...Prisoner Treatment Ethical Treatment of Prisoners Kathy Dauber SOC 120 Introduction to Ethics & Social Responsibility Instructor: Milagros Baez November 25, 2013 The following paper is about the ethical treatment of prisoners. It will discuss the ethical and moral issues that surround those that are incarcerated and what happens behind the scenes, when they need medical attention and other aspect that happen while in jail. Even those that are incarcerated need to have the proper care from a physician or medical staff, so that their needs can be met even if they have done something wrong. Ethical Treatment of Prisoners Medical Facilities When it comes to prison medical facilities, there usually are not enough in prisons to accommodate the inmates. It has been estimated that 95% of inmates received by the federal prison systems need immediate medical care for preexisting conditions (Alexander, 1972). Those that are larger prisons have their own hospital facilities while smaller prisons and jails use community hospitals. Jails have a more critical problem. The American Medical Association did a survey that showed 65.5% had only first-aid facilities and 78% had no formal arrangements with physicians in the community for the medical care of those in the jails. This same study also found that 80% of the medicines given in jails were given by non-medical personal (AMA, 1972). It is viewed that the inmates are not required or should receive medical treatment...
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...Research Involving Prisoners: Ethical Values and Legal Regulation Lawrence O. Gostin Georgetown University Law Center, gostin@law.georgetown.edu Georgetown Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 976413 This paper can be downloaded free of charge from: http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/479 http://ssrn.com/abstract=976413 297 JAMA 737-740 (2007) This open-access article is brought to you by the Georgetown Law Library. Posted with permission of the author. COMMENTARIES Biomedical Research Involving Prisoners Ethical Values and Legal Regulation Lawrence O. Gostin, JD U NTIL THE EARLY 1970 S , R. J. R EYNOLDS , D OW Chemical, the US Army, major pharmaceutical companies, and other sponsors conducted a wide variety of research on prisoners—a captive, vulnerable, and easily accessible population.1,2 During that time, approximately 90% of all pharmaceutical research was conducted on prisoners, who also were subjected to biochemical research ranging from testing diet drinks and simple detergents to studies involving dioxin and chemical warfare agents.3 From 1962 to 1966, for example, 33 pharmaceutical companies tested 153 experimental drugs at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia, including a Retin-A (tretinoin) study in which researchers did not seek informed consent and prisoners were not adequately treated for pain.4 By the mid-1970s, biomedical research in prisons sharply declined as knowledge of the exploitation of prisoners began to emerge...
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...Rights of Inmates Kem P. Charles ASA College Research Methods Abstract This project is about Corrections or being employed as a correctional officer. The purpose of this project is to determine whether or not inmates should have rights. When we think of the term “inmates” most of us if not all believe that all their rights should be revoked as a result of them being found guilty. The legal system provides us with the “Innocent until proven guilty” but not in the minds of the outside world. Guilty individuals to the human race is considered to be a castaway with no rights to anything good or positive because they have done wrong and have lost all rights to fairness. On conducting my research for this paper, Inmates as well as you and I have the same rights even more. I found out that more detailed care is given to inmates than they could provide for themselves. Their health and safety comes first, their meals are timely and balanced. Inmates have the right to complain about prison conditions and voice their concerns about the treatment they receive. They also have a right of access to the courts to air these complaints. The main role of incarceration is to serve as a deterrent. The reason being that persons who are caught and penalized for their crimes don’t ever want to return to prison and try to stay away from trouble. Those who have managed to escape punishment will continue to take chances until perhaps they are caught. Another valid reason for punishment...
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...During WWII, the treatment of prisoners of war was supposedly governed by the Geneva Conventions, the first of which was signed in 1906, and was operative during WWI, and the second of which was sign in Switzerland, 1929. The second Geneva Convention had been signed by the powerhouses of the Western world, including Britain, Italy, the US and Germany. The Allied Forces were under stern orders to treat Axis prisoners according to the conventions, and this order was mostly followed. Generally, the Axis countries treated prisoners from Australia and other Allied Forces in accordance with the conventions. The Germans were even obliged to apply this humane treatment to Jewish POWs who wore the British Army uniform, thus sparing them the horrible...
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...Fyodor Dostoevsky stated that, “You can judge a society by how well it treats its prisoners”. Many prison systems in the world seem rather harsh. North America has received much criticism for having 76.6% of their ex-prisoners re-arrested within 5 years. Whereas Norway has a much superior rate, only 20% of ex-prisoners continue to be arrested within 5 years. This illustrates how the prison system of the United States is corrupt. For instance, the United States has nearly 5% of the world’s population, but nearly a quarter of that 5% is serving time in prison. The society of the United States can truly be judged, and blamed for many ex-prisoners being re-arrested, considering the annual wage of an American citizen drops an average of 40% after...
