Saturday, July 08, 2006

Atrocious Medical Care in California Prisons

Apparently the Dallas County Jails have a rival for worst medical care by a prison system in the nation:

You wouldn’t expect health care in a state prison to be exactly top-notch, but surely we can all agree that a patient dying every week as a result of preventable errors is a bit much. Medical care in California’s bulging lockups is so appalling that last year a federal judge, acting in a case brought by the Prison Law Office, appointed a special receiver to oversee the $1.4 billion system. That receiver now reports that things are even worse than had been thought, detailing, as the Los Angeles Times sums up, “widespread evidence of malpractice and neglect — and proof that inmates suffered not just from incompetence but also from cruelty at the hands of some doctors.”


If ever there was a constituency that was represented by no one, it would be prison inmates. That's why you can count on this sort of thing to be a semi-regular occurrence.

No comments: