Inmate Health Care In American Prisons

The documentary “The released” shared a very important and serious social issue, which is mental illness of prisoners. The film described the inside of the Ohio prison system as it resisted to provide care for prisoners that have mental health problems. The system there allowed prisoners to leave the jail and either go to a shelter or a residential treatment center, to get the health care they need. After the release, prisoners need to take their medications and keep track with a psychiatrist or a mental health care center. However, most of the prisoners didn’t do what is required, most of them didn’t keep up with their medications and end up by going back to jail. The reason of the release was to give them chance to recover by taking medications

In the world, changes need to be made. Some people dedicate their lives to improving the world and making it a better place. In the early 1800s, one woman decided that the prison and mental health systems could be improved to be kinder and more effective institutions. She saw a change to be complete in the world and made it her task to recreate the prison and mental health systems in a new and superior style. Throughout the years, prisons and mental health asylums have changed greatly, especially concerning unfair prison treatment, the reform movement, and today’s important impact.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and of that over sixty percent of jail inmates reported having a mental health issue and 316,000 of them are severely mentally ill (Raphael & Stoll, 2013). Correctional facilities in the United States have become the primary mental health institutions today (Adams & Ferrandino, 2008). This imprisonment of the mentally ill in the United States has increased the incarceration rate and has left those individuals medically untreated and emotionally unstable while in jail and after being released. Better housing facilities, medical treatment and psychiatric counseling can be helpful in alleviating their illness as well as upon their release. This paper will

The idea of sympathetic release of ill and elderly prisoners is not new. In 1994, Professor Russell published consideration of medical parole and compassionate release programs of district and fifty states of Columbia. Only three

Between 1900 and 2000, the life expectancy in this country has risen from 47 to 78 years of age (Rikard & Rosenberg, 2013, p. 404). Although the older population has grown from 4% to 13% in the United States during the same period, the elder prison population has grown substantially. For example, between 1994 and 1998, Texas saw an 86% increase in the elderly prison populations while California expects to see a 200% increase by 2020 (Rikard & Rosenberg, 2013, p. 404). When determining the need to incarcerate an elderly individual, several costly considerations must be made. Elderly inmates require more medical care compared to the younger prisoners and special accommodations must be consider for older inmates (Rikard & Rosenberg, 2013, p.

In attempting to meet the needs of the elderly and the ill prisoners, the correctional departments often provide care to inmates that may not be accessible or affordable to law-abiding citizens; a reality that many criticize believing that criminals do not deserve better care than poor individuals who follow the law (Associated Press, 2012). A solution to the problem can be found in the compassionate release program. Compassionate release was introduced as a federal statute by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 to allow certain terminally ill inmates spend their final days in freedom regardless whether they had completed their sentence (Williams, Sudore, Greifinger, and Morrison, 2011). In addition to the program's compassionate and humane nature, it alleviates the correctional system of a significant financial burden: terminally ill and aging inmates. By releasing terminally ill and the severely incapacitated inmates, correctional facilities lose a significant financial burden in the form of special considerations (specialized units or facilities, or hospice programs), renovations or new prison wings, and medical bills.

There are approximately 1,600,000 million inmates are behind bars in America (Glazer, 2014, para. 11) . Without a doubt, much of state prisons are overcrowded, which can lead to, very dangerous situations and environments. Due to the overwhelming number of inmates incarcerated it is difficult to deal with medical and mental health problems in prison. If most inmates complain about not feeling well or have symptoms, medical condition or disease that is not immediately, they would get some form of medication and get turned life back without seeing a doctor for a proper medical exam. A clear majority of the health care professional that work in the prison systems are very under qualified to work in such dangerous and trauma environments like prisons

Everyday correctional officials work to deal with mental health inmates. Often hotly debated, many search for ways to work with this growing population. Glaze and Bonczar (2009) estimate around 2.3 million people are incarcerated within the US and of those, 20 percent suffer from some form of mental disorder. Even with such a high number, the rate of mental illnesses within the prison system is on the climb. Many of these inmates will remain incarcerated and receive little to no treatment for their mental issues. This essay, will look at the practices associated when dealing with mental illness and discuss the strategies on dealing with this growing issue.

