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Deanna Paul
Reporter covering national and last-minute news
Tammy Jackson was brought into an empty prison cell by sheriffs. Then one morning she was there with someone else: her newborn baby.
According to one letter dated May 3, written by Broward County Public Defender Howard Finkelstein, the 34-year-old mentally disordered man started complaining about contractions to officers about contractions around 10 am, Miami Herald reported .
More than four hours later, members of the sheriff's office spoke to the doctor on duty, who said, "He will check when he arrives," according to Finkelstein. And when the doctor arrived, he did it.
It was around 10 o'clock
During the previous seven hours, Jackson was locked up alone in a prison cell. She was bleeding, was giving birth, then forced to give birth to her baby – a behavior that Finkelstein described as "scandalous treatment" and "inhuman".
"It is unacceptable that a woman, especially a woman suffering from mental illness, is left in her cell to give birth to her own baby," he writes in a scathing letter, excoriating the sheriff's office. Although Jackson and the baby are both healthy, he wrote, "Not only has Ms. Jackson's health been carelessly neglected, but her child's life has also been seriously threatened."
Finkelstein says Jackson was clearly pregnant and the child was coming to term – something the sheriff's office would have known, since he had been placed in an infirmary to receive proper medical care. After her arrest a month earlier, Jackson was placed under medical supervision during pregnancy, ruling out any possibility that those charged with her care – the Sheriff's Office and Broward County Prison employees – would not know about it. .
When Jackson started having contractions and called for help, the guards did not take her to the hospital, where she could have delivered safely. Instead, they tried to contact a doctor on call. Finkelstein took four hours for the guards to come to the doctor, and another hour and a half for the doctor to go to the prison. In all, it took Jackson and his newborn 6 hours and 45 minutes to receive care after initially asking for help.
[Raising babies behind bars?]
"The medical records indicate that her baby was born to term. the birth was neither premature nor unexpected, "wrote Finkelstein. "Yet, in this period of extreme necessity and vulnerability, [Broward Sheriff’s Office] neglected to provide Ms. Jackson with the assistance and medical care that all mothers need and deserve ".
The North Broward office, where Jackson was detained, is a "special needs detention center" that houses "mentally ill, medically disabled, and special needs" inmates among its 1,200 residents, according to his website. Web.
Births in prison have been examined in recent months. The First Step Act, the criminal justice reform bill approved by Congress in December, addresses the use of restraints for prisoners during childbirth. Similarly, several states have begun to revise their policies regarding the use of solitary confinement and handcuffs during pregnancy and childbirth.
Finkelstein called for an "immediate review of medical and isolation practices in all detention centers".
The Post was not able to independently contact a spokesperson for the Sheriff's Office or the North Broward office for comments. However, the Herald said its internal affairs department had opened an investigation into Jackson's treatment.
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