Cancer care poses problems that prison systems are badly positioned to meet. Prisons tend to be distant from urban centers with cancer doctors, and health services afforded most prisoners don’t include regular preventive care. Beyond those practical barriers, inmates, their families and critics describe a cost-obsessed culture pervasive in prison systems that encourages inattention and half-measures.

Read more here.

 

Prisoner accounts laid out in lawsuits, investigations from a new watchdog office and internal department documents obtained by Crosscut point to a pattern of delay that leaves the state’s 18,800 incarcerated men and women unable to access basic health services.

Homicides and suicides in prison may draw more focus, but, in Washington as in much of the country, nine out of 10 prisoners who die inside fall to illness. And, though many are lifers, about a third of those who don’t leave prison alive are dead before they turn 55.

Read more here.

“So much for the ‘pro-life’ administration,” the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author, wrote in a Facebook post. “The taking (of) a life is always immoral. So is the taking (of) a life to punish the taking of another life. This is why the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that the death penalty is ‘inadmissible.’ It is an assault on the dignity of the human person and on human life.”

More than 1,000 faith leaders signed a letter unveiled on Tuesday demanding the White House and Attorney General William Barr halt the practice.

“As faith leaders from a diverse range of traditions, we call on President Trump and Attorney General Barr to stop the scheduled federal executions,” the statement reads. “As our country grapples with the COVID 19 pandemic, an economic crisis, and systemic racism in the criminal legal system, we should be focused on protecting and preserving life, not carrying out executions.”

Read more here.

Reducing the role of policing and the criminal justice system as a whole is not a radical concept and is based on the widely acknowledged idea that the justice system has taken on an outsize role in society.¹ For too long, American communities have allowed—and in many ways mandated—that the criminal justice system serve as the de facto response to a broad swath of social issues, from behavioral health crises to substance misuse to school discipline. Police officers are expected to address situations that they are neither trained nor equipped to handle, which can significantly exacerbate harm for civilians. In establishing a commission on law enforcement in January 2020, even Attorney General William Barr acknowledged this point, saying, “[O]ur officers must confront a wave of social problems, such as homelessness, drug addiction, and mental illness – problems that demand solutions beyond their authority and expertise.”²

Read more here.