Prison Reform for Health Care’s Sake?
Jails and prisons lie at the intersection of criminal justice policies that target already marginalized populations, health disparities, public health, and proven biomedical strategies. The explosive rates of incarceration since 1980 are direct consequences of criminal justice policies that adversely impact urban communities disproportionately affected by detrimental correlates of poverty – particularly poor health as a result of an influx of illicit drugs. Illicit drugs are a double-edged sword: on one end are the dealers and the other are users. In the eyes of the law both are criminals and, in some cases, subject to similar sentences. Therefore, a good portion of the national prison population consists of individuals incarcerated for non-violent offenses or, put another way, “crimes against themselves” (Russell Simmons, 200X).
Is it a wonder that jails and prisons are overcrowded?
In California, the problem is compounded by the fact that other states often transfer inmates to already overcrowded facilities. Should we / the tax-paying-population be concerned that a three-panel judge ordered the release of several thousand inmates (over the next few years) for health care reasons? Or should we be more concerned that the prison system has an expendable population of several thousand to begin with? If that is the case, is ‘health’ a disguise for a seething undercurrent of a much larger problem?
Physical and mental well-being (or health) start with a healthy environment which includes access to the very resources that secure health: employment and comprehensive education. Neither is abundant or is sparingly available in urban communities. But drugs are! And so are mixed messages that, on the one hand, proselytize the advantages of acquiring an education, for example, while simultaneously depleting financial resources that make educational success possible; or, shameless promotions of financial success through illicit drug sales while limiting the alternatives to starving or barely surviving through a less-than-minimum-wage salary.
If one is not mentally unstable from his environment before incarceration, most certainly the conditions within will destabilize him. With rehabilitation programs limited to constructing home-made weapons as cheap but as deadly as Walmart-sold guns, it should not be a surprise that these men and women return to their broken-environment in a worse mental and physical state than they were before incarceration – hence, the high recidivism rate. So it should not be a surprise that correctional facilities are overcrowded. And it is an insult to be shocked, let alone, outraged at the poor health of inmates since their health was poor to begin with.
The question, therefore, is not that corrections facilities are overcrowded but how did they get that way? More importantly, what is the plan to mitigate this problem from occurring again? Or, are we more comfortable with locking people away as a measure to correct problems we’re unwilling to confront and rectify?
Holly Tomlin
BW 706 – Blog 3
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[I am having a hard time getting the links to work in a " blogger comment." The links are not working (I used the proper html tags), and the Blogger comment program is truncating longer urls. Thus, I was forced to break two of the urls into two lines. It seems that in order to go to the links, one must copy it then paste it in a browser. For the links that I had to split into two lines, one must copy and paste each line seperately into the browser making one url. These links contain important information. I hope you get to access it.]
I must respectfully disagree with your contention that exploding prison populations are a result of criminal justice policies that disproportionately target urban communities, especially when the exploding prison population is blamed on increased incarceration for drug offenses. Exploding incarceration rates are the result of violent crime prosecution, not drug crime prosecution.
Please see the following chart:
http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/glance/corrtyp.htm
In 2005, 53% of state prison inmates were in for violent offenses, while 20% were in for drug offenses. The numbers for black inmates were not dramatically different from the overall population—55% of black inmates were in for violent offenses, while 23% of black inmates were in for drug offenses.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/
pub/pdf/p07.pdf
(I used state prison numbers, because state prisons house the vast majority of inmates in the U.S., roughly ten times the number of inmates in federal prisons. I could not find state and federal prison data for the same year. Drug offenses do make up the biggest percentage of the population in federal prisons, but since the state prison populations taken together are so much bigger, inclusion of the federal prison numbers only raised the percentage of drug offenders by three points and did not decrease the percentage of violent offenders.)
I also disagree that high recidivism is the result of inadequate corrections programs. Department of Justice studies show that criminal behavior prior to incarceration is the best predictor of recidivism.
http://www.ojp.gov/nij/topics/
corrections/recidivism/prison-experience.htm
They were criminals before they were arrested, convicted and incarcerated. They were not made into criminals by the incarceration experience.
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