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| Prison inmates in Arizona crying foul over medical care |
| By tucsoncitizen.com - Bob Ortega |
| Published: 12/07/2011 |
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To stave off a lawsuit, Arizona’s Department of Corrections has agreed to investigate scores of complaints by inmates that they are routinely denied medical care for weeks or months even for severe, life-threatening conditions. Inmates who have lost sight, had body parts amputated or been severely disfigured, among other gruesome examples, say proper medical care could have prevented needless suffering. Based on those allegations, a legal coalition has accused the state of chronically and systemically denying medical and mental-health care to inmates, violating state and federal laws and the U.S. Constitution. The Prison Law Office, a legal-advocacy group for prisoners nationwide, also charges that lack of care may contribute to a prison suicide rate in Arizona that is more than double the national average, with 14 reported suicides in the fiscal year that ended last June. Interviews with current and former prisoners and dozens of inmate letters of complaint obtained by The Arizona Republic raise similar concerns. Corrections officials say they have found no evidence of systemic problems, although they say that pending plans to privatize prison health care have made it harder to fill medical-staff vacancies and that rule changes two years ago that cut payment levels to outside contractors also crimped access to care. But prisoner advocates say the problems are longer-standing. Allegations made by inmates, prisoner advocates and attorneys include: A diabetic prisoner, while waiting months for insulin, lost sight completely in one eye and partially in the other. An epileptic who wasn’t given his medications suffered repeated seizures for weeks. A man with a growth on his penis was denied medical treatment for two years. Doctors ultimately diagnosed a cancerous tumor on his penis; the organ had to be amputated, and doctors told him the cancer had spread to his stomach. An inmate with a cancerous growth on his lip waited seven months for treatment. Most of his lip and mouth were removed, leaving him permanently disfigured. Prison medical staff members have repeatedly denied treatment to Tucson inmate Horace Sublett for Kaposi’s sarcoma, a cancer, despite documentation, including from the VA hospital in Phoenix and other outside doctors confirming that the Navy veteran, 82, has the disease. Prisoners with emphysema, end-state renal disease and other illnesses reported being denied treatment or medication, leading to complications and permanent side effects. Corrections officials maintain that they provided appropriate care in these cases. Karyn Klausner, the department’s general counsel, said inmates’ loss of sight, amputation of the penis and disfiguring facial surgery were not related to any delays in treatment. Donald Specter, executive director of the San Quentin, Calif.-based Prison Law Office, described his group’s concerns in an Oct. 12 letter to state Corrections Director Charles Ryan. “State prison officials are deliberately indifferent to the serious health-care needs of prisoners and to the prisoners’ unnecessary and significant pain, suffering and even deaths,” Specter wrote. That letter, which lists dozens of specific allegations without naming the inmates affected and which has been obtained by The Republic, asked Ryan to agree to a court injunction to address problems as a way of avoiding a lawsuit in federal court. In May, Specter and the Prison Law Office won landmark litigation against the California Department of Corrections. In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court required California to release about 30,000 prisoners to alleviate unconstitutional prison overcrowding. Read More. |
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