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| Prison Deaths in Alabama Higher Than Most Other States |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 05/12/2003 |
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The prison death rate in Alabama far outpaces that of most other states, according to corrections statistics analyzed by the Mobile Register newspaper. State prisoners have been dying at an annual rate of about 23 per 10,000 around the country, according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics. But the Alabama rate has exceeded that each of the last four years with at least 35 deaths per 10,000 in three of those four. The state Department of Corrections has no data on illnesses known or believed to have claimed the lives of Alabama inmates with the exception of HIV inmate deaths. 'We don't have the funds to do some of the data collection we'd like to do,' Corbett told the Register for a Sunday story. Last year, Alabama had 88 inmate deaths in its overcrowded, underfunded state prisons system out of about 24,000 inmates. By comparison, North Carolina - with much higher spending for health care in prisons - had 61 deaths among 32 thousand inmates. New Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Donal Campbell has ended the state's contract with NaphCare, the private company that has provided health care to state prisons for two years. At a Corrections Department medical advisory committee meeting in February last year, Dr. Sam Eichold of Mobile asked why Alabama had so many prison deaths. NaphCare officials told him, according to minutes of the meeting, that death numbers were running about the same as when previous health care providers had the contract. But state statistics show Alabama had 61 inmate deaths in the 12 months before Birmingham-based NaphCare took over as health care provider. The state had 87 deaths from March 1, 2001 through Feb. 28, 2002, NaphCare's first year in charge. In NaphCare's recently completed second year, the total rose to 95. Neither Campbell nor NaphCare officials would agree to an interview with the Register on the subject of inmate deaths. No other state with a large prison system had that high a death rate during 2000, the last year for which the Justice Department has compiled state-by-state statistics. While Alabama's overall inmate death rate is high, its death rate for HIV inmates is even more out of line with the norm in state prison systems. In calendar year 2002, according to DOC, Alabama had 12 HIV inmate deaths. That's out of an HIV inmate population of about 280, almost all of them males segregated in Limestone Correctional Facility. That same year, Florida had 43 HIV inmate deaths out of an HIV population of 2,845, said Yolanda Murphy, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Corrections. An external audit of health care provided to state prisoners points to problems including lapses in care of chronic diseases such as diabetes, shortages in medicine and understaffing in doctors and nurses. Even before Campbell made those audits public earlier this year, prisoners' rights groups had sued the corrections department and NaphCare, alleging grossly inadequate care of HIV inmates and women inmates in Alabama. A more recent suit claims that treatment of Alabama's diabetic inmates fails to meet constitutional standards. On May 2, Campbell sent a letter to NaphCare, announcing its contract with the state prisons system would be terminated in three months. Campbell canceled the contract under a 'convenience' clause, and gave no reason for the action. Corbett said the problem was not NaphCare's performance but rather the terms of the contract, which he said Campbell felt hampered DOC's ability to enforce health care policy changes. But Campbell has had to ask the Legislature for an extra $6.9 million to cover cost overruns that NaphCare shifted to the state under the terms of the contract. NaphCare officials had acknowledged earlier that in their first meeting with Campbell he was frank in expressing concern about issues raised in the external audits. |
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