Imprisonment and Public Health | thefeverblog

Imprisonment and Public Health | thefeverblog.

Excerpt from the 8 December 2014 post

December 8, 2014 thefeverblog Leave a comment

Mass incarceration in the United States goes beyond the logistical issues of overcrowded prisons. A shallow mindset wouldn’t identify the connection between mass incarceration and public health, but it’s prevalent and significance is being recognized. An article published in the New York Times briefly discusses the impact mass incarceration has on public health. It touches on a report published by the Vera Institute of Justice, which is an organization that focuses on making justice systems fairer through research and innovation. Most people in prisons come from impoverished communities, and therefore have low health-status.  Specifically, people in prisons have higher rates of chronic disease, mental illness, and substance abuse.

But that’s really the obvious part of the mass incarceration-public health relationship. Overcrowding exacerbates health problems, especially communicable diseases such as flu and other viral infections. In a previous post, I shared how social reform in Russia led to mass incarceration and in turn one of the largest outbreaks of tuberculosis in history. Mental illness  and substance abuse are major problems in jails, and the problem isn’t being addressed adequately. Although over 45% of incarcerated people have a mental illness and over 68% have substance abuse issues, only 15% receive proper treatment.

But that’s not even the  real problem. [My emphasis] Our justice system is focused on penalizing, so vulnerable people coming out of prison are unable to receive any assistance because their actions have removed their eligibility. On first glance, the conservative argument would be that felons shouldn’t be privy to housing, medical, and financial assistance. But the whole picture has to be taken into consideration. Families can be easily torn apart by a family member being incarcerated, especially when parents are taken away from children.

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Mass incarceration in the United States goes beyond the logistical issues of overcrowded prisons. A shallow mindset wouldn’t identify the connection between mass incarceration and public health, but it’s prevalent and significance is being recognized. An article published in the New York Times briefly discusses the impact mass incarceration has on public health. It touches on a report published by the Vera Institute of Justice, which is an organization that focuses on making justice systems fairer through research and innovation. Most people in prisons come from impoverished communities, and therefore have low health-status.  Specifically, people in prisons have higher rates of chronic disease, mental illness, and substance abuse.

But that’s really the obvious part of the mass incarceration-public health relationship. Overcrowding exacerbates health problems, especially communicable diseases such as flu and other viral infections. In a previous post, I shared how social reform in Russia led to mass incarceration and in turn one of the largest outbreaks of tuberculosis in history. Mental illness  and substance abuse are major problems in jails, and the problem isn’t being addressed adequately. Although over 45% of incarcerated people have a mental illness and over 68% have substance abuse issues, only 15% receive proper treatment.

Related articles

• “Mentally Ill in Prison” Mother Jones Search
• Bioethicists Call for Return to Asylums for Long-Term Psychiatric Care

[News article] New approaches needed for people with serious mental illnesses in criminal justice system — ScienceDaily

New approaches needed for people with serious mental illnesses in criminal justice system — ScienceDaily.

From the 14 October 2014 article

esponding to the large number of people with serious mental illnesses in the criminal justice system will require more than mental health services, according to a new report.

In many ways, the criminal justice system is the largest provider of mental health services in the country. Estimates vary, but previous research has found that about 14 percent of persons in the criminal justice system have a serious mental illness, and that number is as high as 31 percent for female inmates. Researchers are defining serious mental illnesses to include such things as schizophrenia, bipolar spectrum disorders and major depressive disorders.

“It has been assumed that untreated symptoms of mental illness caused criminal justice involvement, but now we’re seeing that there is little evidence to support that claim,” said Matthew Epperson, assistant professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. Specialized interventions for people with mental illness in the criminal justice system have been developed over the past 20 years, such as mental health courts and jail diversion programs, Epperson said.

“But we need a new generation of interventions for people with serious mental health issues who are involved in the criminal justice system, whether it be interactions with police, jails, probation programs and courts,” he said. “Research shows that people with serious mental illnesses, in general, display many of the same risk factors for criminal involvement as persons without these conditions.”

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: Criminal Justice Center (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Related articles

• New approaches needed for people with serious mental illnesses in criminal justice system
• New approaches needed for people with serious mental illnesses in criminal justice system
• Trauma and Women Behind Bars in America: The Need for a Criminal Justice Makeover
• Internet addicts often suffer from additional disorders – ScienceDaily

[Reblog] Criminal Law and Public Health – Working at Cross-Purposes?

: Criminal Justice Center (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

From the 18th November 2013 post at HealUoS

 

According to recent news reports, the city of Edinburgh is getting tough on those who seek sensual pleasures outside of the confines of their own homes.  The police have asked that condoms be banned from saunas as a way of trying to prevent sexual activity on the premises, and city Councillors have been asked to stop issuing licenses for saunas and massage parlours.

Besides being a naïve and impractical way to prevent people from having sex, there has been, unsurprisingly, a strong condemnation of such a move on the grounds of its potential negative effect on public health.  The charity Scot-pep, for instance, has warned that implementing the police proposal on condoms could lead a HIV epidemic, as well as the proposal to limit establishments where sex workers can meet clients puts them at greater risk from some of the inherent hazards of plying their trade outdoors.

There has been a long history in the United Kingdom of a connection between the criminal justice system and public health.  In some cases, it has been a beneficial relationship in which everything from firearms restrictions, requirements for seat belts, motorcycle helmets and child safety seats and restrictions on intoxicating substances, provide examples where the criminal justice system has been used to mitigate or prevent behaviours that are harmful to individual and population health.  Nevertheless, not all intersections of criminal justice and public health are mutually beneficial.  What is most notable is the distinct progression that has been made from a so-called “policing model of public health”, that often focused on ideas of moral hygiene and legal moralism, which remained influential in Britain into the 19th century, towards more social models of public health that focus on health promotion, harm reduction and social justice.

