"Chronic Punishment: The unmet health needs of people in state prisons"

The title of this post is the title of this new report from the Prison Policy Initiative authored by Leah Wang.  Here is how the report gets started (with some original links retained):

Over 1 million people sit in U.S. state prisons on any given day.  These individuals are overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately Black, Native, Hispanic, and/or LGBTQ, and often targeted by law enforcement from a young age, as we detailed recently in our report Beyond the Count.  And all too often, they are also suffering from physical and mental illnesses, or navigating prison life with disabilities or even pregnancy.  In this, the second installment of our analysis of a unique, large-scale survey of people in state prisons, we add to the existing research showing that state prisons fall far short of their constitutional duty to meet the essential health needs of people in their custody.  As a result, people in state prison are kept in a constant state of illness and despair.

Instead of “rehabilitating” people in prison (physically, mentally or otherwise), or at the very least, serving as a de facto health system for people failed by other parts of the U.S. social safety net, data from the most recent national  Survey of Prison Inmates show that state prisons are full of ill and neglected people.  Paired with the fact that almost all of these individuals are eventually released, bad prison policy is an issue for all of us — not just those who are behind bars.

This report covers a lot of ground, so we’ve divided it into sections that can be accessed directly here:

Physical health problems: Chronic conditions and infectious disease

Access to healthcare: People in state prison disproportionately lacked health insurance

Mental health problems: Exceptionally high rates among incarcerated people

Disabilities: Disproportionate rates of physical, cognitive, and learning disabilities

Pregnancy and reproductive health: Expectant mothers are underserved in prison

Conclusions and recommendations: How do we begin to address unmet needs in prisons?

Methodology: Details about the data and our analysis

Appendix tables: Explore the data yourself