Former Californian prisoners are gaining much-needed access to medical care, thanks to the state’s expansion of Medicaid, according to a National Public Radio report.
Health insurance is often difficult for ex-offenders to come by, as many have difficulty finding full-time employment. Their situation is also made more dire because they struggle with higher rates of chronic conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, and asthma.
“It’s from living a hard life,” said Dr. George Pearson to NPR. “But, it’s also because they have common medical problems that go untreated. So the hypertension becomes heart failure, the diabetes becomes diabetic neuropathy, amputation, and blindness.”
Pearson said that a 45-year-old ex-offender often has the ailments of someone 55 years old.
The Affordable Care Act includes an expansion of Medicaid that could cover millions of low-income Americans, including those who have been incarcerated.
The Medicaid-like program covers preventative care, prescription drugs, specialty visits, mental health and substance abuse, the report states. Researchers say if these health issues go untreated, offenders could end up right back in prison or jail.
Mental health problems and drug addiction significantly influence criminal conduct, said Lenore Anderson, director of Californians for Safety and Justice.
One in six people in jail had some form of mental illness, according to a 2009 survey by the National Sheriffs Association. Officials estimate 50 to 75 percent of clients in Los Angeles County’s Adult Day Reporting Center have mental health problems. Moreover, 58 percent of California prisoners show symptoms of drug dependency, Anderson reports.
Nine out of 10 people in jails have no insurance to pay for it, according to Community Oriented Correctional Health Services.
Increasing treatment for behavioral health disorders before or upon release will more likely stop cycles of crime, said Anderson.
Archives for January 2013
Health & Fitness
Influenza (“the flu”) has recently arrived in Marin County, and it’s occurring in congregate living settings and in other places where people live in close quarters.
What is influenza?
It’s a virus that causes respiratory symptoms such as a fever, headaches, chills, body aches, runny nose, and sometimes a sore throat and or coughing. It is different from a regular cold, which usually only lasts a couple of days and presents mild symptoms. Influenza causes a fever and people feel very sick and are often confined to their beds.
How is influenza transmitted?
If someone infected with the flu coughs or sneezes, the virus will become airborne and a non-immunized person who inhales the infectious air can become sick. They don’t have to be near the person who coughed or sneezed: If somebody with the flu coughs or sneezes on one of the rails in the blocks, and another person touches it and then touches his own mouths or eyes, he can get the flu from the other person.
Who is susceptible to the flu?
Almost half of the inmates at San Quentin have not been immunized and can get the flu. This year’s vaccine is particularly effective at preventing the current season’s flu.
Who is at risk of death?
Certain people are at higher risk of death than others, such as people with asthma, the elderly, and people with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and HIV. Every year thousands of people in the U.S. die from the flu. Although the disease is highly preventable by vaccination, it is one of the top 10 causes of death in the U.S. If inmates, visitors or staff get sick, they can transmit it to babies, who are not immune and could die. Pregnant women are also at risk of death if they get the flu.
How will it arrive at San Quentin?
Through reception center inmates, staff, visitors and volunteers. The flu has an incubation period of one to four days; the average is two days.
People who care about the health of the inmates will get vaccinated.
What are the common side effects of the vaccine?
The most common side effect is a sore arm and maybe a low fever or achiness. This is not the flu; it’s your immune system doing what it was designed to do. For one or two days you might be feeling a little under the weather, which is far better than getting the flu and being bed-ridden for two weeks.
What are the chief concerns about the flu vaccine?
The most frequent concerns are that the vaccine will make people sick or give them the flu. However, this is not true. Occasionally, people get the flu after they get the vaccine, but this is likely because that person was exposed to the flu after they were vaccinated but before the vaccine took effect (it takes about two weeks after vaccination for the body to build up sufficient antibodies). Another possibility is they were exposed to a non-flu virus or a different strain of the flu: The vaccine protects against the three most serious strains of the flu, but not all, and it’s not 100 percent effective. However, the vaccine will prevent serious illness and hospitalization.
-Nurse Allyson Tabor contributed to this article-
Health Professionals Provide Valuable Instruction During Two-Day Workshop
The San Quentin peer-education group Centerforce received support from two Bay Area experts in providing more health-related help to prisoners.
Sandra Herrera and Linda Dobra visited Centerforce for two days to participate in a bilingual hepatitis workshop and to learn more about the Peer Health Education Program at San Quentin.