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Read the entire post here

 

A Bid to Keep Youths Out of Adult Prisons – NYTimes.com

 

A Bid to Keep Youths Out of Adult Prisons – NYTimes.com.

Excerpts

DENVER — James Stewart died alone.

The 17-year-old from Denver had committed a terrible act: while driving drunk, he slammed into another vehicle head on and killed its driver. Initially placed with other juvenile offenders, he was moved to the county lockup after the district attorney charged him as an adult. Left alone in his cell despite his frantic pleas to be with others, he tightened his bedsheets around his neck and killed himself.

His death, in 2008, was one of two suicides by young people in Colorado jails that helped spur a significant change in state law last year by narrowing the authority of prosecutors to charge juveniles as adults and to place them in adult jails, part of a wave of such laws nationwide.

In a reversal of the tough-on-crime legislation that swept the nation in the late 1980s and ’90s, nearly half of the states have now enacted one or more laws that nudge more young offenders into the juvenile justice system, divert them from being automatically tried as adults and keep them from being placed in adult jails and prisons.

Sarah Brown, a director of the criminal justice program at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said the shift stems from a decline in juvenile crime, concerns about the costs of adult prisons and a growing understanding of adolescent brain development showing that the young have a greater potential for rehabilitation.

The Supreme Court has increasingly taken neurological research into account on juvenile justice issues — most recently in a 2012 case,Miller v. Alabama, which barred mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for those who committed their crimes before they turned 18. Justice Elena Kagan’s majority opinion in the case cited adolescents’ “diminished culpability and heightened capacity for change.”

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Read the entire article here

Related articles

• “A Bid to Keep Youths Out of Adult Prisons” (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
• Detailing new state reform efforts to ensure kids get treated as kids by criminal justice system (sentencing.typepad.com)
• Mothers of kids abused in prison recall their pain (thegrio.com)
• Trend Against Trying Kids as Adults (drudge.com)
• Adult system is no place for kids (hamptonroads.com)
• Children and Prisons (aycockjordan.wordpress.com)
• New York Has Made Zero Progress In Changing the Laws that Put Teens in Adult Prisons (blogs.villagevoice.com)
• New coalition to focus on juvenile justice in Jacksonville (members.jacksonville.com)
• Pre-K and Prisons (drjosephwise.wordpress.com)
• The Price of Retribution (huffingtonpost.com)

 

[Reblog]Re-framing Drugs as a Public Health Issue

Re-framing Drugs as a Public Health Issue.

From the Criminal Injustice Blog item of April 2, 2013

By Louellyn Lambros

It is time that drug use be viewed as a public health issue, rather than a matter for the criminal justice system. Too many drug users are saddled unnecessarily with criminal records, making it extraordinarily difficult to have fulfilling lives including being able to work and to make other kinds of valuable contributions to their families and society.

The skyrocketing incarceration rate in our country has been an outgrowth of the War on Drugs, which began over thirty years ago and had its roots in a political strategy to gain the votes of disaffected whites, in the wake of a successful Civil Rights struggle. Since outright discrimination on the basis of race was no longer acceptable or legal, an alternative route was to label African-Americans as criminals, thereby opening the door to reintroduce all the same forms of discrimination – in employment, housing, voting rights, and so on.

As the number of incarcerated people in the US grew from 300,000 in the last half of the 20th century to over 2.2 million today, racism continues to fuel the revolving door of our fellow citizens into the criminal justice system. In addition, the system has become big business, employing a growing number of judges, lawyers, prosecutors, and all types of ancillary personnel. Prisons themselves are becoming increasingly privatized, run as money-making corporations which sell shares on the NYSE. In thirty-seven states, prison labor is contracted to major corporations who pay 16 to 28 cents an hour, ensuring astronomical profits.

While the majority of Americans, once educated on the issue, may be persuaded by the injustice of the situation as it affects minority communities and may be horrified by how the one percent is capable of turning anything into a lucrative business, it will take more time and effort to address the concerns of those whose loved ones have suffered from addiction and subsequent incarceration.

The truth is that no one, particularly the most vulnerable dealing with drug addiction, is served by the current system. Those who are susceptible to addiction are even more vulnerable and in need of self-soothing in the face of extreme stress. Why do therefore we respond to their difficulties with a system of incarceration which stresses them to the max and saddles them with second-class citizen status as a ‘felon’ upon release back into their home communities?

A policy of decriminalization, as has been in place in Portugal since 2001, would take the whole issue of drug addiction out of the criminal justice system and make it a civil and public health matter. A panel of three– made up of two individuals with a health background and one with a legal background–would make a determination: is this person’s drug use a problem? If not, perhaps a fine or a warning will suffice. If it is deemed a problem, treatment and rehabilitation are in order. Treatment facilities could easily be funded by resources reallocated from the criminal justice system.

Related articles

• A new day for the ‘war on drugs’ (maddowblog.msnbc.com)
• Jason Silverstein: More Treatment, Less War: The White House Drug Policy Reform (huffingtonpost.com)
• 21st Century Drug Policy (propresobama.org)
• Drug Policy Reform In Action: A 21st Century Approach (whitehouse.gov)
• Focusing On Prevention And Neuroscience, President Ends Reagan’s War On Drugs (newsone.com)