Access to Reproductive Health Care in New York State Jails -- Appendix A: Methodology

In March 2007, the NYCLU's Reproductive Rights Project researched the policies and procedures in New York county jail facilities by sending Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests¹ to all county jail facilities in the state.²

We chose to focus on jails rather than the state prison system because more women spend brief amounts of time each year in jails
than they do in state prisons; because there is no uniform set of policies and procedures that jails are required to adhere to; and because the percentage of women in state jails is so small, we were concerned that health care policies would contain little guidance regarding women's health care.

In our FOIL request, we asked for information including but not limited to any policies, memoranda or procedures regarding access to:

• emergency contraception
• access to post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) in cases where inmates have been sexually assaulted prior to or during incarceration
• treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS
• abortion services
• obstetric and gynecological healthcare
• transportation to abortion service providers or hospital facilities for labor and prenatal care, treatment during labor (for example, if restraints are employed on inmates during labor, etc.)
• treatment (including mental health services) for inmates who have miscarried
• the payment of any costs associated with the above

During the course of our research, we broadened our inquiry and asked selected facilities about access to an even wider array of health-related issues affecting women in custody including access to hormonal contraception and custody of newborns.

We received responses to our FOIL request from each county jail facility. Six counties responded to our FOIL request by stating that women are not housed in the county jail facility,³ and 14 had no policies that were responsive to our request.

We reviewed each of the policies and conducted follow-up interviews with administrators and medical staff from 10 jails, either in person or over the telephone. These facilities were selected for follow-up using three criteria:

(1) the nature of the facility's response (i.e., whether the county has no policies, vague and incomplete policies, policies that
appear to present problems for pregnant inmates, or model policies); (2) geographic distribution to ensure that we received detailed information about the actual practice of jail health care staff in counties that are geographically diverse; and (3) the number of women being housed in county facilities to ensure that we had information from both large and small facilities. Data disaggregating female inmates by race for each county was not available, but we were mindful of the need to ensure that the demographics of the counties that we chose reflected the racial diversity of the state.

We collected and reviewed guidelines and recommendations from the American Public Health Association (APHA), the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and various statutes and policies from other states. We also reviewed legal opinions issued by the New York State Commission on Correction (NYSCOC) and the New York State Sheriff's Association.
 

 

 

 

Footnotes

1 N.Y. Pub. Officers Law § 85, et seq. (McKinney 2001).

2 New York State has 62 counties, but we sent FOIL requests to 57 counties and the City of New York, because the City houses inmates from all five of the city's counties:. Kings County (Brooklyn), Richmond County (Staten Island), Bronx County (The Bronx), Queens County (Queens), and New York County (Manhattan). We treat New York City as a single county when quantifying the results of our FOIL request. There is more than one correctional facility in five counties (Erie, Monroe, Onondaga, Suffolk, and Westchester).

3 Essex, Genesee, Hamilton, Livingston, Schuyler, and Seneca counties.
At the time of publication, however, both Essex and Seneca counties had opened up facilities for women.