Objective: This study examined the effect of incarceration during pregnancy on infant birth weight.
Methods: North Carolina prison records were matched to North Carolina birth certificates and health services records to identify 94 women who were incarcerated during one pregnancy but not incarcerated during another pregnancy. Paired analyses examined differences between the pregnancies in terms of the women's characteristics and use of health services. A generalized estimating equations analysis modeled infant birth weight as a function of the number of days that a woman was incarcerated during pregnancy, accounting for the correlation between the birth weights of two infants born to the same mother and several potentially confounding variables.
Results: Since the women were significantly more likely to have been incarcerated during the second of the pair of pregnancies, as a group they were significantly older and had more children at the time of the incarcerated pregnancy than at the time of the home pregnancy. After controlling for important covariates, a higher number of pregnancy days spent incarcerated was found to be associated with higher infant birth weight.
Conclusion: These findings suggest that aspects of the prison environment such as shelter and regular meals may enhance pregnancy outcomes among very high risk women. Health professionals should join others in efforts to assure that health-promoting resources such as adequate shelter, nutritional support, and substance abuse treatment programs are available to all pregnant women.