Nutritional Care for Pregnant Women in Californian Prison

Location

California Institution for Women (CIW) is the only female state prison located in the city of Chino, San Bernardino County, California (Laner 2). The total lot size is 120 acres (49 ha) and is surrounded by the rural area. We decided to create a facility for pregnant prisoners who need specific nutritional care such as daily meals and prenatal care within the CIW area. The new facility occupies about 1/7 of the total lot size of CIW so the approximate lot size of the new facility is about 17 acres (7ha). It is located on the north-western part of the CIW since there is enough space to build the new facility as shown in the pictures below.

Target market

The goal of our facility is to provide adequate and appropriate nutritional support to the pregnant offenders in the state of California (Strickland 1). Due to the overcrowded population in the Valley State Prison which only receives transferred pregnant prisoners, we are targeting all pregnant prisoners in the state of California. We provide prenatal and postnatal care such as daily nutritional meals and nutrition counseling to maintain a healthy nutritional status of pregnant mothers and adequate nutrients for their unborn babies.

Demographic

There are a total of three major women prisons in California: Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) in Central Valley, Valley State Prison for Women (VSPW) also in Central Valley and California Institution for Women (CIW) in Corona (Laner 1). Below is the population chart of the women prisoners in California:

Table 1

* Date based on Women prisoners’ population, critical statistic (Strickland 2)

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in 2004, 4% of the women in state prisons were pregnant and 3% of women in federal prisons were pregnant (Smith 2). The total number of the pregnant prisoners in California is however, unknown.

Competition

Since our facility is in a government institution rather than a private one, we have less or no competition outside the market. Our “customer base” will be predetermined by the government. Theoretically, the funding of this facility is from the government because of the high number of inmates to use our facility (Hart 12). Even though VSPW receives the entire transferred pregnant inmate in California, its population is overcrowded. We have no real competition because there are more pregnant inmates than our facility can hold. Also, we will always be at maximum capacity since the pregnant women are our priority to send to our facility in order to receive the appropriate prenatal and postnatal care (referred to the demographic section). Since there is nothing being done currently that singles out pregnant women in prison such as treating them differently especially in the provision of specific essential meals for pregnant mothers, this proves that we have a “monopoly” in our institution.

References

Hart, M. (2008). Bureau of Justice Statistics. Web.

Laner, D. (2008). California Prison Map. Web.

Smith, M. (2009). Women prisoners’ population, critical statistic. Web.

Strickland, H. (2010). California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Web.