Maria Caraballo held her daughter for the very first time in handcuffs.

Caraballo, a maximum-security inmate at Bedford Hills, New York, reminded officers of the 2009 state law that prohibits shackling pregnant prisoners during labor, but they didn't listen. Caraballo also said they ignored the medical professional's repeated requests to remove her cuffs. In 2010, she delivered the baby with one hand chained to the bed.

"The doctor told the officers to take the cuff off, but they refused,” Caraballo told The Guardian earlier this year. “The line to the cuff is short, so you can’t move your arm without the cuff twisting or cutting into you. I couldn’t even sit up. I was only unshackled after being taken to the prison ward."

When she went to see the baby at the nursery, her ankles and arms were shackled as well.

"People were staring," she said. "It was very humiliating. I don’t want other pregnant women to go through this. People make mistakes in life, but they don’t have to be humiliated."

A recent report from the Women In Prison Project reveals that Caraballo's experience is all too familiar among pregnant inmates. According to the findings, pregnant women are still shackled during childbirth, which the American Medical Association says is "medically hazardous" and out of line with the "ethics of the medical profession."

"We interviewed actually 27 women who had given birth after the 2009 law went into effect and 23 of those 27 women had been shackled at some point in violation of the law," Tamar Kraft-Stolar, director of the Women in Prison Project, told HuffPost Live in March.

Kraft-Solar said part of the issue is putting policy into practice, as well as the fact that many people don't view prisoners as human.

"There's often a divergence between policy and even legal policy and practice," she said. "There's so little oversight. There's so little public accountability. And then you have, piled on that, this widespread dehumanization and lack of public sympathy. All of those are a recipe for laws not being followed."

Tina Tinen, also a former pregnant inmate at Bedford Hills, said she was handcuffed to a gurney until arriving at the hospital, where she swiftly changed into a gown and delivered the child less than 20 minutes later.

“I gave birth so fast that I was still wearing my prison shirt,” Tinen, who had her baby four years ago, revealed to The Guardian. "He was screaming his little head off and stretching his toes. I told him, ‘I feel the same way right now. I just gave natural childbirth.’ I can remember the sun shining on his face and I’m next to him handcuffed, telling him, ‘You’re with mommy now.’”

When the baby's pacifier kept falling out of his mouth, however, Tinen put the binky back in place with her nose, as she couldn't use her hands to do it.

A 2014 New York Times report found that nearly 2,000 American women give birth in prison annually. The Bureau of Justice reports that roughly three percent of women are already pregnant by the time they arrive at federal prison. Because it's rare for shackling victims to press charges, authorities have an easier time violating policies that are supposed to help pregnant prisoners. Even though the Nevada Board of State Prison Commissioners implemented improved and aggressive oversight policies following a shackling lawsuit in 2012, it remains a challenge to hold correctional officials accountable when working with expecting inmates.

"These laws were passed and everybody patted themselves on the back for doing what was right and human and then went on about their business," Danyell Williams, a former doula for prisoners in Philadelphia, told The Times. "But there’s no policing entity that’s really going to hold these institutions responsible."

For more on America's prison system, check out our video on countries that have adopted better prison systems: