how to have ethical treatment of inmates

Correctional authorities should respect the human rights and dignity of prisoners. No prisoner should be subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or conditions. For a convicted risen, loss of liberty and separation from society should be the sole punishments imposed by imprisonment.

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How ethical are we in treating prisoners?

Apr 27, 2017 · There are also three different approaches to these ethics theories, Relativism, Emotivism and ethical Egoism. All of them give a different approach and a different solution to the ethical treatment of prisoners. The Utilitarianism is the theory that one should choose to do that which produces a better outcome for the largest number of people.

What are the ethical issues in the correctional system?

Nov 22, 2019 · To do that, many would argue that prisoners need to be treated much more ethically and humanely than they are today. Making Prisons More Ethical. If prisons are to become the correctional facilities that they were intended to be, then inmates need to be treated ethically. Individuals are housed in a prison to pay for their crimes.

What are the ethical dilemmas of Prisons guards?

Ethical Treatment of Prisoners Introduction Currently, the status of the prisoners is representative of the unethical way they are treated throughout the U.S. Prisoners' rights advocates argue that not enough attention is called to the plight of prisoners, who they say face unduly harsh and cruel conditions, even though the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution …

How should health care be provided to prisoners?

This research paper focuses on ethical treatment of prisoners in the United States. The treatment of prisoners is based on the recognition of the inherent dignity of all members of the human family and their equal and inalienable rights. Prisoners all over the world are deprived of their rights. Prisoners and detainees are perceived as a societal threat, and their imprisonment is …

How should prisoners treated?

How can Correctional Ethics be improved?

What is the humane treatment of prisoners?

What are the special ethical concerns with incarcerated populations?

What are ethical issues in prisons?

Why is it important to be ethical in corrections?

Should prisoners have human rights?

Do prisoners have fundamental rights?

Are prisoners entitled to human rights?

Which ethical principle do you have to be most concerned about when conducting research with prisoners?

What are the 7 principle of ethics?

Why might there be special ethical considerations when conducting research on prisoners?

What is the US criminal justice system?

The US criminal justice system is composed up of courts and , corrections are found in almost all countries, but their names may be different. These elements are based on a number of factors. Firstly, the US constitution and its amendments play a pivotal role in the constituency and formation of the entire legal system governing the United States of America. The dilemmas of treatment professionals within prisons must be relegated to the study of applied ethics in those fields, such as psychology and counseling.

What is the rehabilitation model?

The rehabilitation model of the ethical theories of utilitarianism and deontology focuses on treatment, with the goal of remedying the internal causes that impel individuals to become criminal offenders. This model resembles the deterrence model in looking forward to a lowered incidence of crime, in contrast to the retributive emphasis on retaliating against the past commission of a crime. However, unlike the deterrence model's reliance on punishment itself to affect the future, treatment stresses a variety of positive methods for inducing change, including psychological counseling, education, and vocational training. This model has suffered at the practical level in those instances where it has degenerated into a reliance on drugs, surgery, and various types of therapeutic and other medical experimentation, and critics have also contested empirically the ability of rehabilitative efforts to prevent recidivism. There is a more powerful theoretical objection still: in using the offender's treatment needs as a criterion for release, predictive restraint may lengthen confinement, result in unequal treatments for the same crime, and permit the abuse of official discretion (Rodley, 1987).

What should be provided to prisoners?

(f) Prisoners should be provided basic educational materials relating to disease prevention, good health, hygiene, and proper usage of medication.

How should correctional authorities facilitate prisoners' reintegration into free society?

Correctional authorities should facilitate prisoners’ reintegration into free society by implementing appropriate conditions of confinement and by sustained planning for such reintegration. (c) A correctional facility should maintain order and should protect prisoners from harm from other prisoners and staff.

How should correctional facilities store prescription drugs?

A correctional facility should store all prescription drugs safely and under the control and supervision of the physician in charge of the facility’s health care program. Prescription drugs should be distributed in a timely and confidential manner. Ordinarily, only health care staff should administer prescription drugs, except that health care staff should be permitted to authorize prisoners to hold and administer their own asthma inhalers, and to implement other reasonable “keep on person” drug policies. In an emergency, or when necessary in a facility in which health care staff are available only part-time, medically trained correctional staff should be permitted to administer prescription drugs at the direction of qualified health care professionals. In no instance should a prisoner administer prescription drugs to another prisoner.

