A Woman Gave Birth in a Brooklyn Courtroom. That Should Shame the Entire System.
A Woman Gave Birth in a Brooklyn Courtroom. That Should Shame the Entire System.
By Michele Evans
New York City, New York
5/20/2026
Category: Courts / Criminal Justice / Advocacy
Brooklyn, New York - A pregnant woman should never have to give birth on a courtroom bench.
Not in shackles. Not in custody. Not surrounded by court officers, prosecutors, attorneys, and strangers. Not after being processed through the machinery of arrest, hospital discharge, court transport, and arraignment as if her body were not already in crisis.
Yet that is what happened in Brooklyn Criminal Court, according to public defenders and legal advocates who rallied after Samantha Randazzo, 33, gave birth while awaiting arraignment. Randazzo had reportedly been arrested on low-level drug and trespassing charges, taken to a hospital after reporting withdrawal symptoms and pregnancy, discharged back to custody, and then brought to court, where she went into labor. Public defenders said she delivered without adequate medical care, privacy, or dignity.
Her attorney and court officials have disputed some details, including whether she remained handcuffed during delivery, but the larger fact remains undisputed: a woman in the custody of the system gave birth in a courthouse instead of a medical setting.
That should not be possible in a city that already knows the risks.
New York has laws, policies, programs, and reports about pregnant people in custody. It has anti-shackling protections. It has a Rikers nursery. It has doula programs. It has public statements about family connection and maternal care. But the Brooklyn courtroom birth exposes the gap between what the system says it provides and what pregnant detainees actually experience when they are poor, criminalized, medically vulnerable, or caught in the conveyor belt of arraignment.
The question is not only whether one hospital, one officer, one court part, or one agency made a mistake.
The question is why a visibly pregnant woman was still moving through criminal court custody close enough to delivery that she gave birth on a bench.
Pregnancy Should Be Treated as a Medical Condition, Not a Custody Problem
Pregnancy in jail is not rare enough to be treated as an exception the system can improvise around.
The Women’s Community Justice Association notes that pregnant people in jails and prisons face overlapping issues involving prenatal care, shackling, breastfeeding, and separation from newborns. It also cites national data showing that thousands of women enter prisons and jails pregnant, while regulation, transparency, and reliable data remain limited.
That lack of transparency matters. According to the same issue brief, there is no public data on the number of birthing people on Rikers Island or in New York State correctional facilities. That means advocates, journalists, and the public are often left reacting to horror stories after they happen instead of seeing the full pattern before the crisis becomes a headline.
Pregnant detainees need medical screening, prenatal care, nutrition, mobility, privacy, and urgent access to emergency care. They do not need to be shuffled from police custody to hospital custody to court custody until the body itself forces the system to stop.
The system should have stopped long before a baby was born in court.
New York Already Knows Shackling Is Dangerous
New York has already recognized that restraining pregnant women during labor is dangerous and degrading. A 2015 state bill was introduced to strengthen the prohibition against shackling women prisoners during childbirth.
But advocates continue to raise concerns because legal protections are only as meaningful as their enforcement. The New York City Bar recently supported legislation to end restraints and force on pregnant and postpartum incarcerated individuals, warning that shackling and force during pregnancy and childbirth create serious health and safety risks, including falls, delayed medical care, complications during labor, and long-term psychological trauma.
That is why the dispute over whether Randazzo was handcuffed at the exact moment of delivery should not distract from the broader failure. A pregnant woman in active or imminent labor should not have been in that posture at all. The issue is not only the metal restraint. It is the carceral mindset that treats a pregnant detainee first as a security problem and only second as a patient.
Rikers Has a Nursery. So Why Is It So Empty?
New York City’s own law recognizes that Rikers has a nursery for mothers and babies. The city code requires women admitted to DOC custody to receive notice that they may be eligible to live in the nursery with children who are one year old or younger, and that mothers may be eligible to live there with a child after giving birth in DOC custody. It also states that children and mothers “shall be housed in the nursery” unless DOC determines that such housing is not in the child’s best interest.
On paper, that sounds humane.
In practice, the numbers tell a very different story.
A Rikers Island Nursery Report for 2016 showed only one child admitted to the nursery that year, despite nine applications, three approvals, and four denials. The report also stated that all three approved mothers were discharged before giving birth.
Later reports continued to show extremely limited use. In 2020 and 2021, the nursery admitted zero children. In 2022, it admitted two. In 2023, DOC reported no nursery placements during the reporting period, even though applications and approvals still appeared in the data.
The Women’s Community Justice Association has noted that the Rose M. Singer Center nursery has 25 slots, allows breastfeeding for those accepted into the program, and requires mothers to apply and be accepted.
Twenty-five slots. Yet year after year, the public reports show numbers like zero, one, and two.
