you think?

[Suesumba]

Re: HOw do you guys feel about this

what are they gonna do? run away? that's barbaric.

[kia027]

Re: HOw do you guys feel about this

sounds cruel and sounds like something that came about due to cost cutting measures

could not hire the extra personnel to help with childbirth so they substitute with chains

how inhumane

[Shine_Eye_Girl]

Re: HOw do you guys feel about this

Seriously, that's one of the most inhumane things I have ever heard of.
....

[chitowngirl]

Re: HOw do you guys feel about this

<span style="font-weight: bold">State sued over shackling inmate who was in labor</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">A public interest law firm has sued the state Department of Corrections for allegedly violating its own policy prohibiting female inmates from being shackled during birth.</span>

Casandra Brawley's contractions were coming every five minutes, and she'd been leaking amniotic fluid for days. Labor was imminent. Time to go to the hospital.

But as a prison inmate, Brawley still had to wear a &quot;waist chain&quot; with her wrists shackled to her sides on the ride to the hospital. She said she was shackled to her hospital bed, even after getting an epidural.

And as soon as she had an emergency cesarean section, she said, she was shackled again for a three-day bed rest.

On Thursday, a public-interest law firm in Seattle called the shackling a form of &quot;cruel and unusual punishment&quot; as it sued the state Department of Corrections (DOC) in federal court. Shackling a woman during labor is contrary to established medical advice, in addition to being &quot;ludicrous,&quot; said Brawley's attorney, Sara Ainsworth of Legal Voice.

&quot;It's medically dangerous,&quot; Ainsworth said. &quot;Labor requires a woman to use her entire body to have a healthy baby and birth experience. If part of your body is needlessly restrained, it does not allow a doctor to care for a patient.&quot;

DOC policy now bans restraining inmates during &quot;labor or delivery,&quot; but the agency said in a statement it could not comment on Brawley's case because her records were archived. There is no state law banning the practice of shackling inmates during labor.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists supports a federal law banning shackling women in labor because it interferes with medical care and puts &quot;the health and lives of the women and unborn children at risk.&quot;

Brawley, now 29, said she was a methamphetamine addict from age 16 to 26, leading to a felony record for theft and drug possession. She said she has been clean for three years.

She was nine months pregnant in April 2007 and serving a 14-month sentence at the Washington Correctional Center for Women at Purdy when, during dinner hour, she went into active labor. She'd been leaking amniotic fluid for three days but had been denied admission to a hospital.

But with contractions now five minutes apart, she was taken — shackled with the belly chain — to St. Joseph's Hospital in Tacoma. Then, she was shackled to the bed with an ankle cuff — and being watched over by a prison officer — when doctors realized she had a high fever and her baby's heart rate was about 200 beats per minute. She remained shackled, she said, after being given an epidural five hours into labor.

&quot;I thought it was kind of strange because I couldn't feel my feet,&quot; she said.

She was uncuffed only when a doctor insisted she be unshackled for an emergency c-section, according to the lawsuit. Brawley's baby, a boy named Jayden, had an infection likely related to the previous rupture of her amnion, Ainsworth said.

She remained shackled to the hospital bed during her three days of recovery and a previously undiagnosed case of E. coli food poisoning. Each time she got up, she was fitted with an ankle chain by a prison officer.

&quot;It felt awful to be up,&quot; Brawley said. &quot;It felt like my guts were falling out.&quot;

She was released from prison about a month after the birth — and only halfway through her sentence — because of good behavior and her nonviolent drug offense. She did not see Jayden, who was given to Brawley's mother, until her release.

Today, she's living in Bremerton and has since had a baby girl. Jayden, she said, is healthy.

source

[Blackstar*]

Re: HOw do you guys feel about this

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Marilyn</div><div class="ubbcode-body">One law enforcement official was quoted as saying &quot;they are still felons and not to be trusted even when birthing.&quot; </div></div>
This is no &quot;law enforcement&quot; official as there is 'a federal law banning shackling women in labor because it interferes with medical care and puts &quot;the health and lives of the women and unborn children at risk.&quot;' which he/she seems willing to flout.

[chitowngirl]

Re: HOw do you guys feel about this

<span style="font-weight: bold">Anti-Shackling Law Expected This Week</span>

NEW YORK (AP) — For nearly four hours before she gave birth, Venita Pinckney had a chain wrapped around her swollen abdomen. Her ankles and hands were shackled.

The 37-year-old was in a maximum-security prison for violating parole. An officer told her the use of restraints on pregnant inmates was “procedure.”

“I’m saying to myself, ‘I feel like a pregnant animal,’” said Pinckney, who gave birth to a boy at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility last year.

At state prisons around the country, jailed women are routinely shackled during childbirth, often by correctional staff without medical training, according to civil rights organizations and prisoner advocates. The practice has been condemned by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for unnecessarily risking women’s health, and court challenges are pending in several states.

Federal prisons and five states largely ban shackling pregnant women in prison. Gov. David Paterson is expected to sign a law this week that would make New York the sixth state to do so.

“A woman giving birth to a child is hardly the first person that is going to be thinking of trying to escape or create any kind of problem,” the governor said last week.

Correction departments and unions have argued that any broad-stroke policy that bans shackling could put medical staff and correctional officers at risk.

“We certainly use a common-sense approach regarding shackling, whether it’s females or males,” said Donn Rowe, the president of the New York State Correctional Officers &amp; Police Benevolent Association, which represents 23,000 state employees. “A blanket policy ... doesn’t fit all cases with something of this nature when you’re dealing with some possibly dangerous inmates.”

Erik Kriss, a spokesman for New York’s Department of Correctional Services, said the state law would put staff at risk, noting the inmates are felons.

