Some images never leave you: one that plays itself out in my mind is that of a teenage girl discovered in bed one morning curled up, bloody, with her baby, who is dead. She had given birth without assistance. Another: a woman – who did not know she was pregnant at the time – who gave birth to a stillborn baby in a toilet, having cried and cried for medical help.
In both of these cases, which occurred in the last two years, the victims were in prison at the time they went into labour, and their babies died. Does that change how you see these women? It doesn’t for me. Regardless of her crime, this failing shows that prison is no place for a pregnant woman. It simply isn’t safe. One in 10 give birth in prison rather than a hospital, or on the way to the hospital. Women in prison are five times more likely to have a stillbirth and twice as likely to give birth to a premature baby that needs special care; 28% of the babies born to women serving a custodial sentence between 2015 and 2019 were admitted to a neonatal unit afterwards – double the national figure.
