If a Denver Sheriff Department deputy is pregnant and her job is to guard inmates, then she guards inmates.
If a fight breaks out, it’s her job to break it up.
She must do this because the sheriff’s department never has had a policy on how to treat its pregnant deputies.
“Those are challenges we, as an agency, need to address,” said Division Chief Connie Coyle, who oversees the county jail on Smith Road. “Do I take time off now to protect my baby before it’s born, or do I take time off after it’s born to bond with the baby? It’s a balancing act. We shouldn’t have to make folks choose.”
Creating a pregnancy policy is just one of dozens of issues a new Gender Equity Commission will address over the coming months. The 30-member commission is studying issues that affect female deputies and female inmates, said Coyle, who is leading the commission.
Interim Sheriff Elias Diggins created the commission last fall after three women held a in November to protest a deputy who a few days earlier had asked one of them to leave the lobby while breast-feeding her child.
State law protects a woman’s right to breast-feed in public, and Diggins issued a memo to deputies the day of the incident to remind them of the law.
The commission includes deputies, staff members and people from the community, including university professors, human rights advocates and psychologists, Coyle said.
About 25 percent of the department’s 725 deputies are women, according to statistics provided by the department. That percentage is higher than the national average for sheriff’s departments, said Simon Crittle, a department spokesman.
Female deputies guard male and female inmates.
As for female inmates, the United States saw an explosion of women behind bars after drug laws changed in the 1980s, and female incarceration rates have been increasing steadily since, said Denise Vargas, a clinical psychologist who runs a mental health treatment program for female inmates housed at the Smith Road complex.
In Denver’s two jails, about 22 percent of the 2,265 inmates are female. Most are housed in the county jail.
That population presents a different set of issues than male inmates, Vargas said. Many are homeless, addicted and separated from children.
“Women are more traumatized,” she said. “They’re more vulnerable to trauma.”
For example, a deputy forcefully handling a woman could re-create trauma she already has experienced, causing a volatile situation to escalate, Coyle said.
Coyle expects much of the commission’s work on improving conditions for female inmates will involve new training for deputies. She plans to send people to a National Institute of Corrections conference in August that will address these issues.
Coyle and Vargas said attention to issues specific to women is due. They don’t have a timeline for when their report will be finished.
“I’m excited to see some change,” Vargas said. “Whatever it might look like, it’s a positive.”
Noelle Phillips: 303-954-1661, nphillips@denverpost.com or twitter.com/Noelle_Phillips
