Criminal - Tabatha

Episode Date: May 2, 2025

When Tabatha Trammell was 50 years old, she started studying to become a doula — a support person for pregnant women. Today, most of her clients are incarcerated. She says she always tells them her own story when she meets them: “I went down that same road. But I'm here today. And I'm going to tell you how to navigate this prison system.” Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Was there a point when you realized I'm good at this? I know I'm good at this. This is by calling. It ain't a whole lot of money. You know, we don't do it for the income, we do it for the outcome.

My name is Tabitha Tramell. I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. As a teenager, Tabitha took care of her eight brothers and sisters. So where were you in the lineup? I am the oldest. Oh, wow. So you had babies all around you. Yes, stair steps.

All of us are a year apart, and I had to help raise them. So I was held accountable for their actions. Tabitha says that when she was 15, she started skipping class. And she also started dating someone from school. He was in a band, and I was in an orchestra. And we had snuck off campus a couple of times. And then when I was at home, I just noticed I was feeling real sick. And then I used to mark my period

on a certain time of the month. I keep up with the calendar, you know. And I noticed it didn't come, I missed a month. And I was so nervous. I didn't tell nobody but my best girlfriend. Compared to today, I was really skinny. And we had a lot of goodwill clothes because we was very poor and a lot of people used to give us, donate us clothes and stuff.

So that worked to my advantage because I used to put on big shirts and stuff. And what were you thinking? Were you thinking at 15, I don't know what to do here. I don't know how to, I mean, I guess you didn't know what it was like to have little babies around, but… I was terrified because we grew up in a very religious family. We was Jehovah's Witness. And you know, when that something of that nature, a magnitude happened, you will be

isolated from the church and people are not supposed to speak to you. They call it disassociated. Each month went by, I was just scared. My mother came to me one day and said, one of the ladies that went to what they called the church, the Kingdom Hall, said, she is gaining a lot of weight. Her face is just as full. Is she okay? That's what my mother said she said.

And then my stepdad, he told my mother, you need to take her down to, you know, Grady Hospital and have a pregnancy test for her. Oh my God. I was thinking about running away, killing myself. It was just, I just didn't know. It was all kind of thoughts running through my head. And you went down and had the pregnancy test.

My mother took me. Gotta remember, I was 15. So she took me down there and I was like four months pregnant. Tabitha says that her mother disowned her. and Tabitha went to stay with her grandmother. She had a one-bedroom apartment, me and her share. It was in a senior high-rise, but my uncle lived down the hallway in another unit, and they introduced me to selling marijuana. You were selling it with your uncle?

I was getting it from my uncle, but I found my own people to sell it to. He knew he was giving it to me, and I was bringing him money back for it. So you might as well say that. One day when she was about six months pregnant, she was hanging out near a corner store. And it was a lady, like a regular young girl to me. And then she had been hanging around talking and laughing and playing around with the guys. And then she walked up to me, sitting out drinking a Coca Cola or whatever. And she said, do you have anything? I said, what you need?

She said, some smoke. And so I made a sale to her and come to find out after she walked off, probably if she was gone about 10 minutes and came back down now and got me, she was undercover agent. So I made a sale to undercover. So they took me down to the Atlanta pre-trial

detention center. Back then it was on Decatur Street and they booked me in and I had to call my grandmother. I was the youngest person in there. And you were six months pregnant. Yes. Did any of the other women say to you, you're young, you're pregnant,

did anyone try to take care of you? They didn't say it like that. They said, girl, what you don't got yourself, you're a school girl. That's what they said. But they didn't say it. They was saying it not in a bad way, but like, you just don't, from your appearance, this ain't you. You know?

And some of the older ladies told me,, said, this ain't the route. You starting off wrong, sweetheart. Tabitha was released to her grandmother within a day. A few months later, she gave birth to her daughter. After the baby was born, I had all kinds of thoughts, like, I'm not ready for this. But my mother stepped up and she was helping me. I went back home with her for awhile and I thought since I had a baby, I was

grown then, started back selling and smoking also, and I got re-arrested. Two, let's see. My baby was probably seven days old. Let's see, my baby was probably seven days old. And at that time, since it was my second offense, I stayed in them 60 old days. I was crying. I had these emotions going on. I didn't know at the time it was postpartum. I was bleeding all over myself

and I was asking for extra pads. And the guards was being rude because I kept ringing the bell. And I guess now I can see I was annoying because I kept ringing the bell because I kept messing my clothes up. And it was the older ladies that comforted me and talked to me.

Tapatha says that every time pads were distributed, the other women would line up to get them, whether they needed them or not, and give them to Tabitha. I'll never forget it. My roommate was an older lady. She was probably, I want to say probably about 50. She had old shirts she tore up to make extra period products for me. She said, you better get up and get ready to shower. And I always remember she gave me some paper and she said, just write down some different things.

She didn't call it journaling. She said, just write down. She said, I like to write. I like to draw. She had some pretty pictures she had drawn. She didn't call it journaling. She said, just write down. She said, I like to write. I like to draw. She had some pretty pictures she had drawn. She said, they keep me from being upset or nervous. But when she supported me like that,

I'll never forget when I took that shower, I came back and I rested so good. Tapatha says that when she got home, she started seeing someone she met at a house party. And when her daughter was about nine months old, she found out she was pregnant again. And I was back and forth in county jail, diversion programs, rehab programs, because of my drug use and drug selling. You know, I remember one time I was asking for something.

I was asking for more pads, and I was asking for an extra sandwich. I was just feeling real bad. I didn't have any money to order extra stuff off the store at the time. My mother was on a limited income, and she sent me $20 a month. So you had to make a choice.

You're going to make the call home and try to talk to your children, or you're gonna get your sanitary items. And you know, that was $20 had to last me for a whole month. She remembers that one time she rang the buzzer to ask the guard for something to eat. And the guard told her, this isn't the Ritz-Carlton. She says she was threatened with solitary confinement when she complained about pain

or asked to see a doctor and that she was placed in solitary dozens of times. She says she cried all the time. And which I didn't know why I was crying. If I look at it now, if I'd have bonded with my children, I would have cried lesser if I was more into the pregnancy because I had detached mentally from the pregnancy. I really detached myself, but I cried a lot. One minute I think I'm level, and the next minute I start crying for no reason. One day, she was waiting to be picked up from Fulton County Jail to be transported to prison,

and she started talking to some of the other women who were waiting with her. Some older ladies, again, they always take care of the younger people, the best that they know how. They was telling me about this rehab facility that's Christ's center. I loved reading the Bible because that's how I was raised. So that was in the back of my mind. She says that when she got out of prison, she wasn't doing well. She'd been in and out of jails and prisons for decades.

And I thought back to that day, the lady was talking to me about this place. So I thought about it. And then I said, wow, I'm going to live like a normal person. So I called them. It was on a Thursday at 430. I got a call back saying, hey, can you be here on Monday? I went on that Monday and that's been going on October the 5th for this year, be 15 years. Tabitha went on to join a program that helped formerly incarcerated women find jobs.

She was 50 years old. And she heard about a class to train as a doula, someone who works with pregnant women and new mothers. It's not medical. It's non-medical. It's a support person as a doula. It's a person that can listen to you, to help you find your voice. I didn't have it when I was pregnant. So I decided, I said, oh, I think I want to do that.

I wanted to help somebody else that didn't get the support like I didn't get it. And I can live a good pregnancy through somebody else by assisting them. She's been working as a doula for seven years. Most of her clients are incarcerated. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. We'll be right back. Thanks to Squarespace for their support. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform designed to help you make a great website. Whether you're just starting out or trying to grow your business, Squarespace gives you

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Tools that help you send emails to potential customers, or that let your customers schedule their own appointments. convenient for people to keep in touch with you. Tools that help you send emails to potential customers, or that let your customers schedule their own appointments. Check out squarespace.com slash criminal for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code criminal to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. ["The Last Supper"] Dire Wolves, not just a thing from Game of Thrones, not just Jon Snow's best friend.

