We describe how mass incarceration directly undermines the core values of reproductive justice and how this affects incarcerated and nonincarcerated women. Mass incarceration, by its very nature, compromises and undermines bodily autonomy and the capacity for incarcerated people to make decisions about their reproductive well-being and bodies; this is done through institutionalized racism and is disproportionately done to the bodies of women of color. This violates the most basic tenets of reproductive justice—the right to have a child, not to have a child, and to parent the children you have with dignity and in safety. By undermining motherhood and safe pregnancy care, denying access to abortion and contraception, and preventing people from parenting their children at all and by doing so in overpoliced, unsafe environments, mass incarceration has become a driver of forms of reproductive oppression for people in prison and jails and in the community.
y people to ensure healthy pregnancies. Yet, the right to give birth safely with dignity is not consistently protected for pregnant people behind bars (Hayes et al., 2020). Previous studies and lawsuits have documented the variable and inadequate care for pregnant people in custody (Peeler et
ObjectivesNearly 4% of incarcerated women in the United States (US) are pregnant when incarcerated (Sufrin et al., 2019). Thus, carceral facilities are tasked with caring for pregnant
Few studies to date have provided strategies for maintaining low rates of attrition when conducting longitudinal, epidemiological, or community-based research with young, minority, urban fathers. This paper highlights lessons learned from a 5-year randomized controlled trial of a fatherhood intervention that designed and implemented state-of-the-art and culturally relevant recruitment and retention methods with 348 young fathers ages 15 to 25. Qualitative findings are drawn from interviews with fathers who had been enrolled in the fatherhood intervention (n=10). While traditional recruitment and retention methods, such as incentives, were employed in this study, non-traditional methods were used as well, such as intensive community outreach, staff relationship development, recruiting specialists, and flexible contact methods. These methods were found to be helpful to young fathers in the study. Future research should incorporate, and further study, such non-traditional methods for recruiting young, minority, urban fathers into studies of parenting programs, including randomized control trials, to improve services for this underserved population.
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