What are the restrictions placed on prisoners?

Restrictions placed on prisoners should be necessary and proportionate to the legitimate objectives for which those restrictions are imposed. (d) Correctional authorities should respect the human rights and dignity of prisoners. No prisoner should be subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or conditions.

How long does it take to get a prisoner classified?

(a) Initial classification of a prisoner should take place within [48 hours] of the prisoner’s detention in a jail and within [30 days] of the prisoner’s confinement in a prison.

How long does it take to get a dental exam in prison?

Unless a dental emergency requires more immediate attention, a dental examination by a dentist or trained personnel directed by a dentist should be conducted within [90 days] of admission if the prisoner’s confinement may exceed one year, and annually thereafter. Standard 23-2.6 Rationales for segregated housing.

Where should correctional facilities be located?

Governmental authorities should strive to locate correctional facilities near the population centers from which the bulk of their prisoners are drawn, and in communities where there are resources to supplement treatment programs for prisoners and to provide staff for security, programming, and treatment.

How can research be ethical?

For research to be truly ethical, it must be tailored to the individual setting; a one-size-fits-all approach is inadequate. Every research setting and population presents unique challenges and concerns. Ethically appropriate subject protections in one institution may be grossly inadequate in another. Only through close cooperation and communication with all relevant parties, in every implicated setting, can researchers ensure that they are creating ethical conditions that are favorable for respect and unfavorable for exploitation in any research context.

Why is it important to involve prisoners in the recruitment process?

If prisoners have a voice in how subjects are enrolled, they can help protect themselves from inappropriate recruitment practices that infringe on their autonomy (respect for persons) or unfairly distribute risks and benefits within the prison population (justice).

What is the ethical framework of the National Commission?

The committee developed a new ethical framework that utilizes the ethical principles applied by the national commission in the 1976 report, with several new, important components. The framework builds on the principles of respect for persons and justice by shifting from a categorical approach to review to a risk-benefit analysis approach, and by adding a derivative of justice, called collaborative responsibility to research proposal development.

What ethical dilemmas were identified in the Belmont Report?

The commission identified two basic ethical dilemmas arising in connection with the use of prisoners as research subjects and linked these dilemmas to two basic ethical principles (NCPHSBBR, 1976). The first issue was whether prisoners bear a fair share of the burdens of research and receive a fair share of the benefits. The commission linked this dilemma to the principle of justice, specified as the fair treatment of persons and groups. The second issue was whether prisoners could give truly voluntary consent. The commission linked this dilemma to the principle of respect for persons, specified as involving the protection and promotion of personal autonomy. The principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence (providing benefit and doing no harm) were not discussed by the commission in its report on prison research; however, they were prominently featured in the Belmont Report, and both maintain an underlying importance in the ethics of human subjects research. These concepts have been well developed in other works ( Beauchamp and Childress, 2001 ).

What is the focus of the Commission on limiting research involving prisoners?

The commission’s emphasis on limiting research involving prisoners was guided by its choice of ethical framework. Congress’s charge to the commission concerning research with prisoners identified informed consent as the primary locus of ethical concern. In particular, Congress directed the commission to attend to three components of informed consent: (1) nature of the consent; (2) adequacy of the information given; and (3) competence and freedom of the prisoners or their legal representatives to make a choice. 1

What is the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research?

In 1976, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (NCPHSBBR) addressed the ethics of research with prisoners in a document entitled Report and Recommendations: Research Involving Prisoners. The commission focused on respect for persons and justice as the two key ethical considerations guiding their recommendations.

What are the principles of respect for persons and justice?

According to the second perspective, the principles of respect for persons and justice require (1) that prisoners be protected from exploitation, safeguards be introduced to reduce elements of constraint, and , when that proves impossible, participation be prohibited; and (2) that prisoners as a group not bear a disproportionate share of research burdens without a commensurate share of benefits. Here the emphasis is on structural conditions that create special vulnerabilities in prison populations and the pos sible burdens of research participation. The commission adopted the second perspective.