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for answers over at Today Explained. Tabitha Tramell says that when she asks women if they know what a doula is, most of them think it's someone who delivers babies. But it's a support person, not to take the place of a doctor or a nurse or a husband. It's a person, this Jeff, for me to support me and to help me navigate to see if I want this treatment like this. Give me the voice to say that I want a second opinion. That's what a doula is.

It's a support person that help you be in control of your labor. It's a person that makes it possible for your care to be self-directed. You are in control. A know, a lot of times when you're in certain situations, you lose control. Other people be in control, and that's a bad feeling. And certainly when you're in jail, you have no control. No control.

Do you remember the first incarcerated woman that you saw, that you were going to work with? She called me from Gwinnett County Jail, and it was during COVID, and a lot, you know, you couldn't go into the jails then. And, you know, she wanted to know because she was on a special diet and I had to give her guidance on the store list on certain things that we had to make do with what we had. I told her, I'd say the potato chips and stuff like that. I said we got to work with what we got. You should eat more tuna and stuff that's healthy like nuts and different things and get your extra jar of peanut butter off the store too. You know get your pickles and stuff that's the closest thing you're going to get

to something on that store like for as a vegetable. So it's all about working with what you got. I was there to support her and then have her look at it through a different lens. The fruit might not be fresh but you still get you some pre-packaged fruit off, you know, like fruit cocktail, whatever. Okay, it's high in sugar. I told her, pull the syrup off. It's just different ways how I was there to navigate her, to help her deal with what she had and not be discouraged.

Were you nervous that first client that you had? I was nervous, but I was invested because I look at it, I treated her how I wanted to be treated when I was in that dark place. Was she saying things to you that you remembered so clearly from your own experience? She said a lot of things I identified with. Her family disowned her. She didn't have no support. She used to be in her church choir.

And you know, same thing. She didn't go back to church. It was just a lot. I identified a lot with her. And I told her, I went down that same road. I said, but I'm here today to tell you today You have me as a support person. I Am here as a friend and as a friend I'm gonna tell you to navigate this prison system

But navigate it with respect. We talk about making things better work with the circumstances and try to get the best outcomes See, the main thing is to keep them encouraged and engaged And I told her to keep her journal. That's what keep me going today even and Dealing with the guards I'd say and your hormones don't go up there and be nasty to them Anything you want to say put it in your journal That's what you do put the feelings out in the journal because right now you need a good relationship with the guards so you can get things that you need. You know, it's a give and take.

You're having to navigate being incarcerated at the same time as navigating trying to birth a healthy child. Absolutely. It's double the stress. It's double the stress. It's double the stress. And I told her, being stressed, those hormones go to your baby.

And I told her about, you know, they take you to the library like once a week. I said, what you do, you start giving you some literature on pregnancy and children, childbirth, and what you can do about your feet swelling. I told her, lower your sodium intake, leave those potato chips alone. Well, how do you know I've been in potato chips?

Because your feet are swelling. Some stuff I know too. It's just being there to support her, and she felt like somebody cared. Even if I was a little, I'm not going to use the word street, but a little pushy. But it was a good push because the final thing that we both, we wanted to be a healthy child up under the circumstances. Tabitha meets with many of her clients over the phone. She says it can be hard to get clearance for a visit.

She says a lot of the women who reach out to her have heard from someone else that they should call Tabitha, that she can help them. So when you first speak with a woman that you've been connected with, what do you tell them? I let them know first. I'm not here to judge. Because a lot of times, the first thing they'll say, well you don't understand. Yes, I do. They're not done yet. She always tells her clients her story when she starts working with them.

Reassure them you just got to stay focused. Is it going to be easy? No. To make it easy, you got to be persistent. And I get them to understand that and get them to do a lot of meditation, walk around the day room, put your headphones on. Put your headphones on, do some breathing exercises. Sometimes you have to leave your body and just think of a place, a comfort zone, and go to that place whenever you feel stressed or overwhelmed. I had to teach them those different techniques. But the main thing is to get them not to lay in the bed all day.

Keep them active and motivated. What they look like. When they give you that one hour of yard time, take advantage of it. Even if you don't feel like walking around, go sit in the sun and just that'll change the way your hormones are flowing. It'll help those happy hormones flow in you. Just being out there in the sunlight. We just got to take advantage of things that we do have and know how to work it to our advantage. The institutional beds can be uncomfortable for pregnant women, but Tabitha tells her

clients that they can usually get an extra mattress if they do more work around their dorm and ask the right guards. And I tell them, be nice. If you need extra socks, which you do because your feet be cold, be nice. If you need extra socks, which you do because your feet be cold, be nice. You can't go up there demanding anything. We understand that sometimes they don't treat you right, but some things to get what we need, we just have to step back and see the full picture. The full picture is to deliver a healthy, stress-free baby. But you can't go there like a lot of them, beat on that buzzer and demand it. I say, I was the buzzer queen. That don't get you nothing but

solitary confinement. We'll be right back. is your ticket to more. More perks. More points. More flights. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card. And then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO VI Porter MasterCard. And get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit BMO.com slash VI Porter to learn more.

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in local children's charities across Canada. Last year, Tabitha Tramell testified at a Senate Human Rights Subcommittee hearing on pregnancy in Georgia's jails and prisons, she talked about her own experience being incarcerated 40 years ago and also what she'd heard from other women. And it's, you know, it hadn't changed since I been there. And I had to testify to those facts. Another woman named Tiana Hill testified with Tabitha.

She described the seven months she spent at the Clayton County jail in 2019. She said that when she arrived, she informed the staff that she was pregnant. She had taken a test at home. The staff gave her a test and told her she wasn't. She says she repeatedly told them that she really was pregnant, but she didn't receive any prenatal care. A few months later, she went into early labor in her cell, but no one believed her. Finally, she was taken to the jail infirmary and given a pregnancy test, which was positive. She said the staff started making jokes about her size and told her not to push.

She gave birth to her son in full view of anyone who passed by the infirmary. She said other people in the jail, including men, were watching her, quote, like people were looking at a concert. After paramedics arrived and took them to the hospital, Tiana was allowed to see her son in the NICU while she was handcuffed to a wheelchair. He died five days later. Tiana was put in solitary confinement on suicide watch.

She said she still doesn't know how her son died or where his remains are. They tell you a lot of women deliver in their cells and stuff because they don't respect the fact that you say that you're in labor. A person know their body and they ignore you. Several ladies don't have their babies in their cells ignored. And a lot of ladies have testified too that they had to stand and get examined in front of men guards and stuff. It's no respect.

A lot of times they've been in restraints, shackled. Georgia has banned the use of restraints on pregnant women after the first trimester since 2019. But there have been multiple reports of women in their second and third trimesters wearing handcuffs. And there are fewer restrictions on using restraints on women after they've given birth. How much time are women given with their children after? It depends on a different institution. Usually the ladies that I ever with, they say it's 24 hours,

the first 24 hours, that's it with the baby. That must be an incredibly hard time to know you've got this ticking clock and... Yes. And it was hard for me to try to get in that space also, to try to comfort them. And my job, as best as I can do it, was to try to keep them comforted through that time. I try to get them to breastfeed the baby, even if they're not going to breastfeed.

A lot of them say they don't them to breastfeed the baby. Even if they're not going to breastfeed, a lot of them say they don't want to breastfeed because the baby is going to be gone anyway, which I can understand that to a certain extent. But like I told them, instead of laying down, I know you tired, you're going to be on bed rest when you go back to the prison. Every time that baby's feeding, get up, go to that nursery, or have them push the baby in here for that first 24 hours and feed that baby's feeding, get up, go to that nursery, or have them push the baby in here for that first 24 hours and feed that baby. Talk to that baby.

