This draft was all over the place, and to be honest I turned it in just to turn it in. As you can see below, I didn't properly integrate my multi-modal sources because I was in a rush. I didn't even have a thesis or a proper argument, which is something both you and one of my peer editors mentioned in your comments.

 
Figure 1 and Figure 2 show comments from the instructor and one of my peers.

While I used a lot of anecdotes and statistical evidence to support my ideas like I mentioned in Draft Work #2, I failed to integrate and weave scholarly sources into my HCP, which was also mentioned in the feedback I got from you and my peers. This could be attributed to the fact that I rushed through this first submission and did not turn in my best work because it takes a lot of time to properly interact with scholarly sources. 

Figure 3 and Figure 4 show more comments from my instructor and other peer. 

After receiving feedback for my first admission, I realized I had no idea what I was trying to say, and that's why I didn't have a solid argument to criticize. While I did a lot of research and was able to contextualize the problem, the historical part of my essay was missing, which is the bulk of the entire project. Therefore, my first draft was not up to par as it could've been. In this draft, I mostly discussed prison nurseries and overall health care for incarcerated females, and it was around this time that I realized I needed to clarify my topic because it was very difficult to write about a broad spectrum of women's prisons. During the peer workshops in class, I was able to discuss my project with my group and slightly shift my topic to focus on the practice of shackling pregnant women for my final draft.

Incarcerated Mothers

In 2003, Shawanna Nelson was convicted of identity fraud and writing bad checks. With a baby on the way, she was sentenced to 6 years in prison at the McPherson Unit in Arkansas and would soon give birth under inhumane circumstances. While in prison, Shawanna had been in labor for more than 12 hours before she finally arrived at Newport Hospital. During these twelve hours, officers only gave her Tylenol to relieve the pain from her contractions. Despite being charged for a nonviolent crime, prison guards chained her arms and legs to the hospital bed and refused to unshackle her in spite of the doctor’s orders. This traumatizing experience left Shawanna with permanent spinal damage and ultimately demonstrates the extremely penological nature of the American criminal justice system.
(photo: http://www.peopledemandingaction.org/media/k2/items/cache/161bb2cd9d87d4fb2583e55eca6a3af4_XL.jpg)

In the United States alone, there are over 2 million prisoners currently serving time behind bars. Of those 2 million, approximately 6.7% are female and 61% are mothers (Federal Bureau of Prisons). The majority of women in prison today were convicted for low-level offenses drug offenses rather than violent crimes, and a significant amount were caught up in larger conspiracy prosecutions involving husbands, boyfriends, or acquaintances they previously associated with  (Vainik, 2). Less than half of all incarcerated women have been convicted of a violent offense, indicating that many of these incarcerated women were serving time under mandatory sentences for drug related crimes. The United States criminal justice system is eminent for its “tough on crime” policies, and rather than treating drug addiction as a public health concern, the nation criminalizes drugs and consequently breaks down the American family by separating women from their children.
Though women comprise of a small portion of the prison population, the growth in the incarceration rate for women has outpaced that for men in the last 50 years. More than 80,000 women in prison are mothers, and approximately 4 to 9 percent of women in prison are pregnant (Fritz & Whiteacre, 2). Though this is a relatively low number, the harsh reality is that the vast majority of women who give birth while incarcerated in the United States must hand over their baby within a few hours of delivery, to family, friends, or the foster-care system.

Beginning in the 1970s, women’s advocates began making cases for keeping incarcerated mothers and their babies together. Feminist scholars have shown that the separation of a mother and child has significant psychological trauma on both parties, including increased major depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and a number of adverse mental health conditions (Smyth, 7). Despite these studies, releasing a woman from prison to raise her child is deemed a political non-starter. Forty years later, incarcerated mothers are still forced to give up their children shortly after giving birth in prison, and it is truly a “heart wrenching experience” as described by Brittany Bass, a female inmate who gave birth at the Orange County jail in 2013 (Southern California Public Radio). (photo of Brittany: http://projects.scpr.org/prison-pregnancy/media/imgs/bass/01_BrittanyBass.jpg).
(Link to audio story: http://projects.scpr.org/prison-pregnancy/)

Due to this pressing problem, state facilities began to start implement more prison nurseries starting in the 1980s. Prison nurseries are programs that would allow mothers with low-level offenses to remain with and raise their children in a community setting for about 1-2 years (Fritz & Whiteacre, 3). The first community program for pregnant inmates was established in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York, the longest standing prison nursery ever since its inception in 1901. Today there are only 9 states with such community based programs, including New York, California, Illinois, Nebraska, Washington, Indiana, West Virginia, Ohio, and South Dakota. In California, there is only one Community Prison Mother Program located in Pomona, indicating that incarcerated mothers have limited support and resources in raising their children. (Portraits of incarcerated mothers with their children: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/2015/06/14/WEL_Yager_PrisonMoms_HorseHall_WEBCrop/1920.jpg?1434477488

