A cork board filled with photographs of babies.
A lone nursing pillow tossed on the floor near a baby floor mobile. Children’s books lined neatly in a bookcase. All hints that this is a nursery.
But it’s the silence that is most noticeable.
There are no babies here.
Welcome to the nursery wing in the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women in York, Nebraska, where select pregnant incarcerated soon-to-be moms can bond with their newborns and stay for up to 24 months.
It is the second-oldest prison nursery in the nation, but it is rarely used.
Studies show that mother-baby bonding is crucial to a child’s development and can lead to decreased recidivism rates for incarcerated moms.
It’s unclear exactly how many Nebraska women sent to York enter prison pregnant, or become pregnant, during their incarceration. The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services does not track that data, according to a response from the state to a public records request made by Nebraska News Service this spring.
However, one national study found that between 3% to 4% of women enter prison pregnant. And the number of all women entering prison has exploded since 1980. The Sentencing Project found that between 1980 and 2022, the number of incarcerated women has increased almost seven-fold, from 26,326 in 1980 to 180,684 in 2022.
That has left states to confront an issue that affects a sliver of the total incarcerated population: How to care for pregnant moms and babies born behind bars.
Nebraska is one of 10 states that offer prison-nursery programs, with Missouri’s being the most recent. Each has its own policies and protocols that determine which moms can participate and for how long.
Nebraska’s program, which began in 1994, allows incarcerated mothers to participate in the program if their parole eligibility date or tentative release date is within 18 months of the birth of their baby, according to the nursery program procedural document. A 2018 study of Nebraska’s program found that women who participated experienced a 28% reduction in recidivism, a 39% reduction in returning to prison and savings of more than $6 million over the first 10 years.
Still, a national expert on incarcerated pregnant women said a nursery is still a prison surrounded by the accordion-like concertina wire. Her research suggests that on average, about 58,000 pregnant people enter the nation’s prisons and jails annually, all of whom need maternal health care.
“Mother-infant care units or prison nursery programs are really important,” said Dr. Carolyn Sufrin, an OB-GYN who specializes in incarcerated pregnant people’s care. “They sound on paper really good, like, ‘Oh, you can keep moms and babies together,’ but you don’t have to dig too deep from the surface to really make you think about, you know, is this what we should be doing as a society, incarcerating moms and babies?”
‘Stressful physically, mentally and emotionally’
Rosita Vizcarra, who entered York pregnant after she was sentenced in February of 2025, said she didn’t know what to expect when she got to York’s facility and was introduced to the nursery program.
“I met with the coordinator, who helped answer my questions and go before the committee to be accepted,” Vizcarra said on the prison’s messaging app, GettingOut. “They made sure to get me to all doctor appointments. They’ve made sure that I had all I needed to prepare for my baby. Staff has been great in support and understanding when I need to rock the baby.”
The nursery wing area is tucked away from the general population and the behavior intervention and programming unit. It can house up to 15 moms, each with their own rooms along the perimeter of an open space filled with books, movies, toys and chairs.
There is a communal bathroom and refrigerator area to store bottles and breast milk. There is also a separate laundry area and kitchen.
The program offers parenting classes, including infant care and child development. It also allows new moms to nurse their babies, and to care for their babies who live with their mothers in their rooms.
Baby clothing is provided, largely through donations. And the program’s procedure details guidelines for birthday parties, baptisms and other religious ceremonies.
Incarcerated women gave birth in York’s General Hospital to 77 babies from 2018 through 2025, according to a log kept by Nebraska’s only prison for women. According to the log, 11 of those babies and mothers qualified to participate in the nursery program. It could not be determined how many women have participated in the program or how many babies in Nebraska were born to incarcerated moms since the inception of the program.
In an email seeking clarity on the statistics the prison provided after a public information request by Nebraska News Service, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services said the provided data should not be considered comprehensive data regarding residency in the nursery.
National statistics indicate it costs about $24,000 on average to house an infant in a prison nursery, but those figures vary greatly. York’s nursery program, according to a fiscal note attached to a proposed change in state law in 2021, estimated the cost of housing 15 babies at York to be $82,070 annually — or $14.99 a day per infant. It is unclear how much the prison program currently costs the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services.
Angel Bils, another incarcerated pregnant Nebraska woman who was expecting a baby in May when she was interviewed by Nebraska News Service, said she is grateful to be in the nursery program because it is a different environment than the general population unit.
That doesn’t mean the environment doesn’t come with challenges.
“Being pregnant in prison is very stressful physically, mentally and emotionally,” Bils said via the messaging app. “It’s hard because with all the emotions that come with pregnancy I have to deal with, while there’s much going on around me. Also the fear of having my child while incarcerated, I can’t help but stress about the future.”
“The nursery program is a safe place for us to feed our babies without having to return to our room to do so,” Bils said on the messaging app.
Some states try alternatives to prison
Nebraska’s allowable stay in the nursery is akin to other programs across the nation: California, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, New York, Ohio, South Dakota, Washington and West Virginia.
Indiana, Ohio and West Virginia have a maximum of 18 months. Illinois and Washington have the longest stay period, with Illinois’ being a maximum of two years and Washington’s being two and half years. South Dakota is the outlier with a maximum stay of 30 days.
Minnesota, on the other hand, has taken a different approach. Gov. Tim Walz signed the Healthy Start Act in 2021, which allows for pregnant incarcerated women and new mothers to be conditionally released from that state’s women’s prison for a period of their pregnancy for up to one year after birth, according to a legislative document.