That is not a functioning family-preservation system. That is a symbolic program.
What I Saw Inside Rikers
I know Rikers has a dorm for mothers with babies because I was there.
When I was incarcerated at Rikers, I worked in the mess hall and delivered meals. I remember delivering meals to the mother-baby area only a handful of times. That memory stayed with me because the space existed, but it did not appear to be meaningfully used. It felt like one of those things the jail could point to when outsiders asked about mothers and children, even though the actual women inside rarely seemed to benefit from it.
I also remember a woman in my dorm who said she was not allowed to have her baby with her there. According to her, CPS prevented it. I cannot independently verify every part of her case, but I remember what she said, and I remember how common it was for women inside to speak about family separation as if it were simply another punishment layered on top of incarceration.
That is the part the public rarely sees.
A nursery may exist. A policy may exist. A brochure may exist. A report may exist. But if mothers cannot actually access the program, if child welfare agencies block placement, if eligibility rules are opaque, if approvals come too late, or if women are discharged before anything can happen, then the system is not preserving families. It is preserving the appearance of reform.
Family Connection Cannot Be a Press Release
New York City has invested in family-connection programming at Rikers. The Children’s Museum of Manhattan describes its Family Connections Program as a partnership with DOC that creates spaces for incarcerated parents and children to bond through workshops and learning hubs. The program says it has operated for more than seven years, holds family workshops, and is expanding learning hubs at Rikers.
Those programs may help some families. They matter.
But they do not answer the harder question: why are pregnant detainees and new mothers still experiencing trauma, separation, and medical neglect inside the same system?
A colorful visiting room cannot substitute for prenatal care. A nursery that sits mostly empty cannot substitute for actual access. A doula program cannot fix a custody pipeline that can still process a pregnant woman into court until she gives birth on a bench.
The public should not be satisfied with the existence of programs. The public should demand proof that they work.
The Real Reform Is Decarceration for Pregnant People
The answer is not simply better courtroom procedures for women who go into labor during arraignment.
The answer is to keep pregnant people out of jail whenever possible.
The Women’s Community Justice Association recommends alternatives to detention for pregnant people entering the justice system, community-based alternatives for pregnant and postpartum people, monitoring boards to ensure appropriate prenatal care, onsite OB-GYN care at women’s facilities, stronger prohibitions on shackling, and high-risk pregnancy screening protocols.
That is the correct framework.
Pregnancy should trigger release planning, medical care, community support, and family preservation. It should not trigger a custody scramble.
Low-level charges should not result in a woman giving birth in court. Substance use should not result in a woman being treated as disposable. Poverty should not determine whether a mother receives privacy, dignity, and medical care during labor.
Investigate the Whole Chain
There should be a transparent investigation into what happened to Samantha Randazzo. But the investigation cannot stop at the courtroom door.
It should examine:
Who knew she was pregnant?
Who evaluated her?
Why was she discharged from the hospital?
What information was given to police, DOC, court officers, prosecutors, and defense counsel?
Was she assessed for imminent labor?
Was she restrained at any point while in labor?
What policies govern pregnant detainees awaiting arraignment?
How often are pregnant detainees returned from hospitals to court custody?
How many pregnant people are currently in NYC jail custody?
How many apply for the Rikers nursery?
How many are approved?
How many actually enter it?
How often does ACS or CPS involvement prevent nursery placement?
How often are babies separated from mothers after birth?
New York should not be able to hide behind fragmented agencies. NYPD, hospitals, DOC, court officers, prosecutors, defense providers, ACS, Correctional Health Services, and the courts are all part of the same system when a pregnant woman in custody gives birth in public.
Everyone wants to say, “That part was not mine.”
But the baby was born on the bench anyway.
A City That Claims to Care About Mothers Must Prove It
New York cannot claim to care about maternal health while allowing pregnant women to be processed through criminal court like paperwork.
It cannot claim to care about children while operating a mother-baby nursery that public data suggests is barely used.
It cannot claim to care about dignity while advocates are rallying outside a courthouse because a woman gave birth in custody without the privacy and medical care any person deserves.
And it cannot claim that Rikers is being reformed by pointing to programs that exist on paper while women inside continue to describe separation, fear, and inaccessible support.
A woman gave birth in a Brooklyn courtroom.
That is not just a shocking headline. It is a warning.
The system did not fail at one moment. It failed at every point where someone could have treated a pregnant woman as a human being first.
*Michele Evans is an independent journalist, author, and former ESPN technical producer whose work has appeared in The New York Times.
Michele got her start in 2001 covering the NBA and NFL.
She now covers New York City courts, criminal-justice procedure, NYPD, FDNY, domestic-violence systems, media accountability, public safety, advocacy efforts, and New York civic life through courthouse observation, public records, legal analysis, and lived-experience reporting.
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