{"id":448146,"date":"2026-02-04T08:07:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T08:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/448146\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T08:07:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T08:07:23","slug":"texas-jails-have-more-than-400-pregnant-inmates-monthly-the-state-is-trying-to-understand-what-happens-to-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/448146\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas jails have more than 400 pregnant inmates monthly. The state is trying to understand what happens to them."},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you experienced or witnessed issues related to pregnancy or any medical care in a Texas county jail? Send tips<\/a> to reporter Alex Nguyen<\/a> at alex.nguyen@texastribune.org or via a message on Signal at @alexnguyen.23.<\/p>\n

In May 2018, Ruby McPeters was eight months pregnant when she was booked into Hood County jail on a probation violation. Just a month later, the 33-year-old North Texas woman was dead.<\/p>\n

According to her custodial death report<\/a>, McPeters was sent back to jail after delivering her baby by C-section at a local hospital. But the jail had to again transport her to the hospital a few days later, after she developed an infection from the procedure. That led to sepsis, according to the report, which was sent to the Texas attorney general\u2019s office nearly five years late because the sheriff thought the investigating agency had submitted it. <\/p>\n

In subsequent years, other stories would come out about babies dying after their mothers gave birth alone<\/a> in custody and women miscarrying<\/a> due to alleged medical neglect. There have also been at least seven federal lawsuits filed in the past decade alleging mistreatment of pregnant jail inmates in Texas, according to a recent NBC and Bloomberg Law investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But these harrowing reports capture just a small slice of the issue, advocates said. <\/p>\n

The state has for years tracked the number of pregnant people in county jails and incidents of restraints \u2014 but now, Texas is also collecting information about their prenatal care, mental health indicators, pregnancy outcomes and more. Advocates hope this effort will provide more accountability to a system that incarcerates hundreds of pregnant people each month. They also believe it will help demonstrate that the harm to the health of these mothers \u2014 many of whom are arrested on non-violent or low-level charges \u2014 is preventable in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re hoping lawmakers will see that there is nothing to be gained by locking up this population and causing generational trauma,\u201d said Krish Gundu, executive director of the Texas Jail Project, a key advocacy organization pushing for this work. <\/p>\n

The Texas Jail Association said it has no comment at this time.<\/p>\n

The study comes from a rider in last year\u2019s budget<\/a> that appropriated $15,000 for the Texas Commission on Jail Standards to produce a report on maternal health and mortality. Authored by Democratic state Rep. Mary Gonz\u00e1lez<\/a> of Clint, the provision mandates the agency to pull together information based on data collected by individual jails.<\/p>\n

So far, broad figures from the commission show that county jails across Texas held on average around 430 pregnant inmates each month between September and November 2025 \u2014 a statistics that has previously been tracked. What\u2019s new information is that there were a total of 42 deliveries, 28 miscarriages and one ectopic pregnancy in this period, according to Kaitlin Hickner, a TCJS program specialist. <\/p>\n

Other data prescribed in the rider are not yet publicly available. The commission is expected to submit a full report to the state Legislature by December.<\/p>\n

And while this one-time study will only last a year, it already makes Texas one of the few places in the country that have this level of data collection on pregnancy in jails, according to a leading national expert on the issue. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat it symbolizes is that women who don\u2019t count, don\u2019t get counted,\u201d said Carolyn Sufrin, a fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists who also serves on the board of the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, \u201cand women who don\u2019t get counted, don\u2019t count.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of moms are impacted\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Hickner, all deliveries in the study\u2019s first three months happened in hospitals except for two cases, one of which happened in an ambulance. The other occurred in Johnson County jail in September.<\/p>\n

KERA News reported<\/a> that a 27-year-old woman, who was serving 30 days for failure to complete community service, gave birth in her cell at the North Texas lockup at the time. Jail staff had refused to send her to the hospital, according to the report. <\/p>\n

Lt. Keven George told The Texas Tribune that the Johnson County sheriff\u2019s office can confirm that a birth took place at its jail, but it cannot share any additional details due to health privacy laws. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf it was someone who\u2019s reporting contractions for a while and she wasn\u2019t taken to the hospital, that\u2019s pretty concerning,\u201d said Sufrin. \u201cThese outliers are instances where more detail is needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sufrin also said more information is required to properly assess the outcomes for pregnant women in Texas jails. For instance, she questions how many of the 42 reported deliveries were pre-term, which is the leading contributor to developmental problems and baby death after delivery. Similarly, she wonders how many of the recorded 28 miscarriages happened in the second trimester, which is less common and more concerning than pregnancy losses in the first trimester. <\/p>\n

