Amid coronavirus pandemic, protesters rally for pregnant inmates at Raleigh prison
Updated May 28, 10:15 p.m.
Protesters gathered outside the state’s largest prison for women Wednesday night and held a baby shower for the pregnant inmates inside, tying balloons to the gate and cheering.
Inmates at N.C. Correctional Institution for Women waved from the windows as the protesters circled the streets in Southeast Raleigh, blaring their horns in support.
“Think about the beds, sleeping on concrete slabs on a very thin mattress,” Kristie Puckett-Williams, an advocate for corrections reform who works for the ACLU, told The News & Observer Wednesday. “The responsibility of the state is not diminished when you’re pregnant. It’s actually heightened.”
Williams said the Department of Public Safety has counted nine pregnant women inside the N.C. Correctional Institution for Women, one of them serving a five-month sentence and scheduled to deliver around her release date.
In an email Thursday night, a DPS spokesperson said of the 91 positive coronavirus cases at the women’s prison, five are still considered active cases. Those women have been medically isolated from other inmates, the spokesperson said in an email. The spokesperson did not address the number of pregnancies in the prison.
Meanwhile, the ACLU and numerous other advocacy groups have been touring the state holding impromptu showers and Mothers’ Day celebrations outside the state’s other prisons for female inmates.
“We know it’s a lot of women who finally stood up to their victimizers and ended up here,” Andrea “Muffin” Hudson, director of the NC Community Bail Fund of Durham, told The News & Observer Wednesday.
Fear of the coronavirus risk for pregnant inmates
Inside the Raleigh prison, a pregnant inmate has told Puckett-Williams’ mother that she is due to be transferred to a medical unit as her due date draws nearer, and she fears her risk of coronavirus will grow, Puckett-Williams said.
Earlier in May, longtime inmate Faye Brown died of COVID-19 complications at age 67. Another well-known inmate, former Wake County Register of Deeds Laura Riddick has also tested positive for the virus.
Former inmates and friends assembled outside the front gates to protest, wearing shirts that said “Faye Finally Free” and decrying close conditions inside that increase risk.
ACLU sues Federal Bureau of Prisons, Butner warden
DPS now reports 651 coronavirus cases and five deaths at state-run prisons. The inmates had underlying health conditions. The state says 607 inmates are presumed recovered, according to the DPS website.
Meanwhile, the ACLU and other civil rights groups this week sued the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the warden at the federal prison in Butner, where 10 people have died, according to the Bureau of Prisons website.
On its website, DPS says that it is transferring vulnerable inmates to serve the rest of their sentences while supervised community corrections officers outside the prisons. Pregnancy is one of the factors that qualifies an inmate, but those who have committed “crimes against a person,” which would include assault, do not qualify.
But Puckett-Williams said many inmates with short sentences could easily finish their terms on home confinement. She knows the experience of being pregnant behind bars, having been jailed a decade ago with a six-figure bond and pleading guilty just to get out.
“I think being born in captivity sets a precedent in your life,” she asked. “What’s the prison doing to protect the staff and the people who are not able to socially distance?”
This story was originally published May 28, 2020 at 12:11 PM.