GENERAL PRISON HEALTHCARE

• With state and Federal budgets pinched and hyper-incarceration still swelling the inmate general population, underfunded and understaffed medical facilities can simply not cope with the reasonable demand for services addressing previously unmet and present needs

• many inmates who are poor and of color, correctional health care, despite its legal and ethical limitations, is better than their previous circumstances in the outside world

• options offered are generally not all that they could possibly do for the inmate in that condition 

• inmates with a serious chronic physical illness fail to receive care

• inmates with mental illness most were off their treatments at the time of the arrest

• Improvements are needed both in correctional health care and in community mental health services that might prevent crime and incarceration

• high rates of chronic medical conditions especially viral infections

• substance abuse and mental illness are common among inmates

• Inmates had serious injuries they had sustained since being incarcerated or serious injuries from their crimes

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Prison is a place where diseases are easily spread due to the close quarters and poor hygiene. However, in a good prison, there is a decent (but not enough) amount of care that is given, such as checkups and some facilities focus on sick inmates. However, in the scheme of things, it is very hard to pinpoint the rights of a criminal and to trust the condition the person may be in. Most of our funding will go to any place but the healthcare of criminals because it's not a priority and a large issue is following up on their illnesses through meds but that is very hard to get access to especially due to the cost, and how do they know that they will not abuse the substances given. Overall this is a very difficult topic to have a right and wrong solution because they are criminals but at the same time, they are also humans and deserve to be treated.