Image courtesy of Wallin and Klarich

In his final “Letter to Loretto,” CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who served two years in a federal prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania, wrote about all the things he would not miss in prison. He’d pled guilty to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) in 2012 when he confirmed the name of an officer involved in the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program to a reporter.

Kiriakou wrote that among other things, he certainly wouldn’t miss “staff lies;” COs who are “bullies and punks” and those who harassed his visitors; waiting for 4 days to send or receive an email from his family or attorneys because he was considered “dangerous;” fighting to get mail; and in a later letter, after he’d been released, he said that there had been “a trollish prison employee” who tried to to set him up just as he was leaving.

But one of his worst experiences was when he was actually released: dealing with the number of inane rules for those exiting from prison, so they supposedly won’t re-offend. From the day of his release on February 3 until the end of his house arrest on May 1, he couldn’t leave his house except to go to Hope Village, a halfway house, where he was supposed to be learning life skills—besides having a family, this man had a BA and an MA from George Washington University; he couldn’t leave except to seek or do work, or to visit the doctor. He wrote, “What I [also] couldn’t do was go to PTA meetings, my children’s school events, their sporting events, or enter a private home.” The rules almost cost him a job until he finally got permission to drive because commuting from his home to Hope Village took up 6 hours of his day!

Andrea James, founder and director of Families for Justice as Healing, had been a well established practicing attorney, also with a good job and a family, before her own crazy experiences kicked in behind bars. And leaving Danbury Prison where she served 24 months, was similar to Kiriakou. While behind bars, she had written her now-published book, Upper Bunkies Unite: And Other Thoughts On the Politics of Mass Incarceration. When she left the jail, she began 3 months of home confinement. She wrote in an email:

“I was denied any halfway house time although it could have brought me back to Boston and closer to my children almost 6 months sooner than later. On the day I was released from Danbury, after being handcuffed and walked through the prison to the area where you start and end your prison stay, known as R&D, I was stripped searched one last time. My one box I was leaving with that only contained my book manuscript was searched, and I was finally allowed to walk out of the front door. My family met me in the parking lot and we drove from Danbury to the McGraph Halfway House at 699 Mass Ave. in Boston. I was told that although I was denied halfway house time and was kept in Danbury for most of my sentence, I was given a few hours to get from Danbury, CT to McGraph House to check-in and arrange my schedule, including a payment schedule for the halfway house, for the next three months, as I had to report to them weekly.

After arriving however, as my family waited for me to check in and then return to the car and finally to home, I was told that I would not be allowed to leave the halfway house that day and could be held there for up to three days because the staff needed to do a home visit before I would be allowed to return home, even after being approved for home confinement by the prison and federal probation, who had already conducted a series of home visits and back ground checks on everyone in my home. My children were devastated when I had to yell to them from the doorway of the halfway house (I was not allowed to step out of the halfway house to go back to the car), that I could not yet return home with them.”

James wrote, “The rest of the story is very much like the one told in the article about home confinement, reporting weekly to a halfway house, receiving phones calls from the halfway house all hours of the day and night, everyday, even at 3am, to make sure I was in my home, peeing in a cup in front of strangers (even though I had no prior drug related issues), and constant visits to my home by federal probation, including home searches including even my children’s bedrooms.

The women who had to live in the halfway house had a much more difficult time as they were caught in a ridiculous cycle of not being allowed to leave the halfway house unless they were going to a job interview or job. Not an easy thing to arrange if you’re not allowed to leave. Most of these women had been incarcerated in far-a-way federal prisons for the past 5-10 years. None of it made any sense and was incredibly frustrating to the women. Many wanted to be returned to the prison they came from to wait for their home-confinement date as they felt they had more freedom in the prison. This of course was not allowed because most women are not approved for home-confinement. It’s really a mess and grossly ineffective and costly, mostly to the women who have to pay the halfway house for living there at the one most important time they need their money, if they manage to find employment, to find housing.”

And so it goes, our re-entry system at its finest.

Image via ColorLines

“It blows my mind that I have to sign a law for that,” Massachusetts former governor Deval Patrick said in May 2014, after he signed into law the Act to Prevent Shackling and Promote Safe Pregnancies for Female Inmates in Massachusetts. The law was groundbreaking in that it both protected women’s health behind bars and forbid shackling of pregnant prisoners.

Currently 29 states still allow women behind bars to be shackled during birth. This occurs, in spite of the fact, reported by the Women’s Media Center (WMC) in March 2015, that “this practice has been condemned by many medical and international humanitarian organizations, including the American Medical Association, Amnesty International, and the United Nations Committee Against Torture.” WMC added that it wasn’t until 2000 that merely “one state—Illinois—enacted legislation restricting the use of restraints.”

According to the Massachusetts Anti-Shackling Coalition, the 2014 Massachusetts law went beyond banning shackling and aimed to insure a “safe healthy pregnancy, birth experience and postpartum recovery, including prenatal care, adequate nutrition, and support during labor and birth.” So would it blow Governor Patrick’s  mind, if he were to learn that indeed the law to support pregnant prisoners is not being followed in many of the places we incarcerate women throughout the state?

