By Dr Alex Gatherer
Consider some of the facts relating to prison health. The majority of prisoners, some 80% or so, have some form of mental ill health, and between 5-10% have serious mental illness, which requires specialist care in suitable facilities.
Furthermore, in any community, the local prison at any one time will hold a disproportionately high number of non-nationals and minority ethnic groups, of people positive to HIV and Hep C, of people with educational and social skills deficiencies, of those addicted to some form of substance addiction, of those with serious communicable diseases and of those previously hard-to-reach in our cities and towns.
In most countries, including our own, this high needs group will be detained in old premises with inadequate facilities for meaningful activity and recreation and often in overcrowded conditions.
And the majority of prisoners will be out of prison and back in their home environments on the streets in our communities often after only a short time.
‘Statistical compassion’ is one of the unmentioned skills required of top quality public health practitioners. We must be able to look behind the statistics and see the suffering, the unmet needs and the social injustices amongst the individuals who make up the overall figures that are so central to the reports we write. Without ‘statistical compassion’, how can we make sure that we take into account, in everything we do, those who are in greatest need?
Public health has a choice. We could ignore the above, as we did for many years and waste any opportunities to help a vulnerable high risk group. Or we could realise that it is in the interests of public health as a whole to prevent our prisons from being focal points of disease.
We could also realise that the right to health applies to all.
- Dr Alex Gatherer is Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health. In November 2009 he was awarded the American Public Health Association’s Presidential Citation for his work in improving health in European prisons.
Better Health For All 