Prison Health News

20/07/2024

"On June 7, 2024, approximately forty individuals detained at BFDF engaged in their First Amendment-protected right to go on a hunger strike to protest the facility’s policy and practice of locking people in their cells for approximately 18 hours per day. Hunger strikers were also protesting the facility’s recent decision to end free phone calls to family, a critical lifeline for many detained individuals. Disregarding the protesters’ constitutional rights and ICE’s own operating standards, ICE officials responded to the hunger strike by threatening and using physical force against the strikers; placing them in solitary confinement; and denying them access to their jobs, recreational activities, and the law library."

July 10, 2024, Buffalo, NY – Yesterday, Robert F.

29/06/2024

“There’s a system, pattern and practice of racist and unconstitutional abuse in the Missouri Department of Corrections, and especially within the Jefferson City Correction Center,” Stroth said, adding: “It’s George Floyd 3.0 in a prison."

Four Missouri prison guards have been charged with murder, and a fifth with accessory to...

26/06/2024

Philly friends, join Prison Health News for a picnic in FDR Park this Sunday, June 30th from 1-3pm! Come hang out, enjoy some food, and learn more about PHN. For more details and to RSVP: https://bit.ly/picnicwithPHN

16/06/2024

"She was the first trans litigant to have her interests heard by the Supreme Court, and she won an important concession from the system that controlled her. A unanimous concession, no less. The protections that followed are not nearly enough, and prison r**e persists, but we have the little protection we do because of Dee Farmer."

You want an outlaw hero? Here's your outlaw hero.

13/06/2024

"Rumors about COVID vaccines were among the most viral topics during the pandemic, sowing doubt over and over again and contributing to an estimated 250,000-300,000 deaths in the US that could have been prevented by vaccination."

New study analyzes how vaccine content shared on Facebook influences people’s decision to vaccinate

13/06/2024

"As my good friend, fellow activist, and one-time registered s*x offender Lashanda Salinas, who spent time locked up because her partner claimed she didn’t disclose her status, says, “Current scientific and medical evidence should inform state lawmakers and practices that criminalize actions taken by people living with HIV. States should update and repeal outdated laws and policies.” She is 100% correct. We need to do more to educate legislators on HIV and HIV criminalization."

In thirty-four states here in America, simply living with HIV can land you with a criminal record and, in some of those thirty-four states, can get you a place on the s*x offender registry. Oh, and…

08/06/2024

Support our movement partners and enjoy a relaxing summer afternoon!

30/05/2024

https://theintercept.com/2024/05/24/gaza-palestinian-doctors-hospital-detained-missing-disappeared/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter

Dr. Khaled Al Serr of Nasser Hospital hasn’t been heard from in two months. His family assumes Israel detained him, like other Gaza doctors.

25/05/2024

"A recently issued report from the Pennsylvania Prison Society, Hungry and Malnourished in Prison Food Service in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, explained that the cost drop was built on using poor quality food that often failed to meet inmates’ basic nutritional needs and left them hungry, malnourished, prone to diet-related illnesses and dissatisfied.

After analyzing the Department of Correction’s master menus for a year, Prison Society Executive Director Claire Shubik-Richards called the culinary nightmare faced by about 39,000 inmates in the state’s 24 prisons “nutritional neglect.”

“I can tell you that in 2023 and 2024 there were simply not enough calories (for inmates) and what calories there were relied on starchy filler,” Shubik-Richards said."

Prison Society has released a report saying the food provided to inmates leaves them hungry and malnourished.

24/05/2024

"The report published Sunday found at least 13 hospitalizations for hypothermia over three years at the Marion Correctional Treatment Center. The AP also obtained records that showed medical providers expressing concern about temperatures."

Leading Virginia Democrats say recently uncovered hypothermia hospitalizations among inmates at a Virginia prison deserve further scrutiny. Lawmakers pledged this week to press Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration for answers

23/05/2024

"Overall, women are more likely than men to be incarcerated for drug and property offenses. Reflecting the disparities of the US criminal justice system, incarceration rates among women disproportionally affect individuals of color, especially Black women, who are incarcerated at twice the rate of their White counterparts. Of this growing population of incarcerated women, the majority are of reproductive age. It is estimated that 4 percent of women are pregnant upon admission to state prisons, and 58 percent of women in jails are mothers. Not all individuals who may experience pregnancy identify as women, and health care and carceral environments impact transwomen and nonbinary folk experiencing pregnancy as well.

Although there have always been obstacles to accessing abortion for incarcerated pregnant people, in the aftermath of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, many more incarcerated pregnant people will be forced to give birth in prison. With the exception of Montana, the 10 states with the highest percentages of incarcerated women also have enacted abortion bans. In addition, the Dobbs decision has accelerated efforts in some states to prosecute pregnant people who use drugs under fetal protection laws. Criminalization of pregnancy, in combination with reduced access to abortion, will likely increase the number of incarcerated pregnant people in states with abortion bans and punitive policies. Given existing racial disparities in reporting and prosecuting pregnant people of color for drug use, Black pregnant people are likely to be disproportionately affected, thereby exacerbating the Black maternal health crisis."

With the rise in the number of incarcerated women in US prisons and jails, post-Dobbs restrictions on access to reproductive health care inside and outside of carceral settings, and growing state efforts to criminalize pregnancy, attention must be focused on state and prison policies.

21/05/2024

Our Advisory Board member Kwaneta Harris wrote this beautiful Mother's Day article on The Appeal:

"Historically, women of color have raised and loved others’ children no differently than their biological ones. America has a long history of separating children from parents, from slavery to the boarding schools and genocide of Native Americans. Other surrogate mothers in prison with me have taken a few youngsters under their wings because they remind them of their younger selves. Those makeshift parents have spoken of a karma pact with the universe: If I protect and guide someone else’s child in here, maybe someone will do mine out there."

Prison has robbed my three children of 17 years of Mother’s Day. But this year, Mother’s Day gifts started arriving two months early.

21/05/2024

"I have to disclose my status all the time, wherever I'm at," said Irwin. "If a person finds out I'm HIV positive later without disclosing my status, even for what they thought was a s*xual touch, like if on an arm a knee or something like that, they could try to prosecute me," which is something Irwin says has happened to her twice already.

Irwin says she would have to register as a s*x offender in some cases, if she's convicted.

"Which means I'm not 500 feet from kids. I will not be able to get a job nowhere, I will not be able to rent on anybody's leases or anything because all they see is the assault."

House Bills 498 and 513 have been proposed to remove criminal offenses, also related to donating blood.

19/05/2024

"On Aug. 30, one week after Buckley’s Prism article was published, Buckley said he was moved into a cell with a man who had a history of violent behavior and who immediately attacked him. Following the altercation, Buckley said corrections officers stripped him, pepper-sprayed his body, and then placed him in solitary confinement—not even allowing him to shower off the chemical residue before placing him in isolation."

After publishing a piece with Prism, Demetrius Buckley says he was purposefully subjected to violence and put in solitary confinement

19/05/2024

“Living with HIV is not a crime and the continued enforcement of laws that criminalize a person based on their HIV status, regardless of risk, perpetuate bias, stereotypes and ignorance about HIV,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division."

The DOJ found the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office violated the Americans with Disabilities ACT (ADA) by enforcing the state's aggravated prostitution law.

14/05/2024

"The lawsuit stemmed from the botched transfer of [incarcerated people with COVID-19] in May 2020 from a Southern California prison to San Quentin, which at the time had no infections. The coronavirus then quickly sickened 75% of inmates at the prison north of San Francisco, leading to the deaths of 28 inmates and a correctional officer.

California now faces four lawsuits from the relatives of those who died as well as from inmates and staff who were infected but survived."

The Supreme Court has denied an appeal from California corrections officials who sought immunity from lawsuits claiming they acted with deliberate indifference when they caused a deadly COVID-19 outbreak at San Quentin prison four years ago.

11/05/2024

After brave survivors at the women's prison FCI Dublin spoke out about rampant s*xual assault by staff, the federal Bureau of Prisons suddenly closed the prison and transferred everyone housed there to prisons around the country under unhealthy conditions. Please share and support!

19/04/2024

"Over 6,000 incarcerated people died in the first year of the pandemic, researchers found, using numbers they collected from state prison systems and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. A Marshall Project analysis of data the researchers released shows the overall prison mortality rate spiked at least 50%, and potentially exceeded 75%, with roughly 50 or more people dying per 10,000 in prison in 2020.

The virus hit older generations especially hard, the study’s data shows. Not all states shared counts by age. But in the eight states that did, death rates for people aged 50 and older rose far higher than for others, “reaffirming how much more vulnerable older prisoners are,” said the study’s lead author, Naomi Sugie."

People in prison died at 3.4 times the rate of the free population, with the oldest hit hardest. New data holds lessons for preventing future deaths.

07/04/2024

“We filtered the water with socks,” former Stillwater inmate Jesse Curry said. “It was medieval.”

Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater was the first prison established in the state in 1853. Its current, second facility in Bayport opened in 1914. The building has no central air, and in September, roughly 100 inmates protested conditions with a sit-in, sending the prison into lockdown for over a day. The state departments of Corrections and Health later launched an investigation into the water quality at the prison and promised to develop a water management plan that would include hiring outside plumbers.

Kent Jones, a Stillwater inmate of over 24 years, said a reduction in visitation days to just one a week began out of COVID-19 concerns but have not returned to normal since then. Even at one day a week, he said cancellations happen often."

A decline in staff and rise in inmate population has exacerbated longstanding problems at Stillwater prison.

05/04/2024

"I’m not a fighter. But I do love to eat. In every prison I’ve been in over the course of 28 years incarcerated, food has been my way of becoming valuable to those who might otherwise be more inclined to harm me. And over the years, it’s become a way for me to not just defuse threats to my own safety, but also the safety of neighbors, many of whom are also older, q***r or otherwise especially vulnerable. Food can be a form of violence harm reduction here.