Barbaric restraints that never should have been used in the first place are still in use. According to Judge Nancy Gertner, in a recent op-ed in the Boston Globe, shackles and waist chains for pregnant women are “unconstitutional…a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.” Vans without seat belts are still employed to transport women to and from jails. The statute is clear: no restraints except for handcuffs up front, but facilities are not following the law, in spite of the fact that statute forbids shackles “except in extraordinary circumstances,” and as Judge Gertner clarified, “even then, without leg or waist restraints.” Healthy pregnancies, how are they faring behind bars? Early results seem to indicate that violations of the statute on that front are also alive and well. Healthy diets and suitable clothing and undergarments are not being provided.

Two major advocacy groups, Prisoners’ Legal Services (PLS) and Prison Birth Project (PBP) interviewed women who were pregnant, and some who gave birth in the last year, since the law went into effect. A few of their experiences, reported anonymously, show the ways the law is not being followed:

• “I took a shower after the birth and they put me back in bed and shackled me to the bed by my left ankle. I said it was against the law, but the female C.O. said she had never heard of that. She called the jail and whoever she talked to also said they never heard of it. So I stayed shackled to the bed.”
• “It was very uncomfortable in the back of the vans. You’d slide everywhere, it was a very bumpy ride. It was scary. I would sometimes get cramps on those rides. Me and another pregnant girl who was having twins would talk about whether we’d go into labor in the van itself. We would joke around as a way to deal with how awful it was.”
• “I hate being this pregnant, being hungry and only having access to an extra cheese sandwich. Knowing what I do about being pregnant I know I should be eating more fresh vegetables.”

Lauren Petit, an attorney from PLS, in an interview, said that when the law was passed, jails and Department of Correction (DOC) prisons received the language of the statute—no more, no less. They were to do their own implementation, and by “they”—all the county facilities that transport women, like Essex, and those that house them including jails in the counties of Bristol, Barnstable, Hampden, Suffolk, as well as the Department of Correction state prisons—Framingham MCI and South Middlesex.

Petit said that stopping the shackling of pregnant prisoners is “a huge culture shock” for correction officers. Jails have to train their officers but it seems that most do not have polices in place to do so. Petit said results are varied and inconsistent. “Chicopee Jail in Hampden County has done a good job of training in some areas”—(my note: They better, considering the recent video camera suit they lost)—but, Bristol, under Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, said Petit, is doing a “terrible job.”  Bristol often transports pregnant women in vans with no seat belts. Chicopee sometimes won’t let women go to appointments because, although they know the law, there are no seat belts in that day’s available van.

Petit added that DOC has a different responsibility than the jails per the statute. She said, The DOC “was to put together a set of minimum health care standards and consult the Department Public Health and the Massachusetts sheriffs.” But have they done this? “I can’t say 100% that they have not done it but so far it seems like they have not,” said Petit. The DOC has been unresponsive to her records’ requests.

By the end of May, Petit, Marianne Bullock, co-founder of the Prison Birth Project, and Rachel Roth, women’s health policy expert, will release a report to describe compliance throughout the state. Roth said she was heartened to discover more women behind bars than she expected had heard about the law and were educating others. She is also working on outreach to make sure everyone knows about the statute, including defense attorneys and medical professionals.

The upcoming report is a result of funding that PLS and the PBP recently received from the National Institute for Reproductive Health (NIRH) to monitor implementation of the Massachusetts law.  In an email from Roth, the NIRH was described as working “to promote reproductive rights and expand access to reproductive health care through bold advocacy, creative education campaigns, and high-impact partnerships.”

An email from Marianne Bullock said that funding will also allow the Prison Birth Project “to engage formerly incarcerated women and allies to educate community members about their rights” as well as to allow PBP to work with pregnant women in jail. Bullock and the PBP plan “to ensure that rights are respected under the new law,” and to work on advocacy with the jail administration “to update its practices and policies to reflect the provisions of the law.”

Gavi Wolfe, legislative counsel at the ACLU of Massachusetts, in the above noted article by Women’s Media Center, spoke of the importance of this law: “Women’s experiences giving birth matter. It’s also important to make a public policy statement that this is not okay. We shouldn’t have to make this kind of statement of principle in legislation because it’s so obviously unacceptable treatment, but apparently we do.”

But until the law is followed as it should be, we are left with the fury of this law’s violations. Just after Mother’s Day, and here we are with the Massachusetts Anti-Shackling Coalition‘s insistence that we tend to our mothers behind bars: “The Commonwealth has made a commitment to health care for all, which promotes the well-being of pregnant women and gives every baby a healthy start in life. We call on the Secretary of Public Safety to ensure that the state Department of Correction and all county Sheriffs fully comply with the law and take seriously the health and treatment of pregnant women who are incarcerated.”