This kind of data also matter because in a 2020 study of pregnant people in six large U.S. jails<\/a> including in Dallas and Harris counties, Sufrin noted that this population often face additional issues that can create risks for their pregnancies such as a lack of access to medical care in the community, insecure housing, systemic racism as well as higher prevalence of trauma and mental illness. <\/p>\n

These nuances, she said, show the need for more specialized care for pregnant inmates as well as collaboration with local health authorities.<\/p>\n

Still, \u201cwhat\u2019s striking is just the absolute numbers,\u201d said Sufrin. \u201cA lot of moms are impacted by the criminal justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gundu is also similarly focused on the total number of pregnant jail inmates in Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we claim that we\u2019re a right-to-life state and if we are, then what are we doing to protect that?\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, when asked about the available figures so far, Gonz\u00e1lez said she prefers to wait for the full findings to avoid politicizing the data.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really important for us as legislators to use data to make sure that the agencies and the institutions that are part of our ecosystem are treating people with respect and compassion,\u201d the lawmaker added. \u201cI\u2019m really grateful that we\u2019ve had the opportunity to work on this issue and look forward to continuing to work on this issue because it\u2019s very critical that we take care of our families.\u201d<\/p>\n

A near decade of advocacy<\/p>\n

For Gundu, this initiative is the culmination of nearly a decade of her organization\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

The Texas Jail project launched in 2006, after environment activist Diane Wilson shared<\/a> what she saw during her incarceration in Victoria County\u2019s lockup including the mistreatment of a pregnant woman. Gundu said they had initially thought this case<\/a> was an outlier, but then received a flood of similar anecdotes when they shared that story. <\/p>\n

Then, the group brought these testimonies to the state Legislature. In Texas, there was no tracking of pregnant inmates in county jails and no established health care standards for this population until House Bill 3654<\/a>\u2019s passage in 2009. Lawmakers also passed House Bill 3563<\/a> that same year to largely ban jails from using restraints on pregnant inmates during their labor and recovery.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we got the data for the first time, we could say, \u2018You\u2019re actually are booking a lot of pregnant women in jails,\u201d Gundu said. \u201cThis population literally did not count, so we\u2019ve come a long way.\u201d<\/p>\n

More guardrails arrived in subsequent sessions, such as House Bill 1651<\/a> from 2019 mandating obstetrical and gynecological care for pregnant people in jails. Still, the advocate said horror stories continued to come out, eventually prompting the push for the current rider.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were so many cases,\u201d she said. \u201cBut Ruby [McPeters]\u2019 case is definitely one of the main driving forces because I don\u2019t know of any other post-delivery deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Gundu said she is thankful for the commission\u2019s work and hopes that the final report will show lawmakers the importance of making this data collection permanent. <\/p>\n

One piece that won\u2019t be included in that report, however, is data on inmates who delivered shortly before entering jail.She said a report about maternal health and mortality should cover this population as they navigate a critical period that accounts for most<\/a> of the country\u2019s pregnancy-related deaths. There could be health complications, such as in the case of McPeters who developed an infection after giving birth. There could also be new mental health risks, such as postpartum depression and psychosis.<\/p>\n

And this should include people who have given birth within a year before entering custody, according to advocates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe postpartum period is defined as up to 12 months after delivery,\u201d Sufrin said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just the first two days after someone delivers or even the first six weeks, and that\u2019s because of the physiology of pregnancy. It takes a long time for someone\u2019s body to restore to the non-pregnant state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hickner acknowledged the push for this postpartum data-tracking, but said it would have not been feasible for the length of this study. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are thousands and thousands of women that come into the county jails each year,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then to collect that information on top of all the pregnant inmate information, it would be extremely difficult and very also hard on the jails.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s office confirmed that postpartum care is not part of the rider, but signaled openness to consider the issue in the future. <\/p>\n

Have you experienced or witnessed issues related to pregnancy or any medical care in a Texas county jail? Send tips<\/a> to reporter Alex Nguyen<\/a> at alex.nguyen@texastribune.org or via a message on Signal at @alexnguyen.23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Have you experienced or witnessed issues related to pregnancy or any medical care in a Texas county jail?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[210435,17152,97,252,253,111,6589,46047,127235],"class_list":{"0":"post-448146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-commission-on-jail-standards","9":"tag-criminal-justice","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-health-care","12":"tag-healthcare","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-state-government","15":"tag-texas-legislature","16":"tag-well-a-homepage"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}