Pregnant women injail

[MichaelD55@xxxxxxx]

I would appreciate some help finding more literature on systematic outcome of 
pregnancies from adult women who are in jail or other parts of the criminal 
justice system. I particularly want to find programs that predictably serve 
this population outside of jail including probation parole law enforcement 
and Fire EMT.

My reading of pieces of literature suggest about 6% of women in jail are 
pregnant and 6% entering prison have a baby while in prison.  Some jail 
professionals suggest 12-15%. For LA County has about 240/year with 80 
delivering from jail and 160 discharged pregnant.

Most already have kids. The majority of all women in jail in one study had 
positive urine's for cocaine, heroin and/or methamphetamine. Add to that 
tobacco, marijuana, alcohol, malnutrition, a high but unstudied incidence of 
violent partners and occasional HIV along with lots of Chlamydia and other 
STD. Reading levels are low include illiteracy and non English speaking. Many 
lack the skills and self esteem to make and keep appointments. Life may 
involve walking distance between home, children's school, the grocery and 
liquor store and a friend or relative. Some are homeless. 

Jail may be home with friends who also do poorly outside. Chaos, violence, 
child care, drugs and alcohol are generally replaced in jail by patterned 
predictable life generally with sobriety, physical safety, better diet, sleep 
patterns, and medical care for STD and other obvious ailments. Women who have 
babies out of jail and in jail may have healthier pregnancies while in jail. 
Problems seems to come after jail with lost follow up and no continuity of 
care. The women may avoid community based programs. The community based 
programs in turn avoid jails. 

At 6% this is about 0.2% of LA County births, probably a higher rate of 
problem births but we have no systematic data on outcome. I would appreciate 
such outcome data and would like to know who is doing such work.

Michael Durfee MD
Los Angeles