Published Wednesday, August 26, 2009 6:05 AM

N.Y. weighs shackling pregnant inmates

By CRISTIAN SALAZAR
Associated Press

NEW YORK -- For nearly four hours before she gave birth, Venita Pinckney had a chain wrapped around her swollen abdomen. Her ankles were shackled together and her hands were cuffed.

The 37-year-old was in a maximum-security prison for violating parole. An officer told her the use of restraints on pregnant inmates was "procedure."

"I'm saying to myself, 'I feel like a pregnant animal,'" said Pinckney, who was taken from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility to a hospital for the birth of her boy last year.

At state prisons around the country, jailed women are routinely shackled during childbirth, often by correctional staff without medical training, according to civil rights organizations and prisoner advocates. The practice has been condemned by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for unnecessarily risking women's health, and court challenges are pending in several states.

Federal prisons and five states largely ban shackling pregnant women in prison. Gov. David Paterson is expected to sign a law this week that would make New York the sixth state to do so.

"A woman giving birth to a child is hardly the first person that is going to be thinking of trying to escape or create any kind of problem," the governor said last week.

Correction departments and unions have argued that any broad-stroke policy that bans shackling could put medical staff and correctional officers at risk.

"We certainly use a common-sense approach regarding shackling, whether it's females or males," said Donn Rowe, the president of the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, which represents 23,000 state employees. "A blanket policy ... doesn't fit all cases with something of this nature when you're dealing with some possibly dangerous inmates."

Erik Kriss, a spokesman for New York's Department of Correctional Services, said the state law would put staff at risk, noting the inmates are felons.

"They can coordinate on the outside to facilitate an escape. We have to be vigilant about those kinds of things," Kriss said.

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