I’ve hosted many conflict-resolution meetings to which I lured both parties with promises of food. I tell them I’m not going to try to change their opinion, I’m just going to facilitate and they can each say their piece, but first we’ll have some food."

In 2015 I was transferred to West Tennessee State Penitentiary, a prison with a reputation for violence. My new cellie ...

05/04/2024

Van Jones calls into Ebro in the Morning to discuss why he believes some prisoners should be released from prison due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the effect of the virus in the black and brown community and also takes a look at the 2020 Presidential election. Watch the full conversation below.

03/04/2024

"Garrett, who has served about 30 years in TDCJ, alleges in a lawsuit he first filed 11 years ago that the schedule violates his Eighth Amendment right, which bars the state from inflicting cruel and unusual punishment. The scheduled sleep deprivation, he argues, poses a serious risk to all incarcerated peoples’ health in Texas."

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a man incarcerated at the Estelle Unit who has been suing over his sleep schedule for a decade.

03/04/2024

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-04-02/hepatitis-c-los-angeles-county-jail-california-medicine-health-care

The Los Angeles County jail system needs a concerted effort to screen for and treat the blood-borne liver disease, which kills about 14,000 Americans a year.

03/04/2024

Huge thanks to medical students Olivia Duffield, Hannah Calvelli, and professor Brian Tuohy at Temple University medical school for working with Prison Health News and bringing attention to the crisis of medical neglect in prison! Their medical school has published this article about their work with us:

“Our role as students has been to be a resource for people in prison and a liaison between them and medical information,” Calvelli said. “They don’t have access to the internet or their social networks or basically anything else.”

Students have even researched which foods are available in the prison commissary, so they can recommend items people can buy to help manage their diabetes, Duffield noted.

“We want to make the world a better place,” said Duffield, who plans to specialize in infectious diseases. “I feel like we’re building a movement of practitioners and others who are poised to make a change.”

Two students and their professor at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University are bringing attention to a largely unseen public-health crisis: the severe lack of healthcare for people in prison.

03/04/2024

Federal prisons are beginning to offer PrEP for HIV prevention, but only to people who will be released soon.

03/04/2024

"Instead of letting people return home once they’ve completed their sentence, prison staff collude with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to funnel thousands into the federal deportation system. They accomplish this by profiling, detaining, isolating, and reporting those they suspect might have been born outside the United States, with devastating consequences for them, and for our broader community.

The ACLU, the Asian Law Caucus, Asian Prisoner Support Committee, and Root & Rebound have worked with a wide range of partners, incarcerated people, and formerly incarcerated people to expose CDCR's anti-immigrant practices. Together, we're leading a multi-pronged campaign, composed of lawsuits, investigations, public education, and organzing, to stop CDCR from transferring people to ICE, once and for all."

The ACLU of Northern California is one of the largest ACLU affiliates in the nation with more than 100,000 members. Join us.

28/03/2024

"Dan Pfarr, CEO of a reentry nonprofit in Minnesota called 180 Degrees, says the older men he sees come out of prison are in rough shape.

"They've gone so long with substandard health care or not the right types of health care," says Pfarr, whose organization has contracts with the state. "For men coming out of prison, 40 is the new 60, 60 is the new 80."

By one measure, about a third of all prisoners will be considered geriatric by 2030. Prison systems are grappling with how to care for their elderly prisoners — and how to pay for it.

27/03/2024

Although Nigeria appears to be edging closer to controlling the HIV epidemic, people in Nigerian prisons are two times more likely to be living with the virus than people in the community, a National HIV Assessment study conducted by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has revealed...

21/03/2024

"And one thing that the world doesn’t talk about is the terrible torture that the people in Israeli prisons are subjected to. They are fighting them, torturing them with hunger. They brought down the rations for — their food rations by 70%. They beat them regularly. Most recently, they attacked even one of the political prisoners, Marwan Barghouti, and many of his colleagues, as well, beating them badly. And it goes on. We have lost already 13 people in Israeli jails because of torture and because of beating and because of starvation. The situation in Israeli prisons is horrifying. And in Gaza, we don’t know exactly the number of people who were imprisoned or kidnapped. We’re talking about thousands of people, maybe 3,000, maybe 4,000. But the people who were released told us horrible stories about how they were tortured in an Israeli concentration camp in the Negev with electrical shocks, with drowning them in the water, with terrible beating. The director of Shifa Hospital is still in prison. They broke both of his hands, as was reported. And they tried to force him to admit things that he never did. That is the reality and the situation on the ground. It’s horrifying."

A new U.N.-backed report has found that famine is imminent in northern Gaza with nearly a third of Gaza’s population experiencing the highest levels of catastrophic hunger. This comes as Israel launches another major raid at Al-Shifa Hospital, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have...

13/03/2024

Content warning for medical neglect

The Utah Department of Corrections is under fire for discriminating against a transgender inmate who the U.S. Department of Justice said was driven to harm herself after she was repeatedly