• Providing Health Care for Pregnant Women in Prison: A Review of International Guidelines
  • Somayeh Alirezaei,1 Robab Latifnejad Roudsari,2,*
    1. Ph.D. Student in Reproductive Health, Student Research Committee, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.


  • Introduction: Pregnancy for women in prison is considered dangerous due to their criminal records and health and welfare conditions. As a result, at the international level, standard guidelines were provided for their care and support. However, specific requirements of imprisoned women have remained unknown and there is no single guide to meet their needs. In this study, reviewing the international guidelines provided for this population, it was attempted to reveal the existing gaps in these guidelines.
  • Methods: This narrative review was conducted through investigating databases including Pubmed, Scopus, Embase, Google Scholar, PsycINFO, CINAHL, The Cochrane Library database, Science Direct, and Sage Journals. The keywords were (Guideline OR Standard OR Procedure OR Instruction OR Rule OR Principle) AND (Prison OR Prisoner OR Incarcerated OR Inmate OR Jail OR Behind bar) AND (Pregnant Women OR Pregnancy Outcomes) AND Antenatal Care OR Prenatal Care OR Postnatal Care). Persian documents were also searched in Persian databases including Iran Doc, Google Scholar in Persian, SID, Iran Medex and Magiran with the same keywords. All the guidelines written in any language aimed at examining the provision of care services in the population of imprisoned women were included in the review. Two authors searched the guidelines and extracted the data. Then the contents of the guidelines were subject to analogy comparison and presented as comparative tables.
  • Results: Out of 274 retrieved documents, 13 guidelines were included in the study for review after removing repetitive and unrelated cases. Of these, 10 guidelines were related to the organizations and associations deployed in the United States, two guidelines were related to the international organizations including the United Nations (UN) and the World Health Organization (WHO) and one guideline was related to the UK. The most comprehensive care coverage of pregnant women was suggested, at the first level, by Birth Campion (BC) and in the second level by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), both published in the United States. The cares recommended in the guidelines were classified into four general categories of health care, safety, and security, education and counseling, as well as miscellaneous issues. Most of the care items mentioned in the guidelines were related to the issue of safety and security of pregnant women.
  • Conclusion: Despite the efforts made by international guidelines to address the care issues for pregnant women, there are currently gaps in many aspects of the health and well-being of women including maternal and fetal health assessments, mental health care, and also ethical, legal and Communication issues. Therefore, it is essential to upgrade the guidelines provided for imprisoned women or alternatively to develop comprehensive health promotion programs to meet their specific needs.
  • Keywords: Guideline, Prisoner, Pregnant Woman, Prenatal Care