Re: “WA jails have among the highest death rates in the U.S. A new law to explain why isn’t working.” [March 26, Northwest]
Sydney Brownstone’s important article on Washington state’s high jail death rate calls for missing explanations from state officials. Deliberate indifference to the serious medical needs of incarcerated people violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. This month the New England Journal of Medicine called “Health Care in U.S. Correctional Facilities — A Limited and Threatened Constitutional Right.”
Brownstone points out that the problem goes far beyond suicide prevention for the mentally ill. The problem extends to how best to provide health care to our incarcerated citizens. Washington state jails use one of two different systems: either care from national private for-profit corporations or from ad hoc contracts to local groups. Both approaches receive widespread criticism. But is one system better than the other?
Greater transparency on Washington state’s alarming death rate inside its jails, as Brownstone’s article suggested, may help answer this important question.
Richard O. Cummins, M.D., Seattle, Emeritus Professor of Emergency Medicine, University of Washington Medical Center
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