October 14, 2009
EDITORIAL
One Protection for Prisoners

The practice of keeping female prisoners in shackles while they give
birth is barbaric. But it remains legal in more than 40 states, and
advocates of prisoners’ rights say it is all too common. A federal
appeals court has now found that the shackling of an Arkansas inmate
may have violated the Constitution — but the margin was uncomfortably
close.

Shawanna Nelson, a nonviolent offender, was 29 years old and six
months pregnant when she arrived in Arkansas’s McPherson Unit prison
in 2003. When she went into labor, she was taken to a civilian
hospital. Although there was no reason to consider her a flight risk,
her legs were shackled to a wheelchair, and then, while she went
through labor, to the sides of a hospital bed.

Ms. Nelson testified that the shackles prevented her from moving her
legs, stretching or changing positions during the most painful part
of her labor. She offered evidence that the shackling had caused a
permanent hip injury, torn stomach muscles, an umbilical hernia that
required an operation and extreme mental anguish.

In a suit against prison officials, Ms. Nelson charged that her
Eighth Amendment right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment had
been violated. She won an early ruling from the trial court, but a
three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the
Eighth Circuit rejected her suit. Now the full appeals court has
reversed that decision, ruling, with a 6-to-5 vote, that a jury could
find that Ms. Nelson’s shackling was unconstitutional. The court
relied in part on a 2002 Supreme Court holding that Alabama’s
practice of tying prisoners to a hitching post violated the Eighth
Amendment.

The ruling should help persuade other courts and state legislatures
that the shackling of pregnant prisoners is unconstitutional. Several
states have already made the practice illegal under certain
circumstances — including New York, which did so this year.

Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s
prison project, called the circuit court’s ruling “thrilling,” given
how conservative the federal courts have been on prison issues. It is
clearly an important victory. Sadly, it is also a sign of how low the
bar has been set for the humane treatment of prisoners.

Source: NY Times