“They can coordinate on the outside to facilitate an escape. We have to be vigilant about those kinds of things,” Kriss said.

It isn’t clear how many inmates nationwide are affected by the practice. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics said 4 percent of state inmates and 3 percent of federal inmates were pregnant in 2008 when they were first incarcerated. Data weren’t available to indicate how many women delivered babies in prison or were restrained while doing so.

Malika Saada Saar, the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Rebecca Project for Human Rights, said her organization is researching state-by-state data. Kriss said 43 New York inmates gave birth in 2008, but didn’t know if any were “mechanically restrained.”

The bill awaiting Paterson’s signature would ban restraints on inmates giving birth, except when needed to keep a woman from injuring herself, medical staff or correctional officers. In those cases, women would be cuffed on one wrist while being taken from prison to the hospital.

Similar laws exist in Texas, Illinois, California, Vermont and New Mexico, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Legislatures in Massachusetts and Tennessee are considering bans, too.


Tamar Kraft-Stolar, who works for the Correctional Association of New York, has lobbied for a law banning shackling. She said her organization had helped interview 15 to 20 current or formerly jailed women who said they were shackled during labor, delivery or recovery from childbirth in state prisons in 2008 and 2009.

The use of restraints, she said, “depended on which correction officer was on duty.”

Trevor Lippman, an attorney with the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said that his organization still hears of cases even in states with written policies limiting the use of restraints.

Several lawsuits challenging the practice are pending throughout the country.

In Washington, former prison inmate Casandra Brawley sued in June saying she was shackled by a metal chain around her stomach while being transported to the hospital, and then fastened by a leg iron to a hospital bed through hours of labor. It was only because a physician objected to the restraints during an emergency Cesarean section that they were removed, the suit said.

The Washington Department of Corrections has a policy prohibits shackling in such cases, but there is a “disconnect in state policy with the prison policy itself,” said Brawley’s attorney, Sara Ainsworth. The agency has said that it would investigate Brawley’s claims.

In Nashville, Tenn., a woman accused the county sheriff’s office of improperly restraining her before and right after giving birth to a son in July 2008. The sheriff later agreed to stop restraining inmates, unless they posed a danger. The woman, Juana Villegas, filed a federal lawsuit in March.

Four former Cook County, Ill., inmates filed suit in June against the county sheriff’s department saying they were shackled to their hospital beds during labor.

Pinckney, of New York City, gave birth to her son, Savion, in November while serving a two- to four-year term for violating parole on a 2001 drug conviction. She says she was kept in shackles until she was placed in a prison hospital room where guards could oversee her.

“I think that’s just too much,” Pinckney said. “That’s too much to bear.”

Since being released from prison in December 2008, she has been living with her son at a re-entry program in Queens.

source

[chitowngirl]

Re: HOw do you guys feel about this

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlackStar</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Marilyn</div><div class="ubbcode-body">One law enforcement official was quoted as saying &quot;they are still felons and not to be trusted even when birthing.&quot; </div></div>
This is no &quot;law enforcement&quot; official as there is 'a federal law banning shackling women in labor because it interferes with medical care and puts &quot;the health and lives of the women and unborn children at risk.&quot;' which he/she seems willing to flout. </div></div>
Childbirth in Chains

<span style="font-weight: bold">The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called several years ago for an end to the barbaric and medically hazardous practice of shackling female prisoners during labor.</span> In addition to further frightening these vulnerable women, the practice of chaining their legs, wrists and even their abdomens makes treatment and delivery more difficult and places mother and child at greater risk of harm.

<span style="font-weight: bold">The Federal Bureau of Prisons must have had these facts in mind last fall when the bureau ended the routine use of restraints for women in labor and limited shackling</span> to cases in which a woman presents a danger to herself, the baby or the staff. <span style="font-weight: bold">Five states have similar policies. New York would become the sixth</span> — if Gov. David Paterson signs an antishackling bill that sailed through the Legislature this spring.

The bill has caused a debate about how many pregnant women are actually shackled in New York. But recent interviews of female inmates by the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit group that monitors prison conditions, suggests that the practice may be more common than corrections officials know. In any case, the bill would put an end to it, by establishing clear guidelines that carry the authority of law.

Modeled on federal prison policy and laws in other states, the New York bill would prohibit women from being shackled while being taken to the hospital for a delivery. A woman could be cuffed by one wrist in cases in which she presented a danger to herself, hospital staff or corrections workers. But it seems highly unlikely that a woman doubled over in labor pains would be able to attempt an escape or overcome corrections officers.

Governor Paterson, whose staff members have recently been quibbling with technicalities in the bill, should make it clear whether he thinks the measure needs minor changes or clarifications. Otherwise, he should sign the bill into law and bring New York into line with the federal government and the other states that have wisely acted to protect pregnant inmates and their children during labor.

source

[Marilyn]

Re: HOw do you guys feel about this

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: SueSumba</div><div class="ubbcode-body">what are they gonna do? run away? that's barbaric. </div></div>

Yeah that's what I thought also Sue

[Marilyn]

Re: HOw do you guys feel about this

Thank you to those who posted the article....there are just some issues going on in AMerica...another is how people who are in holding for immigration are treated as well. Clean up thine own house first.

[jah_yout]

Re: HOw do you guys feel about this

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Shine_Eye_Girl</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Seriously, that's one of the most inhumane things I have ever heard of.
....
</div></div>

di babylon dem do a lot of inhumane things; the average person who has never been involved with them just doesn't realize how evilous they can get.

but the plunger they shoved up some guys bum should give some people an idea of how they get down sometimes

[loops]

Re: HOw do you guys feel about this

two words for you jah yout

genital mutilation