Prisons Plagued By Medical Staff Shortages
Low salaries, grim working conditions and remote locations make it hard for the institutions to be competitive in wooing and retaining health care personnel.
McClatchy:
Medical Care In Federal Prisons Is Found Wanting
Fewer than a quarter of federal prisons have maintained adequate medical staffs in recent years despite a nearly $200 million increase in funding for medical care, investigators said in a report issued Monday. Stymied by relatively low salaries, grim working conditions and remote locations, the prisons have a hard time competing for medical staff, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General notes. And though the investigators focused on federal institutions, the problems they identified exist in state facilities, too. (Bell, 3/28)
Meanwhile, the FBI is investigating the deaths of two mentally ill inmates —
KQED:
Two Mentally Ill Inmates Died In One Month: What Can We Learn?
The final three weeks of Walter Roches’ life last September were, like much of his previous decade, violent and chaotic, complicated by mental illness and repeated encounters with law enforcement. Roches, 32, had completed a state prison sentence for domestic violence. Afterward, he was placed in the Evans Lane Wellness and Recovery Center, a San Jose facility that, among other things, treats mentally ill parolees. (Pickoff-White and Small, 3/29)