Health Care in US Prisons: a Human Rights Issue Hiding in Plain Sight

There are 2.3 million people in US prisons in conditions that are often inhumane and at worst life threatening. An estimated 80,000 of US prisoners are locked up in solitary confinement, which means in a 6 ft x 9 ft cell containing little more than a bunk bed, toilet, sink, shelf, and unmovable stool. Prisoners in solitary confinement are let out in leg irons, handcuffs and belly chains for ‘exercise’ two or three times a week in dog kennel-type runs. Bathing is sporadic and the food often miserable and insufficient. One third of prisoners in solitary confinement are thought to be mentally ill and half are placed in solitary for nonviolent crimes.

Recently, the press has begun suggesting the situation in US prisons might be improving slightly. In part, this may be due to reforms pushed by the American Civil Liberties Union in Mississippi that forced reduction in numbers of men held in solitary and because of the hunger strikes in California which have brought small reforms there. Under steady pressure from citizen groups, Maine has reduced the numbers of men in solitary. Furthermore, reforms proposed by US Attorney General Eric Holder aim to reduce overall crowding in prisons by releasing the old and sick, and by loosening the hitherto mandatory drug laws.These laws have sent untold thousands into prisons on lengthy sentences for minor drug offenses.