What are the ethical dilemmas of prison guards?

For instance, well-connected prisoners have many opportunities to bribe them for better treatment. Other inmates may be abusive to guards for no reason. In either case, the guard must treat prisoners equally. They must enforce prison rules firmly and consistently. Not only does this policy ensure smooth prison administration, it provides an ethical model for prisoners to follow.

How can taxpayer money be used to fund prisons?

A possible workaround for using taxpayer money to fund prisons is to give up their administration to private companies. Opponents argue that the profit motive encourages corporations to reduce costs needed to ensure the safety of prisoners, staff and the public. Further, private prisons have an incentive to keep convicts longer as more inmates mean more profits. They may lobby the government to pass unneeded mandatory minimum sentencing laws and exert a negative influence on parole hearings. However, advocates point to the public demand for increased incarceration and harsher sentencing during difficult economic times when the government cannot afford this.

Why are convicts in jail?

Except in the rare cases of innocence, convicts are in jail because they did something bad. In many cases, they have stole, killed, or caused great harm to people and society. Punishing prisoners by locking them up in an extremely unpleasant place for a long time aims to deter potential criminals from perpetrating similar deeds. At the same time, poor and unsafe conditions harden their anti-social instincts, making it difficult to re-enter society after release. To make them productive citizens, educational and vocational training can help as well as a reasonable guarantee of protection against brutality from guards and other prisoners. But these programs require money from honest taxpayers who may prefer to keep their legitimate income from bettering the lives of those that have done wrong.

Do prisons have moral fiber?

Though inmates may not possess a strong moral fiber, the prison is a site of numerous ethical issues for guards, lawmakers and officials who run correctional systems. Every policy and procedure must balance the interests of the taxpayer, the prison staff and the incarcerated population. Not surprisingly, there is a substantive lack ...

What are the challenges of being in prison?

These include limited access tohealth care, poor diets, bad food, lack of communication,negative attitudes toward them from the public and fromother inmates,19toxic environment, restrictions on traveland outside communication, threats to their safety bypredator inmates and others, constant noise and brightlights, minimal to no privacy, unexplained punishments,humiliating strip searches, endless loneliness, heartbreak-ing homesickness, and loss of control over even minordecisions. 20,21When prison inmates develop advanced cancer, thosechallenges may be amplified by social abandonment, fear,anxiety, hopelessness, and other existential distress. Prisoninmates generally have little access to a second medicalopinion and limited opportunity to weigh their treatmentoptions with health care professionals. Primarily becauseof fear of coercion, prisoners routinely do not have accessto clinical trials. They have little recourse to challenge thecare provided or to request alternatives.

Why is chemotherapy so burdensome?

In the authors’ experience, treatment with chemotherapyand/or radiation can be excessively burdensome for theinmate, because of inability to access management and ad-vice with regard to the many symptoms and problems that can occur with these therapies once back in the confines ofprison. Most inmates are not allowed to keep medicationssuch as antiemetics in their cells, and if they are too sick tostand in the pill line, they miss their chance to obtain relief.The idea of being unable to manage their symptoms can bedeeply distressing to patients and, in Mr A.C.’s case, was areason he considered not receiving cancer treatment at all.It is also distressing for the treatment team to administerchemotherapy and/or radiation and hope that the adverseeffects and toxicities will be adequately managed in theprison or jail. That includes the risk of neutropenic fever,which if left untreated can be fatal. The oncology team re-lied on frequent communication by phone, e-mail, andwritten documents to educate and remind the prison per-sonnel about the emergent aspects of recognition andtreatment of neutropenic fever and other serious toxicities.Pain management is perhaps the most difficult of all clin-ical issues for prisoners and providers alike. In many in-stances, even if a pain management plan is developed andcommunicated to the prison, it is not always preciselyfollowed, as prison physicians and nurses vary significantlyin their knowledge and comfort level with pain and palliativetherapy. A study of inmates with cancer pain and providers ina Texas prison system indicated significant undertreatmentof cancer pain. The study described the most common bar-riers to cancer pain treatment as provider concerns aboutdrug misuse and diversion, concerns about patient credibil-ity, inadequate assessment of pain and pain relief, and ex-cessive institutional regulation of prescribing analgesics.22Facilities that can give opioids in the general medicationline or ‘‘pill line’’ cannot provide certain medications, such asanalgesic tablets, for fear of prisoners ‘‘pocketing’’ the pills inthe buccal mucosa or elsewhere. The pill line is only 3 or 4times per day, with the last one being at 7 or 8PM,makingthe nights very long for patients who have pain and are notprescribed long-acting analgesics. There are delays be-cause of opioids not being on formulary. A discussion withthe treating physician is often required to establish or esca-late opioid dosing to achieve adequate pain control.Often the infirmary, a hospital unit within the walls of theprison, is the only place that patients can receive opioids, es-pecially but not limited to parenteral opioids. If they arehoused in the prison infirmary, they may have a better chancefor symptom control, and nurses may have a greater influenceon their symptom management. However, many inmates re-sist transfer to the infirmary because they are then unable to visitthe canteen to buy preferred food, and they do not have accessto their friends and acquaintances in the general population.