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/06/WEL_Yager_PrisonMoms_Lead/8e816b48f.jpg

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/06/WEL_Yager_PrisonMoms_JungleNursery/6d06dc66c.jpg

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/06/WEL_Yager_PrisonMoms_DollNursery/3e054e858.jpg)

Among these limited resources is access to optimal prenatal health care. Female inmates are routinely denied the support necessary to achieve healthy pregnancies and maintain relationships with their children while in prison.  Many inmates feel that the quality of healthcare provided to pregnant women at penal facilities is poor. According to one inmate, her prenatal visit was a “2 minute conversation” and felt empathetic for women with serious conditions because “they are not in a hurry with anything” (Fritz & Whiteacre, 9). Another woman claimed she would only see a doctor for “45 seconds” and the most that was ever said to her was “‘looks fine’, ‘looks good’, or ‘okay.’”, comparing her check up to the feeling of being on an assembly line (Fritz & Whiteacre, 9). In most facilities, there is no relationship between the doctors and prisoners, and the visits are very impersonal. There is no sense of urgency and pregnant inmates’ needs are often ignored.  In one instance, a pregnant woman was only given sanitary pads and refused a doctor, although she was “bleeding and in considerable pain” (Vainik, 8). After many hours passed, police finally called an ambulance and she gave birth within 30 minutes of the ambulance arriving. In particular, the failure of prisons to provide women with adequate prenatal care prior to and at the point of delivery negatively impacts the health of both incarcerated mothers and their babies. Prisons and jails fail to follow proper health care procedures; guards are indifferent and there is a lack of supervision, as a result procedures are not strictly enforced. Because prisons are closed facilities with very little public scrutiny, it is easy for prison administrators and officials to get away with violating established laws.

In almost all states, the practice of shackling is permitted with the exception of California, Illinois, and New York (Vainik, 17). Pregnant inmates are handcuffed during transport from correctional institutions to the hospital and restrained to the bed with leg chains once admitted to the hospital. One inmate was charged for a drug offense and stated that she had never tried to escape and was not classified as a high level security inmate. Nevertheless, she was handcuffed on the way to the hospital and placed in leg shackles during labor. She described:

“I was given an epidural, and I carefully moved into a sitting position while dealing with the leg iron. While the needle was still in my back, I felt a strong contraction and I knew that the baby was coming. When I told the nurse, she told me not to push and said that the baby wasn’t coming yet. I asked for the doctor and worked the leg chain around so that I could lay down again. The doctor came and said that yes, this baby is coming right now, and started to prepare the bed for delivery. Because I was shackled to the bed, they couldn’t remove the lower part of the bed for the delivery, and they couldn’t put my feet in the stirrups. My feet were still shackled together, and I couldn’t get my legs apart. The doctor called for the officer, but the offer had gone down the hall. No one else could unlock the shackles, and my baby was coming but I couldn’t open my legs (Amnesty International, 3).”

According to Sheila Dauer, director of the Women’s Human Rights Program, the practice of shackling “denies women basic rights and is a cruel and degrading form of treatment” (Nelson, 2). Shaking reaps permanent negative consequences on the mother and child that are not justified by any valid penological interest, especially if the inmate is a nonviolent offender. Because most women in prison are convicted for drug crimes, they are not the type of criminals that implicate security concerns, therefore shackling serves as another form of social control that reflects and reinforces complicated ideas about health care in the United States (Yager, Atlantic). These pregnancy specific patterns of social control offer important insights into our culture’s values and preoccupations when it comes to the American criminal justice system.

In 2009, the Anti-Shackling Bill was passed after many cases of shackling, including Shawanna Nelson’s, were brought to court. The New York senate passed a new law, prohibiting the inhumane practice of shackling pregnant inmates who are in labor. The bill prohibits state and local institutions from using restraints on a pregnant inmate who is transported for childbirth, during labor and delivery, and in post-natal recovery, with an exception made under “extraordinary circumstances” where restraints may be used if the inmate is a danger to herself or the medical and correctional staff. In these instances, a pregnant woman may be cuffed only by one wrist. While shackling has slowed down ever since the bill was passed, many women are still shackled immediately after giving birth and during their trips to and from the hospital. Tamar Kraft-Stolar, the director of the Women in Prison Project, interviewed “27 women who had given birth after the 2009 law went into effect and 23 of those 27 women had been shackled at some point in violation of the law” (Gebreyes, Huffington Post). There’s so little oversight and public accountability that law enforcement officials are able to break the law and illegally shackle women despite the Anti-Shackling Bill.