“Addicted to punishment: Jails and prisons punish drug use far more than they treat it”

The title of this post the title of this new Prison Policy Initiative briefing by Emily Widra. The subtitle highlights its themes: “Despite the common refrain that jails and prisons are ‘de facto treatment facilities,’ most prioritize punitive mail scanning policies and strict visitation rules that fail to prevent drugs from entering facilities while providing little to no access to treatment and healthcare.” Here is how the briefing starts (with links from the original):

Jails and prisons are often described as de facto mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, and corrections officials increasingly frame their missions around offering healthcare.  But the reality is quite the opposite: people with serious health needs are warehoused with severely inadequate healthcare and limited treatment options. Instead, jails and prisons rely heavily on punishment, while the most effective and evidence-based forms of healthcare are often the least available.

This tension points to a crucial flaw in our nation’s reliance on criminalization: these institutions were never intended to be — and can never function as — healthcare providers. Efforts to reverse engineer them as such have proven ineffective, harmful, and financially wasteful, substituting medical best practices with moralizing and surveillance, from providing exclusively abstinence-based education to scanning and photocopying mail in a vain attempt to keep contraband out. This briefing builds on our past work about the unmet health needs of incarcerated people and the endless cycle of arrest for people who use drugs by compiling data on treatment availability versus drug-related punishment in jails and prisons across the country. We find that despite the lofty rhetoric, corrections officials punish people who use drugs far more than they provide them with healthcare.