Prisons and Healthcare

[stormdog]

As I noted earlier to Danae, it also doesn't help one get through one's readings more efficiently when said readings actively inspire anger at your government. Jill Nicholson-Crotty and Sean Nicholson-Crotty make a good case that US states with more negative social perception of inmates have lower funding for inmate health programs and have statistically significantly higher rates of diseases like HIV and tuberculosis in prisons. It seems that certain units of government, influenced by public perception that inmates are not worthy of care, fail to adequately fund healthcare for a population that is already significantly marginalized, often outside of prison as well as in it.

This is not surprising, sadly, but it is indefensible. And it suggests that our (that is, the United States' public's in general, not ours like yours and mine specifically) belief that prisoners are undeserving of basic levels of care may lead to prisoners failing to receive basic levels of care. So yay democracy, huh? I'm sure private, for-profit prisons will address this issue somehow (he says, rolling his eyes).