NCJ Number
74292
Journal
Prisoners' Rights Newsletter Pages: 319-413
Date Published
1980
Length
95 pages
Annotation
This article explores the health status of incarcerated women by examining the involvement of courts and professional associations in health care delivery in jails and prisons and by assessing the essential components of adequate health services for women inmates.
Abstract
It focuses on people who are incarcerated by the State as pretrial detainees or as sentenced inmates. A brief sketch of women's jails and prisons is provided, and a comparison of these institutions with those that house men is presented. Details are included on the physiological and sociological differences between the sexes, and a description is given of how some of these differences affect women's health. Further, because incarcerated women are a demographically select group, a survey of their particular health status at the time of entry and during incarceration is included. The article traces the history of Federal court intervention in prison health care and examines one case indepth -- Todaro v. Ward. This class action lawsuit charged that the entire health care delivery system of Bedford Hills women's prisons in New York State worked constitutional deprivation. The article also describes the formulation of standards and the accreditation procedures of the American Medical Association (AMA) Jail Project and compares its standards to those of other groups, including the American Public Health Association and the American Correctional Association. In addition, the history of other accreditation programs in medicine is given. It is concluded that more systematic research on the current health problems of incarcerated women is necessary since current AMA and other agency standards are inadequate. In addition, further data about the correctional practices that affect women's health should be collected so that it will be possible to determine what health regulations are needed and how they can be fashioned to be both meaningful and flexible. Finally, once an institution is found to meet the minimum established requirements, some mechanism for continuing monitoring of care must be created. Tabular data and 381 notes are included.