“The classes given by Centerforce here at San Quentin are excellent,” said Herrera. “I am very impressed with the program offered to the men.”
Herrera works with the HIV Prevention Program in Marin County’s Health and Human Services Department. She started in the field with the Napa Valley AIDS project, training youth to help their peers. She also worked for the Napa Emergency Women’s Services as a domestic violence counselor.
Herrera works alongside Dobra as an HIV and Hepatitis C counselor and Spanish interpreter at the STD clinic for M.A.I. (Minority AIDS Initiative) and for M.A.P. (Marin AIDS Project).
OTHER LOCATIONS
The Centerforce Peer Health Education program at San Quentin is also offered at the Central California Women’s Facility and at Valley State Prison. Trained peer health educators serving time at these institutions work to raise awareness, provide education, and serve as a resource for other incarcerated people on health issues such as hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis, substance abuse, and child support.
Centerforce has been providing peer health education at San Quentin for more than 20 years, said Dr. Julie Lifshay, manager for Centerforce Health & Special Projects. “Our aim is to provide factual information important for people who live here and their families. Centerforce supports other organizations to do the same work in the incarcerated settings in which they work. We provide trainings and materials to other organizations so that as many people and communities can benefit from these programs as possible.”
Nebraska’s Prison Population on the Rise
Due to a growing number of prisoners, Nebraska is proposing to reverse last year’s prison cutbacks.
Officials are seeking $5 million to hire new staff and reopen the Omaha Correctional Facility, which was closed after 2011 budget cuts. The state had also eliminated 70 full-time prison jobs.
“While (the department) was able to temporarily close this unit, it cannot remain closed and unoccupied with the increased inmate population,” department officials wrote in a budget request.
The number of prison admissions rose in 2012 from 2,874 to 3,047, The Associated Press reports. In 2010, the average daily population in Nebraska’s prisons was 4,462. The number grew to 4,609 in fiscal year 2012, according to the department.
The growth in prisoners is attributed to longer sentences, which translates to fewer releases offsetting new arrivals.
The Turnaround State? Does California Have One of the Finest Prison Systems in the Nation?
Gov. Jerry Brown has combined leadership on reducing California’s bloated prison population with relentless attacks on the courts, whose orders have made that badly needed “realignment” politically possible. Still, even I was surprised by the air of unreality to the governor’s dual press conference on Jan. 9 (backing up the state’s legal filings seeking an end to the federal court oversight of California’s prison health system), and a respite from its prison population cap. (Listen to the California Report’s coverage.)
“We’ve gone from serious constitutional problems to one of the finest prison systems in the United States. Most of the people get far better care for mental health problems or physical well being inside prison than they’ll get when released on the streets.” (Cecilio Padilla’s reporting on Fox 40.)
The state’s main correctional problem now, according to the governor, is the court’s oversight and lawyers.
While acknowledging court intervention had forced vast improvements to a system that was in crisis, Brown said overly intrusive judges had unleashed a feeding frenzy of highly paid attorneys “running around the prisons looking for problems.” (Paige St. John in the LA Times.)
I have not had time to read the state’s legal filings (almost done grading, almost) but these claims are remarkable and possibly outrageous. First, let’s remember the context. Judge Thelton Henderson put the state’s prison health care system in receivership in 2005, finding that after three years the state had accomplished very little toward a settlement agreement for improving health care and that a prisoner a week was dying of unmet medical needs.
POPULATION CAP
In 2009 a three-judge court ordered the population cap, finding that chronic hyper-overcrowding (with many units housing 300 percent of their already optimistic design capacity) was exacerbating the medical and mental health problems and making improvements impossible.
Then Attorney General Brown appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Brown v. Plata (he was now governor), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that order against all the same arguments the governor is once-again making. Describing the lack of health care as approximating “torture” in its significance, Justice Kennedy wrote:
“Just as a prisoner may starve if not fed, he or she may suffer or die if not provided adequate medical care. A prison that deprives prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity and has no place in civilized society.”
CONSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS
The evidence in the record, what Gov. Brown calls “constitutional problems,” included the following profiles of medical failure:
“California’s prisons were designed to meet the medical needs of a population at 100 percent of design capacity and so has only half the clinical space needed to treat the current population. … A correctional officer testified that, in one prison, up to 50 sick inmates may be held together in a 12–by 20–foot cage for up to five hours awaiting treatment. …. The number of staff is inadequate, and prisoners face significant delays in access to care. A prisoner with severe abdominal pain died after a five–week delay in referral to a specialist; a prisoner with ‘constant and extreme’ chest pain died after an eight–hour delay in evaluation by a doctor; and a prisoner died of testicular cancer after a ‘failure of M.D.s to work up for cancer in a young man with 17 months of testicular pain.’”
We can all hope that conditions like this are a thing of the past in California. The fact that they persisted in the state for at least a decade is an utter disgrace that calls for investigations and accountability, rather than euphemisms and attacks on the courts. But the very tone of the governor’s remarks is good reason to hope the courts will not relinquish oversight.
The fact that prisoners now get better health care than they get when they return to the streets may say much more about how poor community mental and physical health care is in California’s communities of rural and urban disadvantage.
A HARSH PLACE
It is also the case that prison is a far harder place on physical and mental health than even impoverished free communities because of crowded conditions, racialized gang divisions, and systematic lack of opportunities for education or work.
The governor coincidentally also acknowledged successful treatment for prostrate cancer, describing himself as “raring to go.” (Read Steven Harmon’s reporting in the Mercury News.)
If he thinks lawyers are gold-plating our prison health care, perhaps he should demonstrate that by receiving his future cancer follow-up treatment at Folsom or San Quentin. (One can hope his outcome will be better than the young prisoner who died of testicular cancer after 17 months of reporting pain).
Is California now one of the “finest prison systems” in the nation? A lot depends on what we mean by finest. If that means strong educational, vocational, and rehabilitation programs, that has not been true since the governor’s father was governor. Does it mean keeping the largest number of people locked up? Thanks to the courts, we have now lost that status to Texas, (but they are at least more competent managers).
The truth is California has followed a path of indiscriminate imprisonment for decades. Most of the damage was done during the 1980s under Republicans like George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, and Democrats like Gray Davis, who committed the state to mass incarceration policies.
While Gov. Brown’s realignment policies are an important turn away from that pattern, he has yet to articulate a convincing vision of public safety. In his attacks on the courts, he suggests he does not have one.
The claim that further efforts to reduce the prisoner population to meet the court order is baseless. The reality is that California prison sentences are not based on prospective risk, and California prisons offer no serious rehabilitation programs to the overwhelming majority of prisoners.
Reducing sentences by days, weeks, or even months (all that would be necessary to meet the targets) is unlikely to alter how those prisoners will behave once released.
Reprinted with permission from Simon’s Blog.
Capital Punishment: One Person’s Moral Dilemma
Death penalty or Life Without Parole – Will someone please be kind enough to tell me which of two evils is the “lesser” one? Maybe then I’ll know if I handled my moral dilemma morally, when I voted on Prop 34.
It’s seems strange now that when Proposition 34 first appeared on the horizon, over a year ago, it was greeted by us abolitionists with the big rah-rah of “Oh, Goody, now we’re going to get rid of the death penalty.” I even wisecracked, “Gee, then I’ll be out of a job.” None of us, many of whom, like me, had dedicated their lives to eliminating this barbaric practice, didn’t consider what the alternative would be. In our naivety, we just assumed that all the condemned prisoners would be jumping with joy when given LWOP. Well, we were wrong.
DEATH ROW
Some residents of Death Row here at San Quentin hastened to set us straight. They told us that, in their opinions, LWOP was worse than death. They, who are facing the executioner, said they’d rather die than face LWOP in the General Population. “The other death penalty,” they call it.
My conscience didn’t want me vote for LWOP, but what other choice did I have? I voted YES on Prop 34, because my conscience wouldn’t allow me to vote NO, which would have amounted to YES on DEATH.
Killing people who have (allegedly, at least) killed people to prove that it’s wrong to kill people serves no purpose. It’s not a deterrent, and it wastes a heap of money that could better be spent on education, medical care and other needs that would benefit society. Not to mention it’s morally wrong to kill people, regardless of what they have done.
Of course, an execution may assuage the desire of some people for revenge. Some prosecutors may tell families of homicide victims that executions will help bring closure, but family members I’ve spoken to say it didn’t happen that way; apparently the desired revenge and happiness aren’t attained by execution.
So the first question is: Why do we do it? Why is our country the only Westernized, Industrialized Democracy that still kills people for retaliation?
No European country has the death penalty, and their homicide rates are lower than ours. My Irish grandmother always said, “You’re known by the company you keep.” We are in the good company of Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Rwanda and China. Many Americans criticize the legal systems of those countries, yet imitate them in use of the death penalty. Where’s the logic?
EXECUTIONS
Yet there’s no doubt that the death penalty is on its death bed. The number of executions nationwide has dwindled to where Texas executed “only” 13 in 2011 and 15 in 2012. California hasn’t had an execution since 2006, a total of 13 since 1976. So, if we’re determined to have a death penalty, then why aren’t we actually utilizing it? We, as a nation, still condemn people to death, though fewer each year. Yet we persist in the notion that we must retain it. It makes no sense to me.
Why are many Americans so steadfastly devoted to capital punishment? Why does our system convey the concept that “justice” is spelled “r-e-v-e-n-g-e”? What do we expect to accomplish? Why do we seem to have a cultural love affair with the hangman?
It saddens me to say that I don’t believe we will ever find a way to eliminate capital punishment once and for all until we can thoughtfully answer the foregoing questions and figure out why we think killing people is a solution to crime. I won’t hold my breath.
Maria Telesco is a retired registered nurse, teacher, forensic investigator and free lance writer who has dedicated her adult life to ending the death penalty, thus far unsuccessfully.
Pondering the Future: What Would You Do?
Looking ahead 10 to 20 years, what’s the first thing you would do if you had the energy, time and resources?
That question was posed in 21 informal, random interviews in San Quentin. Included were 16 men in blue, three outside volunteers in the Prison University Project and two outside volunteers with the Marin Literacy project.
After leaving prison and discharging their parole, many are interested in starting their own businesses.
“I would start my own company in technology,” said Larry Histon. “It would give me an opportunity to live a good lifestyle and give back to my community.”
Thao would open up a resort in Thailand, Orlando Harris would start a lawn service and then a landscaping company, and E. Phil Phillips would go into the music business.
“I would start a record label and start it out with my own music,” said Phillips.
Others want to focus on personal interests, involving family and leisure. John Holmes would travel to Denmark, Brigido Mariscal would go back to work to put his kids through school and college, and Enrique Gabriel would visit his mother’s tomb.
Some of the men in blue say they would engage in altruistic activities involving social service, faith, or advocacy for reform. Michael Fields said he would “work to help those who are less fortunate” than him.
“…work to help those who are less fortunate…”
David Basile would reach out to at-risk youth. “I would start a youth-mentoring program in L.A. through Homeboy Industries and L.A. Kids on a Mission. I am networking with them now,” Basile said.
Rafael Calix said, “I would eat a vegetarian diet, organically, and become an advocate for organic farming to end the disparity of governmental support of chemical farming, which causes more health hazards than alcohol and tobacco combined.”
Trenton Capell would go into the missionary field and preach the Gospel.
Terrell Merritt said he would be an advocate for those that live on the margins of society. “The way to tell the success of a society is in how they treat the people in the margins, and I would like to be their voice because I have been in their shoes,” Merritt said.
All five volunteers interviewed said they would volunteer even more than now. Sue Pixley of Project REACH said, “I would probably teach more math. I would continue to teach pre-calculus at the university where I work, and I would continue to volunteer for Project REACH.”
All three PUP teachers would continue to volunteer as teachers or tutors for the San Quentin college program.
Two expressed interest in personal activities. “I would like to start a family,” said Steve Weber, a math tutor. Rachel Walsh said, “I would go out and have adventures.”
January 2013 News Briefs
1. CORCORAN — Last fiscal year, the California State Prison’s Visions Adult School graduated a record number of 125 students, who earned General Education Development certificates, reports CDCR News.
2. SHELBY COUNTY, Tenn. — The county and U.S. Justice Department signed an agreement intended to keep low-level offenders out of jails and prisons, and instead send them to rehabilitation programs closer to their homes. “We’re hoping our agreement will serve as a template for other jurisdictions,” said Tom Perez, an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department.
3. LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Kerry Porter was exonerated of murder after serving 14 years in prison. Porter was released in 2012. He has filed a lawsuit claiming that Metro Louisville and eight police officers fabricated evidence, used improper identification procedures, and hid evidence that would have cleared him. He was convicted of a 1996 murder, reports The Associated Press.