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...what life holds after prison contribute to the inmate’s mental health. Inmates whose judgment is altered or impaired by depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other severe mental illnesses are impacted more severely by the tribulations of prison life. Inadequate mental health services is also something mentally ill inmates face, this absconds them undertreated or mistreated. Numerous prisoners do not receive proper psychotropic medication due to the lack of mental health services and care, further impairing their capability to function. The security mission of prisons tends to overlook mental health considerations. Prison rules and codes of demeanor teach staff about security, safety, supremacy, and power. Coordinating the needs of the mentally ill with prison regulations and goals is almost impractical. Factors of the sources and effects of the concern between prison and mental illness will be observed in this research proposal. Reforms will be provided to improve mental health requirements and defend the rights of the increasing population of mentally ill prisoners. An indication of the causes for the increase of mentally ill individuals in U.S. prisons as well as the tension between prison operations and inmates with mental illness will also be presented. The intention of this research is to take a Looking at the characteristics that address the pros and cons of...
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...Prison Privatization Prior to the 1980s, private prisons did not exist in the US. In the 1980s, as a result of the War on Drugs by the Reagan Administration, the number of people incarcerated rose. This created a demand for more prison space. The result brought up the development of privative and the for-profit prison industry. [1] In recent years, there has been debate over the privatization of prisons. Both publicly provided and publicly financed prisons operate under the supervision of the various Departments of Corrections that exist at the state and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. In a study that used three comparable Louisiana medium security prisons, two of which were privately run by different corporations and the third was publicly run. The data from this study suggests the privately run prisons operated more cost-effectively without sacrificing the safety of inmates and staff. The study concluded that the privately run prisons had a lower cost per inmate, fewer critical incidents, a safer environment for employees and inmates, and a higher proportional rate of inmates who complete basic education, literacy, and vocational training courses. However, the publicly run prison outperformed the privately run prisons in areas such as fewer escape attempts, controlling substance abuse through testing, offered a wider range of educational and vocational courses, and provided a broader range of treatment, recreation, social services, and rehabilitative services.[1] Supporters of...
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...crimes is relatively new. During the 15th century in Europe, the penalties for crimes were some form of corporal punishment like whippings for less serious crimes and execution or enslavement for more serious offenses. In early 16th century England, vagrants and petty offenders were committed to correctional institutions known as workhouses. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the government transported convicted felons to the English colonies. The punishment was thought of as the hard labor to which the prisoners were consigned. It wasn't until the 17th century that the idea that persons convicted of crimes could be punished by confinement and released after a period of time. During the 17th century, England and other European countries like Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands began imprisoning debtors, delinquent juveniles, minor misdemeanant, and felons. Early jails were mostly dark, overcrowded, and filthy. Prisoners were herded together indiscriminately, with no separation of men and women, the young and old, the convicted and unconvicted, or the sane and insane. In America the concept of imprisonment came because of deep religious beliefs. The English Quaker William Penn abolished the death penalty for most crimes in the late 1600's and substituted imprisonment. The Pennsylvania legislature replaced capital punishment with incarceration as the primary punishment for...
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...CUSTODIAL AND NON-CUSTODIAL MEASURES The Prison System Criminal justice assessment toolkit 1 UNITED NATIONS OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME Vienna CUSTODIAL AND NON-CUSTODIAL MEASURES The Prison System Criminal Justice Assessment Toolkit UNITED NATIONS New York, 2006 The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations, the Secretariat and Institutions of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the Belgian 2006 OSCE Chairmanship concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. This publication has not been formally edited. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE ISSUE ..................................................................................... 1 2. OVERVIEW: GENERAL AND STATISTICAL DATA ......................................................... 5 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 7.1 7.2 OVERVIEW OF COUNTRY AND PRISON SYSTEM.............................................. 5 PRISON POPULATION ........................................................................................... 6 PROFILE OF PRISON POPULATION..................................................................... 6 QUALITY OF DATA ......................................
