UK: Pregnant women chained during labour
01 January 1996
The barbaric practice of using chains or handcuffs to prevent pregnant women prisoners from escaping while they are in hospital during labour is to be "relaxed" following a storm of protest during January.
The shackling of pregnant women during hospital visits was initially defended by Home Office minister, Ann Widdecombe, who asserted that "hospitals are not secure places". Following media coverage of the case of a Holloway prisoner, Annette, who spent ten hours in labour chained to her bed at Whittington Hospital, London, the minister denied that shackles had been used. Her claim was contradicted by the consultant obstretician in the case, Fredericke Eban, and by the chairwoman of the Association for Improvements in Maternity Services, Beverley Lawrence Beech, who accompanied Annette during her labour and birth. Eventually, after almost universal criticism, the minister reluctantly admitted to "concerns...about decency and delicacy and the use of male officers in these circumstances."
It was further alleged that at least three seriously ill women had been shackled while in hospital. In one case, Jane, a 34-year old unconvicted woman, who is seriously ill with HIV complications, spent nine days wearing shackles 24 hours a day after being admitted to hospital.
Both of the women threatened court action over their inhumane and degrading treatment. This, along with condemnation of the practice by health, maternity and human rights groups, prompted Home Secretary, Michael Howard, to belatedly announce that in future "no woman who goes into hospital will be restrained from the time she arrives at the hospital". Nonetheless, he ignored demands by MPs that he should apologise to the women for the appalling treatment they received.
If the treatment of women prisoners who need to visit hospital is barbaric the situation in Holloway Prison is hardly better. In 1992 HM Inspector of Prisons, Judge Stephen Tumin, deplored the conditions at Holloway's Mother and Baby Unit which was located in "a cockroach infested semi-basement". In December 1995 a team of prison inspectors walked out of an unannounced inspection of the prison in disgust at the appalling squalor, which included infestations of lice, rats and cockroaches, and harsh security measures where inmates were locked in their cells for 23 hours a day. The inspectors have stated that they will not return until conditions - including desperate overcrowding - are improved. In January part of the hospital wing was closed when "vermin overload" and the rotting corpses of dead rats were revealed to pose a health risk.
Overall, the number of women in British prisons has increased by 37% over the last two years, reaching 2,150 in December 1995. The Howard League has reported that 37% of those who entered prison in 1993 were fine defaulters and another 22% were guilty of petty crime; 39% of the women had no previous convictions.
Guardian 11.1.96.