4. WASHINGTON — Santae Tribble was granted a certificate of innocence after spending 28 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, reports The Associated Press. Tribble, 51, was convicted in 1978 when an FBI agent testified his hair matched one on a stocking mask used by the killer of a taxi driver. The judge’s order read there is “clear and convincing evidence” Tribble did not commit the murder.
5. TEXAS — In 2011 the state began to change its Juvenile Justice Department in an attempt to keep juvenile offenders closer to home for treatment. Since then, the juvenile prison population dropped from 5,000 to just over 2,000.
6. MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A U.S. District Court judge is deliberating whether the state’s policy of isolating prisoners who have tested positive for HIV is legal. South Carolina is the only other state to segregated HIV-positive prisoners.
7. HOUSTON, Texas. — Anthony Pierce, 53, spent the last 34 years on Death Row. He was convicted and sentenced to death three times for the August 1977 killing of Fred Johnson during a robbery, reports The Associated Press. An appeals court subsequently overturned his sentence. Prosecutors say they will not seek another death sentence. Pierce is innocent of the charges, according to Robert Loper, his attorney.
8. MARIN COUNTY — State officials are giving county officials high marks for how they are handling low-level offenders diverted from the state’s prison system to county facilities. The county program coordinates the probation department, sheriff, district attorney, public defender, court and health department staffs as well as Novato police. Officials have developed ways to help offenders, assisting them with housing and jobs and providing in-custody treatment for mental health and drug dependency, reports the Marin Independent Journal.
9. SACRAMENTO — The rate of prisoners committing new crimes after release has continued to drop, reports state corrections officials. The three-year recidivism rate peaked at 67.5 percent in 2008. The new report shows a recidivism rate of 63.7 percent in 2011. The report shows that there is still a problem with the issue of “revolving-door criminals” in California as the recidivism rate among those with two or more prison stays is more than 75 percent.
10. COLUMBUS, Ohio — Gov. John Kasich commuted the death sentence of Ronald Post to life without the possibility of parole, according to The Associated Press. Post was convicted of the 1983 shooting death of a motel clerk during a robbery. Kasich’s decision relied on a recommendation by the state parole board, which said it did not question Post’s guilt, but says there were too many problems with how his lawyers handled the case, the AP reports.
11. SACRAMENTO — California prison officials plan to cut health care workers in early 2013. Notices went out to 2,200 workers with the intent of cutting 829 jobs beginning March 31, 2013. The layoffs are the result of a reduced prison population brought on by realignment.
12. MENDOCINO COUNTY — Realignment of non-violent offenders to the state’s county jail system shrunk the amount of prisoners available for fire crews. The California legislative analyst has suggested the state assign higher risk prisoners to fire crews to relieve prison overcrowding. Fire camps are currently operating 16 percent below capacity.
13. HARRISBURG, Pa. — Thanks to bipartisan legislation, the state’s prison system has been reformed by moving prisoners out of “state prisons where cost are the highest, and help them become productive members of society,” reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. “It’s about time we started thinking a little smarter about how we incarcerate people,” Gov. Corbett said at a news conference. “The answer isn’t always building new prisons.” Over the last 30 years, prison costs have tripled, and the number of inmates has ballooned from 10,000 to 51,000, according to state figures. It now costs taxpayers an average of $34,000 a year to house an inmate in one of the 26 state prisons.
14. VATICAN CITY — The Pope told participants of European prison conference to educate prisoners, not just punish them, reports The Associated Press. The Pope advised prison administrators to respect the dignity and rights of offenders. He said society and prisoners would benefit from better treatment.
15. SANTA CRUZ — Since realignment, about 88 people have been sentenced to the county jail who would have gone to prison, reports the Santa Cruz Sentinel. County probation is monitoring 128 more people who would have been on state parole. The county is adding at least eight more probation officers, bringing the department total to 51 officers. The average stay in county jail increased by a month to more than 13 months.
16. SANTA RITA — Disabled detainees are confined in cells without wheelchair access to toilets and showers, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. A lawsuit filed in Alameda County Superior Court claimed the conditions are unconstitutional. The lawsuit also alleged that wheelchairs and canes were taken away from people who need them and that detainees with certain conditions, such as sleep apnea, are restricted from rehabilitation programs that can shorten their sentence.