University of Minnesota researchers collaborated with the Minnesota Department of Corrections, according to Ingie Osman, a staff member for the department of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota.
Osman said that her team, specifically Dr. Rebecca Shlafer, informed the development of the Healthy Start Act.
Prior to the change in Minnesota, incarcerated women were transported to the hospital to give birth and were taken back to prison three days later, according to the Minnesota and the Healthy Start Act Report.
Osman said that immediate separation comes with a variety of effects, limiting opportunities for parent-infant bonding, initiation of breastfeeding, and cascading negative impacts for the health and development of children to come.
“When we think about supporting a mom and baby inside, for example, there are still probably a lot of needs around re-entry support that are going to happen when they’re released,” Osman said. “So I feel like the Healthy Start Act is trying to combine sort of a conditional release program with also a wraparound re-entry support that are family focused. And while there are lots of ways they can continue to improve that, that is sort of the goal.”
In 2023, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed legislation that allows judges to consider alternative sentencing for pregnant mothers who are deemed not to pose a risk to the public. The law allows judges to stay a prison sentence, defer sentencing or send the convicted mother into a diversion program and not prison.
Experts said that programs also help ease prison overcrowding, which is a problem York is facing. The prison was designed to house 275 women, but its average daily population puts that number at 310, according to their average daily population for the 2024 fiscal year.
‘Deeply troubling’
Sufrin, the national expert on pregnancy in prison who has worked in gynecology and fertility for more than 15 years, was confronted with pregnant prisoners when she was a resident training at the University of Pittsburgh: She delivered a baby while the incarcerated mother was shackled to a bed.
“I found that a deeply troubling experience,” Sufrin said in a telephone interview this spring from her office in Baltimore, Maryland. “Of course, it was much more troubling for the birthing person, but that’s what really sparked my interest in this population.”
She spent 15 years studying the issue at Johns Hopkins University. Her research resulted in the publication of “Pregnancy in Prison Statistics.”
This first step in research of incarcerated pregnant women found that 4% of women entering state prison were pregnant and 3% of women entering jail were pregnant from 2016 to 2017.
But numbers aren’t what matters most to her, she said. She wants to see reform.
“Forget the numbers. It doesn’t matter if it’s one or 1,000 or more than that, the fact that it’s more than zero is what matters,” Sufrin said. “And before the study, there wasn’t anything to document that.”
‘Women remain at the bottom of priorities’
To provide better opportunities for incarcerated pregnant women, Nebraska Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh of Omaha sought in 2021 to create additions to the Healthy Pregnancies for Incarcerated Women Act, which was passed in 2019.
“Where a facility has a nursery program the goal is to maximize the use of that program and to better inform the incarcerated women and their families of the policies and guidelines of the nursery program by making the policies public,” Machaela Cavanaugh wrote in her statement of intent for that 2021 bill.
The bill would have forbid the separation of infants from their mothers unless the prisoner presented clear and imminent danger to the infant.
“In any youth rehabilitation and treatment center or Department of Correctional Services adult correctional facility that incarcerates, detains, or houses women, any infant shall not be separated from a prisoner, detainee, or juvenile who birthed such infant unless the administrator of the facility or center makes and documents an individualized determination that remaining with such prisoner, detainee, or juvenile presents a clear and imminent danger to such infant. Such determination shall be based solely upon the presenting behaviors of such prisoner, detainee, or juvenile in relation to her infant, and not upon administrative convenience,” the bill said.
The rights of incarcerated women has been an issue Cavanaugh has been working to address for the past six years, according to her legislative aide, Margaret Buck.
However, those proposals have yet to advance out of committee. Larry Kahl, the former chief operating officer for the Department of Health and Human Services, and former Nebraska Department of Corrections Director Scott Frakes, were among those who opposed Cavanaugh’s bill.
Institutional resistance and a general lack of focus on incarcerated women because they are a small part of the overall incarcerated population ultimately prevented it from advancing, Cavanaugh said.
“Resistance … from the corrections department is indicative of the lack of priority for issues that affect incarcerated women,” Cavanaugh said in an email. “Whether it’s poor water quality or use of the nursery program, or allowing incarcerated women access to a doula — it simply shows that women remain at the bottom of priorities for the department of corrections, the governor and the Legislature.”
With the overcrowding, aging facilities and workforce issues, the department has a lot to prioritize, according to Cavanaugh. However, Cavanaugh said the budget is a moral document that shows a distinct lack of understanding and empathy for issues at the York facility and for incarcerated women and their families.
Sufrin points to Minnesota and Colorado’s laws as a better way to keep moms and infants together.
“If people meet eligibility criteria for these programs, maybe instead we should be investing in community-based alternatives,” she said.
Osman, the Minnesota researcher, noted that there is a lot of national work still to be done, though, to bolster the lived experiences of pregnant and postpartum incarcerated women.
“Just know that these are mothers, these are families, these are babies, they are like any mothers and families and babies that we know in community,” she added. “And, it’s just important to really kind of center the humanity of all these folks throughout these conversations.”
Nebraska Behind Bars
This story is part of a series produced by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications 2025 in-depth reporting class.
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![The 2-year-old son of James Price and Samantha Cedillo chases a red soccer ball at his Iowa home on April 9, 2025. The child was conceived while his father, Price, was an inmate at the Omaha Correctional Center and his mother, Cedillo, worked as a programs coordinator there. “I believe [my son] is a big part of my giving back to the world,” Price told a journalist.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/1716a67/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1763x1166+0+0/resize/260x172!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F03%2F44%2F4e7d12f748c5a7e7ebe34d6b28e3%2Ffifth.jpg)
