Options for Pregnant Inmates

Published for NC Criminal Law on June 15, 2011.

One of my colleagues recently tipped me off to a great article in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr. Jennifer G. Clarke entitled Perinatal Care for Incarcerated Patients: A 25-Year-Old Woman Pregnant in Jail. 305 JAMA 923 (2011). I wish I could share the full article but it does not appear to be available without a subscription. The abstract, at least, is available here. The article uses the case of a Rhode Island woman sentenced to a 1-year jail term during the second trimester of her pregnancy as a springboard for discussing the issues, benefits, and challenges of caring for an incarcerated pregnant woman. Though its target audience is health care providers the article offers plenty of food for thought for people in the criminal justice system—as well as an opportunity to summarize some related points of North Carolina law. The article begins with a moving first-person account of the woman’s jail stay. She describes a range of emotions, going from being “glad I came to jail to get cleaned up so my child could be born clean” to “getting really sad because I’m gonna have my baby in jail.” When it came time for her to deliver she was moved to a community hospital where, aside from some minor complications on account of her prior heroin use, everything went smoothly. She was discharged after 36 hours and returned to the jail. Shortly thereafter she was granted some type of parole to a community-based residential parenting program. The [...]