Resources

Pregnancy, Parenting, And Prison: The Dire Need For Reform In The Post-Dobbs Era

By Health Affairs Journal

ClinicalCommunityPartnerUnderstanding Communities/Areas/PopulationsIncarcerationParentingPolicyJournal

In the past 40 years, the number of women in prisons and jails in the United States has skyrocketed. Between 1980 and 2021, the percentage of incarcerated women increased by more than 525 percent, outpacing rates of incarcerated men during this time period. The most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows yet another increase, with 5 percent growth between 2021 and 2022. Overall, women are more likely than men to be incarcerated for drug and property offenses. Reflecting the disparities of the US criminal justice system, incarceration rates among women disproportionally affect individuals of color, especially Black women, who are incarcerated at twice the rate of their White counterparts. Of this growing population of incarcerated women, the majority are of reproductive age. It is estimated that 4 percent of women are pregnant upon admission to state prisons, and 58 percent of women in jails are mothers

View Now

MHARC is committed to providing reliable, accurate resources that will increase the recipient’s ability to improve maternal health outcomes for all populations in their communities in order to advance maternal health in the U.S. Some of the resources may be primarily informational and others may be oriented more toward capacity-building to implement a program or action. Read our full resource usage disclaimer here.