Do prisoners have rights to healthcare?

Unlike other marginalized populations in the United States,prison inmates have a legally guaranteed right to healthcare. Prisoners comprise the only population in the UnitedStates that has a constitutional right to health care, protectedby the Eight Amendment’s clause barring cruel and unusualpunishment. The basis for this is a 1976 Supreme Court de-cision,Estelle v Gamble, which held that inmates must relyon prison officials for their medical needs, and therefore fail-ure to respond to these needs may produce unnecessarysuffering, torture, and/or a lingering death. The governmentis mandated to pay for prisoners’ health care, regardless ofcost, because the prisoner can no longer obtain care inde-pendently.1Louis Shicker,2medical director of the IllinoisDepartment of Corrections writes, ‘‘Ethics and moral consid-erations dictate that becauseoffenders are not free to carefor themselves, society must provide humane care, whichincludes care of acute and chronic illness as well as reliefof pain and symptoms.’’Legal scholar and prisoner advocate Gregory Doberwrites, ‘‘While the law guarantees provision of care for pris-oners, it frequently falls short of an acceptable standard ofcare. Unfortunately, in the United States, principles or stan-dards for the care of prisoners are either undefined orvague. Rather than definitive doctrines, declarations, or alegislated definition of prison health care standards, pro-viders in US prisons and jails rely predominately on caselaw for guidance regarding delivering minimal and/or ad-equate care. However, case law is used to generally deter-mine violations of cruel and unusual punishment underthe Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution.’’3Unfortunately, there are multiple reports by inmates andtheir families, corrections officers, nurses, and other pro-viders of neglect and even cruelty to prisoners with cancer.Patient and prisoner advocacy groups such as the Oncol-ogy Nursing Society, the Southern Poverty Law Center, andthe American Civil Liberties Union make these reportsavailable. They attest to routine delays in diagnosis andtreatment of cancer, as well as neglect and denial of appro-priate counseling, pain and symptom management, medi-cal attention, and even provision of accommodations suchas wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, and even appropriatecounseling and accommodations for blind patients.4-16There has been more than 1 instance of a blind personsigning a do-not-resuscitate order without knowing whatthey had signed. One prisoner was reported to discoverthat only because he was told it was the reason he couldnot have the cataract surgery he needed.7ThePrison Legal Newspublishes court decisions andawards regarding egregious prisoner mistreatment andneglect. Many involve prisoners with cancer. For example,1 such report described a prisoner with a severely pain-ful, bleeding, rapidly growing penile lesion that was re-peatedly ignoredby prison medical officials for severalmonths, until the lesion was so large it required amputationof the penis, and the patient then died after enduring a yearof painful chemotherapy treatments. He had been seenmultiple times by the prison providers whose treatmentrecommendations consisted of 7 pairs of clean shorts asthe prisoner was bleeding profusely from the penile lesion.Multiple outside recommendations for biopsy were rejectedas being too expensive and not urgent; the patient went formonths without pain medication.17