The accounts are horrific: Pregnant women locked up in county jails describe excruciating pain, saying their cries for help were ignored as they miscarried or gave birth into cell toilets or on filthy floors, sometimes with deadly consequences.
These stories, told to reporters through tears and recounted in federal civil rights lawsuits, drove a groundbreaking yearlong investigation by Bloomberg Law and NBC News that exposed systemic failures in the US criminal justice system. Pregnant women accused of petty crimes are held on bail they can’t afford. They are often seen as unfit mothers, not worthy of humane treatment. Trapped in isolated cells without emergency medical care that jails are legally required to provide, they scream in pain, alone. Some of their babies, born in jail, suffer long-term health problems. Others don’t survive.
This crisis is largely hidden from the public because there is no federal mandate to track pregnancies in jails. Nor are there uniform rules for the medical care pregnant women receive, reporters found. Even when jails adopt standards, they can go ignored.
To bring these catastrophes to light, the reporters submitted over 100 public records requests and reviewed thousands of pages of lawsuits, depositions, police reports and medical and jail records. Harrowing body camera and surveillance video showed one woman in labor, begging to be taken to the hospital, and two others seizing in pain in the last minutes of their lives. Reporters interviewed more than 60 people, including a dozen formerly incarcerated women who described their experiences as hellish and shattering.
Bloomberg Law and NBC News exposed these harms through a compelling multimedia investigation, including a richly written narrative feature, a powerful 17-minute digital documentary, an interactive database encapsulating 54 women’s accounts, immersive photography and data visualizations.
