We did it. After years of work from the ACLU of California and our allies, dangerous shackles and restraints can no longer be used on pregnant women in our state’s prisons and jails. Last week Governor Brown signed AB 2530, authored by Assemblymember Atkins, after it passed the legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support.
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is a popular definition of insanity. Those of us across the country trying repeatedly to pass bills that would prohibit the shackling of pregnant women in jails and prisons are hardly insane. Dedicated? Yes. Stubborn? Possibly. Unwilling to accept women suffering? Absolutely.
This year marks the third attempt to get a signature on a bipartisan, unanimously supported bill in California (AB 2530) that would ban the practice of putting incarcerated pregnant women in dangerous shackles. Similar bills have passed two previous legislative sessions with overwhelming support from both political parties, only to be vetoed. Opposition from the powerful law enforcement lobby surely played a role in these vetoes. But we have persevered, and this year we’ve been successful in keeping law enforcement neutral. While we’re happy with this progress, we still need the Governor to sign the bill.
On September 9, 1971, in response to brutal living conditions and oppressive policies, prisoners rose up and took control of New York's Attica prison. The prisoners held more than 30 prison staff hostage, taking care to protect them from additional harm, while prisoner representatives sought to negotiate with state leaders. They protested the horrific conditions in which the prisoners were forced to live. They protested the lack of educational programs and basic medical care. And they demanded change.
By Amy Fettig, ACLU National Prison Project at 5:52pm
Every year in the United States babies are born to women who are literally in chains – shackled to their delivery beds even in the act of labor. Thankfully, there is hope that this long-hidden and terrible practice – and the legacy of pain, humiliation and harm its causes mothers and children – will soon be eradicated from jails, prisons and detention centers across the country.
By Diana Kasdan, Reproductive Freedom Project at 11:02am
Women's dignity was vindicated twice in a double dose of justice on Thursday. A federal jury in Tennessee awarded Juana Villegas $200,000 as compensation for the suffering she endured when the Davidson County Sheriff's Office unconstitutionally shackled her to her delivery bed in 2008.
Meanwhile, just across the state line in Virginia (which failed to enact anti-shackling legislation earlier this year), Delegate Patrick Hope, of the Virginia General Assembly , and anti-shackling advocates announced that the Virginia Department of Corrections has agreed to implement regulations prohibiting the shackling of pregnant inmates during labor and post-partum recovery.
