Pseudo-families have been developed in prisons as coping methods for women to survive the pains of imprisonment. They are formed for emotional support, economic support, or protection. They are not gang affiliated but represent as the family that they have left outside of the prison. Male inmates seek gang membership for protection while female inmates seek family membership for closeness and support. Women inmates are more likely to participate in supportive social networks and less likely to have relationships based on coercive power structures like men. Pseudo-families can compose of 15-20 inmates of different races who play the roles as mother, father, sister, brother, grandparent etc. Women prisoners are more isolated from their family, friends, and life outside of prison, that they turn to a prison family to help cope with the lack of contact from people of the outside. Women hardly get visitation from family members. Since there are few women facilities, women are usually housed a long distance away from where their family lives. Women prisoners are more social than men prisoners that within these families, inmates have someone to talk to, seek advice form and learn how to survive in the prison world. The "mother figure" is often the inmate who gives advice and listens to the group. She tends to be older and a more experienced inmate who has served a long amount of time. Usually these relationships are not sexual but some do form for sexual relationships. In instances of that sort, the "father figure" is usually the dominant female who offers protection to the family in exchange for sexual favors.
Birthing in Shackles
Only 17 of 50 states in the United States have any regulations or laws against the shackling of female prisoner during childbirth. California recently passed a law that bans shackling to women in labor in 2005. With the increase of the number of women who have entered into the criminal justice system, the number of pregnancies in prison have also increased. Studies have estimated that between 5-10 percent of all female prisoners are pregnant and approximately 2000 children per year are born to incarcerated mothers. Women are shackled by hands and feet to their hospital beds, which is a constant procedure done to pregnant incarcerated women. It is used to control and demean them. Only in actual labor are either one leg and one arm are freed or just their feet. Some facilities do remove all shackles during birth but right when the baby is delivered the shackles go right back on. Any women who are incarcerated go through this "procedure" even if they have no history of violence. Prison officials "say" that the use of shackles is protection to them and to the public, but what women is going to try and escape if they are in labor. If that was the case, someone will be able to catch them because they have an excessive amount of weight on them and they are in excruciating pain and discomfort and would not be able to get far. Women endure great amounts of degradation and humiliation. Facilities require women to be strip searched before they enter back into prison, even as their pregnancy progresses. Some people believe that the use of shackles are a way of punishing women for choosing to be mothers while they were incarcerated. It is a way for society to punish the mothers for being absent in their child's life for the choices they have made. Women face many hardships when it comes to childbirth in prison. Not only are they shackled but they lack adequate care during their pregnancy because they are denied it. Not only that, but some facilities also ignore the mothers signs of active labor and they are forced to deliver their babies in the cells without any doctors, in which can cause potential harm to the baby and the mother.
Health Issues
Even though men face hardships in prisons, women face their own amount of hardships. Many researchers have showed that female inmates are more likely to have more serious health problems than both men and women in the U.S. population because of the lack of access to medical care, chronic poverty, and problematic lifestyles. Health care in women prisons were looked over because of the small percentage of women actually in prison. Now there is a great increase in the prison population but health care is still overlooked. Women in prison are noted to have higher rates of substance abuse and HIV because many of the female prisoners have exchanged sex for drugs and with a greater number of females incarcerated for drug offenses, it is more prevalent to see this trend. Between 70-80% of incarcerated women abuse alcohol and/or drugs. They are more likely than men to be injection drug users and use hard drugs, such as crack and heroin. Women are reported to have higher rates of mental illnesses and are prescribed medications to help with these mental illnesses and they are usually prescribed to them without being checked to see if they are pregnant or not. Some of the leading mental health problems in female prisons include physical and sexual abuse/trauma, victimization, depression and substance abuse. Women are at greater risk than men of entering prison with sexually transmitted infections such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and HIV/AIDS do to prostitution, sex work, and being a victim of sexual abuse. Women frequently engage in self-mutilating behaviors, are verbally abusive, and report numerous suicide attempts.
Toilet Paper the New Tampon!!
When it comes to menstruation, women suffer from this at times. Prisons fail to provide menstrual products such as sanitary napkins, only providing them as part of medical supplies. Sometimes menstrual products are even withheld as a punishment. Prison facilities also run out of menstrual products, leaving women to find ways to make there own menstrual products. Some facilities ration out products. Toilet paper has become the new tampon in prison. If an inmate is pregnant one would think that they will be provided the same care that women would get if they were not in prison. That is not the case. Women are still kept on the timely regiment as other inmates. They do not receive prenatal care or the ability to meet with a doctor regularly.
Sexual Assault
1 in 4 women in State prisons have reported being sexually abused before the age of 18 compared with 1 in 20 men. Even in prison women suffer from sexual abuse. In some female prisons, most of the correctional officers are males resulting in consensual and non-consensual sexual activities between officers and inmates. Consensual sex between guards and inmates occurs when the guards require sexual favors in exchange for smuggled contraband goods. Other sexual misconduct such as, pervasive harassment, pervasive touching and invasion of privacy are common among female prisons. Many officers go unpunished after findings show that there has been signs of sexual abuse and if they are found guilty, at times they settle for plea bargains and this sometimes does not include prison sentencing.