The Case Of Estelle V. Gamble Essay

Society implemented policies like the Anti-drug Abuse Act of 1986 and Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 that targeted racial minorities, people with disabilities and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds. On an institutional level, health disparities continue to rise between the prison and general population because the private prison industry is focused solely on monetary gain. The cost of providing healthcare to prisoners diminishes profit. A lack of quality education and exorbitant high school dropout rates increase the likelihood of unemployment and criminal behavior leading to incarceration. Policy, privatization of prisons and education are upstream factors impacting incarceration and healthcare in prisons. Employment, income and criminal behavior are downstream factors. Prisoners aren’t being given resources or opportunities for rehabilitation. Instead, they are thrust back into the social inequalities that predisposed them to a life of drugs and crime. As people are disenfranchised from society, they are pushed to the margins of

Is it right to grant prisoners the availability to health care when they have taken the rights away from others that put them in jail in the first place? Should health care be made a privilege to those who haven’t committed crimes? There is an ideology that prisoners should not have the right to healthcare because they went against the rights of the constitution and in turn should not receive healthcare, making it more of a privileged. However, the opposition of that argument is that it goes against the eighth amendment right if health care is not provided to prisoners because it is deemed as cruel and unusual punishment. This debate subsequently leads to many good points regarding the pros and cons to making health care a privileged or right

Many advocates are fighting for improved medical care. It is improving slowly but surely. For example, many prisons started new counseling and education programs for HIV/ AIDS. Lawsuits and grievances are filed against prisons that are careless. The best strategy for change to occur is by having the media involved. “Lawsuits and Media go hand and hand,” Law stated. For example in Wisconsin, anonymous female prisoners called a Milwaukee newspaper to report medical negligence that led to an inmate’s death (Law, 2009). This phone call gave attention to this problem. Laws were passes to train medical personnel and for improved medical records.

The Bureau of Prisons carefully lists the inmate’s health care rights and the inmate’s responsibilities in order have access those rights. In the Federal Correction Institution at Terminal Island, California the Inmate Information Handbook lists out the specific rights to health care access each inmate has and then the handbook lists the inmate’s responsibility to be able to access the health care. An example is the inmate has the right to access all services on Terminal Island including medical, dental, and all support services but the

Linder and Frederick J. Meyers. This article starts with a story about an inmate who found out he had cancer while incarcerated. Then, it goes on to incorporate his story throughout the article in interview form to provide inside information on the treatment of prisoners. Most inmates come in with addictions and substance abuse, no access to health care, homelessness, and untreated mental illnesses (Linder and Meyers 895). They blame this on the lack of medical health that’s available to the general population. According to Linder and Meyers, “Inmates and the free-living populations share 6 of the 10 leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, cerebrovascular disease, respiratory disease, influenza/pneumonia, and septicemia”. With the remaining four for inmates being liver disease, AIDS, self-harm and digestion

In the 2011 case of Brown v. Plata Judge Kennedy stated that the prisons in California were beyond overcrowded which lead to lack of proper medical and mental health care, which violated the cruel and unusual clause of the Eight Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (Brown v. Plata, 2011, 1). It stated that California prisons were built to house approximately 80,000 inmates but by the times it went to the Supreme Court it had nearly doubled the original number (Newman and Scott, 2012, 548). It also stated that a prison which deprives prisoners of adequate medical care is an inadequate living facility for any human (Brown v. Plata, 2011, 13). Failure to comply with adequate medical services would cause inmates physical torment which in return would violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause (Newman and Scott, 2012, 549). As a result of overcrowding and lack of proper mental and medical health care the State of California was ordered to reduce their prison population by one-third by May 2013 (Owen and Mobley, 2012, 47).

The objective of this paper is to examine issues of health care inequity affecting the incarcerated Canadian population. We will be investigating the impacts of these health issues on the indicated vulnerable group, assessing how services and resources are currently distributed to deal with this issue, proposing public health responses to address the issue and also identifying what further research must be conducted to gain a better understanding of the issue.

Skeem, Sara Manchak and Jillian K. Peterson (2011) compared males and females in jail who suffer from schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder to the general U.S population. They found that males incarcerated in jail are three times more likely to suffer from schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder than males in the general population and females incarcerated in jail are nearly twice as likely to suffer from schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder as females in the general population. (Skeem, Manchak, Peterson, 2011) Amanda C. Pustilnik (2005) highlighted the findings that more mentally ill individuals are incarcerated in prisons and jails than being treated in mental health care facilities. “Annually, over 300,000 adults and children with mental illnesses many of whom have committed only a public order infraction or no offense at all-are confined in state and federal prisons, jails, and juvenile corrections facilities. A mere 60,000 people with such conditions are treated annually in medical facilities. Thus, for every one person treated in a hospital, about five people are treated, or merely confined, in penal facilities. Prisons have become the largest mental health facilities in the United States.” (Pustilnik, 2005: 226, 227,

Prisoners should be required to pay co-payments for the medical services that they receive in prison. The purpose of incarceration is to rehabilitate offenders to become active and productive taxpayers in their community. In order to do so, they should be held to the same standards that average law abiding citizens are. The two articles noted that even if the inmate does not have the funds to pay for the co-payments, they will not be denied treatment. Prisoners are guaranteed the same basic rights as everyone else and that includes their right to autonomy; in which they can receive or deny treatment.

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

The Ohio Justice and Policy center documented a claim in 2003 for three prisoner’s Rodney Fussell, Gary Roberts, and James Love. The prisoners stated that they obtained incompetent medical care. Although some may argue, they are prisoners and do not deserve medical care, they still have the legal right to obtain it. These three men suffered from Hepatitis C, and periodontal disease.

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

While, the issue of the incarcerated population having the privilege of this scarce medical resources is extensively and generally approved or compelling recognition within the correctional health profession and there is a case-law supporting the matter of concern, that the statues of a person as an inmate must not preclude such person as a patient from receiving adequate care in respect to serious health needs, regardless of the cost of such treatment. They also have all the social and moral values since the law does not exempt them from citizenship (Puisis, 2006, p.23).

When a criminal is caught they are placed in a prison, in jail, a correctional facility, a detention center, or anything else that is government run and designed to keep the criminals separate from the noncriminal (1). Prisons aren't just for keeping them separate, they are also used as a punishment for their crimes and then help with rehabilitating the inmates so they are able to return to society (1) and not reoffend once their sentence is up or they are on parole. At any moment, there are 11 million people in prison (3). Each one of those 11 million people could have brought in a wide range of health problem like a mental illness, a substance abuse issue, or a communicable disease (1) which can then cause problems and issues for the staff of the prison, who might not be equipped to deal with them, or could have a communicable disease spread from staff to the general population. The World Health Organization (WHO) took an interest in prisons and their means of health care after outbreaks of tuberculosis (TB) and it was then when they took an even greater interest in the health care delivery in prisons. The WHO created a plan called the Health in Prison Plan (HIPP) in the hopes of improving the health of the prisoners as well as the health and safety of the staff.

Majoring in Criminology, Law & Society has allowed me to explore issues related deeply to health justice. Classes within the major like: Race, Ethnicity and Social Control, Miscarriages of Justice and Community Context Crime- have illustrated to me the devastating effects brought on by the inequalities within our health system and especially within prisons where racial groups are targeted and subjected to this inequality. I previously did work with the Woodland Police Department, where I learned more about these issues and designed a research project to explore the effects of limited healthcare within prison systems, since we know that initially health benefits rise while in jail, but they get worse as time goes on because they do not offer enough services to adequately care for people. Due to limited resources and time, I was unable to go farther with this research project, but this something I would like to explore in the future.