Prisons Reflect Society: An Introduction to Health. Care. Incarcerated.
Teaser
“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members,” said Mahatma Gandhi. Healthcare is complicated enough, but within a carceral setting, bound by budget constraints and compassion barriers, the experience is abysmal. At best confusing… costly… restrictive… these failings are to be expected; they are how the system was designed to work. On Health. Care. Incarcerated. we interview people living this reality. We place their stories in context historically, scientifically, legally, medically, and politically, and speak with advocates working to reform the system through abolitionist aims. These are their stories.
In production…
1. Follow the Money
“Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value,” said President Joe Biden. The cost of healthcare and the cost of prison have increased dramatically while health outcomes plummet, exacerbating inefficiencies. In this episode we learn where prisons get their money, where they spend it, and who decides. We’ll investigate money from a whole-budget, whole-person perspective and hear from incarcerated folks about how financial redistribution could improve their health and wellbeing.
2. Sugar Sells
Faced with slimy salad and raw chicken, Kay Enyart and the women of Coffee Creek Correctional Institution in Oregon, find themselves—if they can afford it—avoiding the cafeteria and opting for commissary junk food instead. In this episode we’ll learn about sugars connection to addiction and hear from Dr. Robert Lustig, a leading physician-scientist, who refutes the idea that sugar is even food.
3. Diabetes & COVID
How does a healthy man—a marathon runner— end up with glucose levels that put him in the diabetes danger zone? A sedentary lifestyle, a nutrient-poor diet, and delays in care can all exacerbate chronic conditions. In this episode we interview Steve Brooks, incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison and diagnosed with prediabetes during the COVID-19 pandemic. He tells us about how his care plan is at odds with his environment, and we speak with experts about the science of diabetes, the pancreas, and COVID-19.
4. The Compassion Gap
At Rikers Island in New York, a man died after an infection went ignored. In Louisiana, multiple women bled out, alone, for hours during labor and subsequently gave birth to stillborn babies. The gap between pain and believability leads to devastating consequences. In this episode, we’ll speak with people who have lived through the bleakest outcomes of the compassion gap, forced to navigate a system that’s against them in their most vulnerable moments.
5. Mental Health
The conditions that worsen mental health—isolation, weakened social ties, waning purpose and meaning—are also the defining qualities of prison. If prison is meant as rehabilitation, then the services provided therein must align with connection, community, and purpose. They seldom do. In this episode, we’ll learn about innovative mental wellbeing programs as well as speak with young people whose stage of development make them a unique demographic in need of our support.
6. Shackled & Separated
When an incarcerated woman gives birth, she suffers from the system's most egregious forms of inhumanity. Prisons were never designed for women, no less pregnant women, the result of which is a lack of requisite prenatal testing, separation from one's baby after mere hours, and being shackled during labor, a practice that is neither illegal nor uncommon. The sum of which is the traumatization of women at a time when they should be nurtured. In this episode, we’ll speak with a prison doula and learn about how the carceral environment can accommodate new mothers.
7. Death
People die in prison. Not always for nefarious reasons, but often in the way many of us die when our time comes, from cancer or COPD or old age. The need for end-of-life care is becoming increasingly pronounced, yet few correctional institutions have kept pace. In the absence of hospice care, a person might die in their cell, without pain relief or spiritual support. In this episode, we speak with the Executive Director of the Humane Prison Hospice Project and with Fernando Murillo who spent the last five years of his sentence as a hospice caregiver, a time he describes as “transformative.”
8. The Built Environment
Form follows function, as the old adage goes, is as true in prison as on the outside. In the name of security, prison design prioritizes around-the-clock control and surveillance, but can design also solve for human wellbeing? In this episode we’re talking about how the built environment contributes to a system of subjugation and poor health outcomes, and how we can design our way out of it.
9. Wellbeing
Whole-person health is contingent on an ecosystem of factors working in harmony together: the food we eat, the safety of our homes, our faith, access to mental health care, and even social ties. The carceral system though, was not designed for human wellness—no matter how many resources or support groups are thrown at it. In this episode, we’ll speak with yoga teachers, wellness practitioners, and faith providers to understand how people behind bars are caring for themselves when the system won’t.
Bonus. Innovation
After decades of delay, the pandemic forced the hand of patients, doctors, and policymakers to adopt telemedicine as a mainstream service—but prisons have been using it for years. It’s an innovative mechanism to reduce delays, connect resources, conduct remote diagnostics, and lessen the burden of transportation. It is an important entry point for smarter healthcare, but it is not a silver bullet. In this episode we speak with innovators and legal experts who want to see health care delivery in prison totally reinvented.