The American Correctional Healthcare Systems Is Ailing: Technology Innovation as a Prescription for Penal System Healthcare Delivery
Abstract
The U.S. corrections industry has a history of poor inmate healthcare delivery, with penal-system reform advocates and other stakeholders highlighting these failures. Inmates receiving poor medical and psychiatric care behind jail walls experience greater difficulty becoming self-sufficient, and this situation contributes to the nations recidivism problem. Caring for inmates is often a neglected proposition and because of this, the U.S. courts impose legal requirements that inmates receive healthcare. Access to quality healthcare specialists for inmates led the penal system to investigate and implement use of telehealth during the 1990s. This thesis investigates how the evolving field of telehealth and emerging technologies may contribute to improved inmate healthcare in the future. A myriad of factors discussed in the thesis pose as challenges to implementing innovations that could improve penal system healthcare. For all the challenges confronting corrections administrators and criminal reform advocates, the corrections system is at a crossroads, as there is potential to modernize jail facilities and use technology to improve the safety and healthcare of inmates, corrections officers and those who render care. Investing in technology infrastructure that supports emerging technologies could also facilitate simpler integration of future innovations that address suicide, mental illness and other medical health maladies that would otherwise go unaddressed.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2022
- Accession Number
- AD1184599
Entities
People
- Daniel Jr Salazar
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School