California bill considers shackling
California is poised to become the first state in the nation to halt the shackling of pregnant women prisoners, under legislation sent to the governor for his signature.
However, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not said if he will sign the legislation, which received final legislative approval August 24, said Sandra Trevino, aide to Assembly Member Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley. The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment but supporters are optimistic he will sign it, since AB1900 passed unanimously in both the state Assembly and Senate.
The California Catholic Conference is one of about 50 organizations which support the legislation. Other supporters include California Medical Association, American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, California Nurses Association, California National Organization for Women, California Church IMPACT, California Commission on the Status of Women, and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. No group is known to oppose the legislation, said Trevino and no opponent is listed on the state analysis of the bill.
California is already just one of six states in the country that have prohibited, by law, the shackling of women prisoners during labor and delivery, according to the The Rebecca Project for Human Rights based in Washington, D.C., which says the practice of shackling pregnant women “constitutes a cruel, inhumane and degrading and practice that rarely can be justified in terms of security concerns.”
The five other states which have statutes regulating the use of restraints on women in labor and delivery are Illinois, New Mexico, New York, Texas, and Vermont, according to the Rebecca Project.
AB1900, if enacted, would affect about 1,000 women a year, said Karen Shain, of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children in San Francisco. There are approximately 11,000 women in state prisons and another 11,000 in county jails, Shain said. Those in county jails would be most affected as they are more likely to be moved from place to place for court hearings. Few women are incarcerated for violent offenses, Shain said. Nearly 71 percent of all arrests of women are for non-violent larceny and theft or drug-related offenses, according to the Rebecca Project.
“It’s a safety concern. The way this started we got a letter from a woman in Contra Costa County jail. She was trying to figure out if what was happening to her was legal,” said Shain. The woman was in jail for seven and a half months, and heavily pregnant as she was transported from jail facility and back and forth to court, hands bound behind her and feet in chains, attached to both men and women prisoners, Shain said. She was also “belly shackled,” even while heavily pregnant, Shain said.
“She had to shuffle down the street. What would happen if the person in front of her tried to make a run for it or fell down? There was no way she could protect herself or the baby,” Shain said.
The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists backs the legislation because of difficulties its doctors have had treating women who were chained, said Shannon Smith-Crowley, legislative advocate for the 5,200-member California chapter of ACOG. “There are increasing numbers of women that are being incarcerated,” said Smith-Crowley, “and particularly pregnant women are at higher risk being incarcerated. We’ve got concerns about their health, the health of the pregnancy and of the fetus.”
“The stories we mainly have from our doctors are really challenging cases where there has been emergency treatment that has need to be performed and it has been physically difficult to treat,” Smith-Crowley said. One doctor had difficulty getting an IV in during an ambulance ride with a woman suffering extreme preeclampsia or high blood pressure. “There have been reports of broken bones and broken pelvises because of difficulty accessing women,” because of the chains, she said.
San Francisco General Hospital has an entire ward devoted to treating women prisoners and Smith-Crowley said the program is a model that ACOG and its doctors hope the state will follow if the legislation is enacted.
There are no readily available statistics of women who suffered miscarriage or other injury because of the state and county practice of shackling but the danger exists, Shain said. However, on the other hand, she said, “There are certainly no cases of pregnant women escaping because they were not shackled enough.”
By Valerie Schmalz
From September 3, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
