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A pair of state legislators want to change state law to require the conditional release from jail of pregnant women and women who have just given birth.
A.7585/S.7131 was introduced recently introduced in the Assembly and Senate by Assemblywoman Dr. Anna Kelles, D-Ithaca, and Sen. Julia Salazar, D-Brooklyn.
Neither bill has yet made it out of committee in the Assembly or Senate, meaning the bill will likely be reintroduced in January for possible debate in the next legislative session. Kelles has attracted two co-sponsors in the Assembly (Michaelle C. Solages, D-Valley Stream, and Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, D-East Elmhurst) while Salazar has yet to have a co-sponsor back her bill.
The lawmakers say it would be better for the children to prohibit incarceration of pregnant or postpartum women and instead to create alternative, community-based programs for them. Neither Salazar nor Kelles include financial implications of the legislation, though they say it is likely to save the state money by cutting costs related to keeping pregnant women or new mothers in jail.
"Incarceration is detrimental to the health, mental health, and well-being of individuals and families," Kelles and Salazar wrote in their legislative justification. "This is particularly the case for individuals who are pregnant or postpartum and their children. Alternatives to incarceration of these individuals is possible and necessary for the welfare of children."
According to a 2019 Associated Press report, about 4% of women incarcerated in state prisons across the U.S. were pregnant when they were jailed. The number of imprisoned women has increased over the past decades, growing even as the overall prison rates decline.
Dr. Carolyn Sufrin of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine attempted to fill the void by collecting data from 22 state prison systems and 26 federal prisons during a yearlong period in 2016 and 2017. She released her results in the American Journal of Public Health .
Researchers found there were 1,396 women who reported being pregnant while incarcerated -- 1,224 from state prisons and 172 in federal prisons. There were 753 live births among the 56,262 women included in the study, with about 10,000 in federal prisons but the majority in state prison systems. There were 46 miscarriages, 11 abortions, four stillbirths and three newborn deaths, according to the study. No women died during childbirth. Among women who were already in state prisons, five new pregnancies were diagnosed during a six-month period -- three women became pregnant during work release and the other two were not reported..
The study included about 57 percent of all women in prison -- 53 percent from state prisons and 86 percent in federal prisons. There are about 112,000 women behind bars nationwide. New York did not participate in the study.
Most incarcerated women have to give up their babies within days of having them, especially if they are serving long sentences. In rare cases, like at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York, some women are allowed to keep their newborns in a separate nursery inside the prison run by a nonprofit.