Over the last thirty years the number individuals held in the United States Prison system has been growing rapidly. Numerous studies have found that the prison population that is growing most rapidly is the elderly population. For the purposes of this paper, the term aging and elderly population will refer to those who are incarcerated and are over the age of 61. As the number of elderly inmates continues to increase the number of stressors put on both the correctional system and the individual. In general, the correctional system faces a significant amount of financial stress in attempting to care for aging inmates, where as the inmates themselves face more emotional and physical stressors of aging, chronic illnesses, and even dying in prison. This paper aims to examine the stressors faced by the system and the individuals, as well as alternative options to continuing the incarceration of aging and elderly individuals.

Healthcare is a big topic no matter how you view it, but when looking at it from the point of a person who is in prison, it takes on a whole new view. Those who are in prison have federal and state laws that say that the prisons must provide them with medical facilities for their healthcare needs. This paper will identify a governmental agency that regulates the healthcare that is provided to prisoners in an institution within the United States, along with the foundation of such an agency and who regulates the licenses, accreditation, certifications, and authorization for employment for those who work within one of these

[In an effort to reduce crime rates over the last two decades, there was a push to increase arrests, and length of incarceration of criminal offenders. Due to the increase in numbers of offenders incarcerated and the length of their sentences the prison has an increasing population of elderly offenders. In light of this situation, the need to provide medical care for this population has become increasingly more expensive than anyone anticipated. Therefore, there has been a great deal of attention to what is known as compassionate release. In order to evaluate the arguments for and against this legislation we will look at the arguments on both sides, what values underlie each position, how medical release fits into the discussion, and alternatives to the problem.

The topic that I chose to research for my proposal is health care in the prison system. This is something that can vary drastically depending different details such as the specific prison, the management of the prison, as well as the needs of the inmates that could change for various reasons. It is generally believed that the health care that is available to inmates in both emergency situations as well as day-to-day medical needs is lacking compared to the health care that is available to the general public. The reasoning behind the quality of health care in the prison system can also be attributed to many different aspects such as an increase in inmates within the prison system, an increase in privately operated prisons that seek to make a profit, and the population of the prison system changing. There is now an increase in the elderly being incarcerated due to there being longer sentences which leads to there being an increase in age related health concerns that need to be taken care of within this growing population.

Jails have been described as “de facto mental hospitals” because they have filled the void created when state psychiatric hospitals began closing in the early 1960s through a process known as deinstitutionalization. Supporters of deinstitutionalization thought the process would help individuals suffering from a mental illness live more self-reliantly while being treated by community mental health programs. However, the federal government did not provide the necessary funding to meet the mounting demand for these programs, leaving numerous untreated. Individuals with serious mental illnesses are often poor or homeless and are likely to have substance abuse problems. Therefore, when they are left untreated, they are more likely to commit minor crimes that have been the focus of law enforcement in recent years (H. Richard Lamb and Linda Weinberger).

Medical problems are recognized as issues with health, dental, psychological, injury, and other ailments of the human body. Inmate access to adequate medical care is sometimes unavailable and because of this, chronic and viral illnesses run rampant within the U.S. prison system. Based on a survey of inmates during 2004, a variety of information has been made available regarding inmate medical and health issues which can be used to make inferences and develop solutions to the prison healthcare system in the United States.

Prison health is an inevitable section of public health (WHO, 2011). Healthcare in prison has grown into a global and ignored problem (Finkel and Skorton, 2011). Prison healthcare has planned to offer a service approximately correspondent to that of community healthcare in both quality and access however according to research most prisons fail to accomplish this (Reed, 2003).