The Latest on COVID-19 in Nashville's Jails and Tennessee's Prisons

Thirteen years ago, then-20-year-old Aniya Wiley was 37 weeks pregnant. She says she feared for the life of her unborn child after being arrested and sent to a correctional facility on Harding Pike, where she was shackled by both her ankles and hands. 

“I wasn’t going to run away,” Wiley says. “I could barely walk.”

Seventy-two hours after being arrested — three weeks before her due date — Wiley went into labor while in chains. She cries as she describes being restrained to a gurney and transported to the hospital. When Wiley awoke following her C-section, she didn’t see her newborn daughter Malachia — she saw steel shackles around her ankles. Wiley spent four years in prison before she was acquitted of the crimes she was accused of.

On Tuesday, HB2875 — a bill that bans the shackling of pregnant women in Tennessee jails — passed in the House's State Government Subcommittee, the same committee where this bill has gone to die in four consecutive legislative sessions.

The bill still has to survive the House’s Calendar and Rules Committee. But Nina Gurak, the policy director for Healthy and Free Tennessee — the nonprofit group behind the bill — said Tuesday was the biggest test, and she would “be surprised if it wasn’t passed and signed into law.”

Laws to protect pregnant incarcerated women from being shackled have been passed in every state that borders Tennessee, Gurak tells the Scene.

In 2018, President Trump passed an anti-shackling provision as a part of the First Step Act, which prohibits federal correctional authorities from restraining incarcerated women during pregnancy and for a period after. While the Tennessee Department of Correction prevents the shackling of pregnant women at all 14 state prisons, there is no law prohibiting the act in Tennessee’s 112 county jails. 

Gurak says HB2875 is less expansive than the First Step Act, largely because it had to be in order to keep lawmakers from killing the bill.  

“In order to offer any sort of protection for pregnant women, we had to make some concessions and compromises,” Gurak says. “The bill doesn’t go far enough, but it's a starting point.”

Unlike the First Step Act and legislation in some neighboring states, HB2875 does not protect women from restraining during the postpartum period after they give birth. It also does not prevent them from being handcuffed from in front of their bodies.

So why in the past have Tennessee lawmakers been OK with the practice of shackling pregnant women?

“The sheriffs have had their ears,” according to Gurak. “They’ve offered every excuse in the book. Sometimes they say they don’t have room. Other times they say it's a liability not to shackle these women.”

Three years ago, 11-weeks-pregnant Shauna Scott feared for the life of her unborn child after she was shackled to a chair in the Clay County jail hallway for days after being arrested for a probation violation. Mackenzie Melton, a pregnant woman sitting next to Scott, suffered a blood clot from being restrained.

In both cases, then-Clay County Sheriff Brandon Boone cited overcrowding as the reason for shackling the women to the chairs. State law requires the separation of incarcerated men and women, so women are forced to stay in the hallway.

Others have argued that leaving pregnant inmates unshackled poses a danger to other inmates, and therefore creates liability for the facility.

There is no record of a lawsuit being filed against a government agency or corrections facility related to a pregnant inmate attacking another inmate, Gurak says. However, there have been multiple lawsuits, most notably Juana Villegas de la Paz vs. Metro Nashville Government, filed against government agencies in Tennessee that have shackled pregnant inmates.

There is little data on the number of pregnant women in correctional facilities. But the most recent available report by Gov. Bill Lee’s Criminal Justice Investment Task Force found that the number of female prisoners in Tennessee increased 47 percent between 2009 and 2018. That follows national trends, which find that women make up the fastest-growing portion of the U.S. incarcerated population.

Like what you read?


Click here to make a contribution to the Scene and support local journalism!