Rub that baby's hand. Touch bonding. Put that baby on your chest. Let that baby feel your heartbeat. That baby know your heartbeat because that baby been with you nine months. Give that baby a sense of security. And it also gives you something to go back to that prison

and you can recreate that scenario in your mind. See prison is about a mind thing. You're always looking forward to the day you get out. It's all about using your imagination. So you feeling that baby heartbeat and that baby land and thinking about how that baby breath felt on you and how you just rubbed that baby, you can keep revisiting that and it gives you a sense of comfort. I have told a lot of them that and they have did it and they say yeah, so we have to go back to that space.

that and they have did it and they say yeah, say we have to go back to that space. And we also try to make sure that they ask the nurse to get a picture of that baby. You know, if she had to take it on their phone and print it off as a piece of paper or whatever, I highly recommend that. So when you in that prison during that time, you look at that picture. This is what I'm working toward. It give you a sense of empowerment. Give them one of your shirts, you take off your shirt, sit there with that baby, that baby will have your smell.

You can get one of the baby's t-shirts, get one of the baby's blankets with the baby's smell on it, and name your baby. Take ownership. Name your baby. Be present in whatever they're doing at the hospital at that time. Get up and walk around because you can always, even if the baby's sleeping, go peek through the glass and just

watch your baby. I said, because it's going to be many days. That vision is going to take you through a lot of days. Do you think that things would have been different for you if you had had someone counseling you? Telling you to give a shirt or do you think it would have changed things for you? When I had my children, it was shame and guilt, so I detached. So me being able to provide that support and to encourage them, it made me feel whole as

a person again, because pregnancy, like I've seen a lot of the ladies, I like to go online and look at the pregnancy pictures the ladies take with their stomachs being exposed and stuff. I think that is so cute. I could have never did that. Remember I had on those big secondhand clothes that hit at pregnancy almost six months. And I want all my ladies to know there's nothing wrong with being pregnant and to take care of yourself. I tell the mothers, read positive stuff. It's almost like an internal vision board.

I do that a lot now. Make plans and I see it in my mind and put it together. It might not be in my reach right now, but I'm always, I'm a dreamer. And I tell them that's another thing you have to use to get by when you're in prison. Make plans. Tabitha says that a lot of her clients' children end up in foster care, and they don't have access to much information about where they are or how they're doing. So Tabatha helps them navigate the system.

She also started a program for older incarcerated women whose adult children have died. I let them know, you still, we can't go back in time, but you can be the best grandmother. And that's what I tried to be. She says she keeps in touch with most of the women she's worked with. They still call me for advice. I still send them shipments or have them meet me and give them products for their new children. I keep an open relationship and they always refer back to me. And do you get to hear when sometimes a mother and a child have been reunited?

Yes. I had one before. She didn't get full custody, but the thought of her, she was so happy to get every other weekend visitations. That was a start because in the beginning she didn't have no contact at all. And I told her, I said, when you get ready for your visitation,

I need you to give a good night rest, wear that child out. Make memories. Always bring a little trinket, little gift, coloring book. In each visit, you start up, you take a picture and put it in your scrapbook. And on nights when it's raining, when you're feeling down, look back at that scrapbook. Look how far you don't came.

Look where you at. Do the comparison with that and you'll see the progress. And that'll help keep you going. So you get to see some of these kids grow up. Yeah. And they call me granny too, because they hear my grandchildren call me granny. Tabitha has six grandchildren and one more on the way. Oh, man, I can walk on water. They love granny. I can do no wrong. Those little people when they see me,

they smile like they shoot a toothpaste commercial. Last December, after hearing testimonies from Tabitha and the other women at the Human Rights Subcommittee hearing, Georgia Senator John Ossoff introduced a bill that would require jails and prisons across the country to report on the number of pregnant women in custody, the care they received, and the outcomes of their pregnancies. The Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Roberson, Jackie Sejico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan

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Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. you