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The Collision of Confinement and Care: End-of-Life Care in Prisons and Jails

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Nancy Neveloff Dubler
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Extract

In 1997, the United States incarcerated over 1.7 million persons in local jails and in state and federal prisons. These inmates are disproportionately poor and persons of color. Many lack adequate access to health care before incarceration and present to correctional services with major unaddressed medical problems.

Convictions for drug possession and use have increased the number of injection drug users with HIV and AIDS in prisons. Determinate sentencing and “three strikes and you’re out” laws have increased the number of inmates who are aging and dying during their sentences. Their feelings reflect those of Larry Rideau, sentenced to life without parole and founder of The Angolite—an award-winning prison newspaper at Louisiana's Angola Prison—“The dream of getting out, you equate with heaven. Dying in prison you equate with hell.”

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , Summer 1998 , pp. 149 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1998

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References

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