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...Colonialists never considered the possibility of rehabilitation; their aim was to frighten the offender into law abiding behavior. Unlike today where prisons are viewed as instruments of punishment, this has not always been the case. The common jail dates back hundreds of years, but was used solely as a means of detention, a temporary place for the prisoner until acquitted, fined, or subjected to corporal punishment (Schamalleger, F. 2010). Pennsylvania was determined to be different from other colonies. Founder William Penn brought his Quaker values to the new colony, relying on imprisonment with hard labor and fines as the treatment for most crimes, while death remained the penalty only for murder. In 1790 Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail became the first prison by the Pennsylvania Quakers. In the Penitentiary Era, which lasted from 1790 to 1825, prisoners were housed in penitentiaries, where they were supposed to do penance and be rehabilitated into productive citizens (Schmalleger, F. 2010). The Quakers hoped to use religious and human principles to rehabilitate the inmates. The philosophy of the prison was to have prisoners accept responsibility for their actions and make amends to...
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...1995 Eighth Amendment case concerning the treatment of prisoners at California’s Pelican Bay Supermax Penitentiary. I argue that the language of dehumanization fails to describe the harm of solitary confinement because it remains complicit with a hierarchical opposition between human and nonhuman animal that rebounds against prisoners, especially those who have been racialized and/or sexualized as less than human. Humanist discourse neglects the sense in which both human and nonhuman animals are affective, corporeal beings who rely upon the support of others for their own capacity to orient themselves within a mutually-perceived world. Drawing on the testimony of inmates in solitary confinement, and situating this testimony in relation to the political and scientific history of US incarceration practices, I develop a post-humanist critique of solitary confinement. Keywords: Solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, intercorporeal Malebranche would not have beaten a stone as he beat his dog, saying that the dog didn’t suffer. Merleau-Ponty, Nature, 166 Certain carceral practices are often condemned – both by prisoners and by their legal or political advocates – on the grounds that they violate human dignity by treating people like nonhuman animals. For example, in the 1995 Eighth Amendment case, Madrid v Gomez, the treatment of prisoners at California’s Pelican Bay Supermax Penitentiary is consistently compared to the treatment of nonhuman animals.i Some inmates were “hog-tied”...
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...criminal causing behavior of prisoners by eliminating completely the factors or circumstances that drive them to commit criminal acts. Criminologists such as Martinson who conducted research on the effectiveness of rehabilitative programs such as educational, community based and transcendental programs noted that rehabilitative programs had a higher efficacy when they were oriented towards providing treatment to prison convicts so as to reduce recidivism. Martinson noted that both the educational and transcendental rehabilitative programs were designed to provide prisoners with life skills that they could use to manage their criminal causing behavior as well as equip them with technical skills that would improve the quality of their lives (Prison conditions, 2013). Rehabilitative programs that are focused on the principles of effective intervention are able to target the known factors of recidivism thereby necessitating change and also enabling the incorporation of cognitive or behavioral treatments to reinforce the behavior of the criminal offender by eliminating criminal thinking patterns. Principles of effective intervention ensure that rehabilitative programs are able to take into account the various characteristics of offenders which would affect their response to rehabilitative treatments. According to various rehabilitation programs such as vocational and academic education, community based programs; moral recognition therapy and behavioral treatment programs have proved to...
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...legal terms and laws to keep in mind before discussing this case. According to Legal Aspects of Health Care Administration by George D. Pozgar, the Patient Self-Determination Act of 1990 “provides that each person has a right under state law to make decisions concerning his or her medical care.” (2012). The text further states that “adult patients who are conscious and mentally competent have the right to refuse medical care to the extent permitted by law, even when the best medical opinion deems it essential to life” (Pozgar, 2012). To be considered competent there are specific guidelines to help assess a patient. Capacity is the ability to make treatment decisions (Pozgar, 2012). The individual must be able to understand...
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...With advanced medical treatments getting more accessible to public, there has been a scarcity of organs for transplantation for the past few decades. In order to meet the enormous demand, alternative sources have been adopted from condemned prisoners to supplement the supply. In particular, the practice of harvesting the organs of condemned prisoners for use in transplant operations has become an open secret in China. As the number whom she executes has decreased by 75% in recent years, shortage problem arises for a medical system that relying on such flow of organs. In fact, use of executed prisoners' organs for medical transplantation has always received bitter criticism from the international community. What highlight the problem are the...
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...The Holocaust was traumatizing event in the 1900s. It was a life changing event for the Jews. This time period went down in history. Rudolf Hoss, estimated during the Nuremberg Trial that nearly three million people died while being held hostage in death camps. Also, ninety percent of the ones killed were known as Jews. In death camps the people who were known as “different” suffered from cruel treatment, harsh environment and immoral medical experiments. Well, we all know Hitler had millions of people killed in death camps. It seemed, due to the history that Hitler was a racist man. Hitler disliked any other race that were not considered his race. “That if they eliminated the people who stood in their way and the degenerates and racially inferior, they-the great Germans would prosper” (Schwartz). So, Hitler wanted to kill a lot of...
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