Ethical Treatment of Prisoners

Ethical give-and-take of Pris one and only(a)rs Iris J. OHalloran Soc 120 Introduction to Ethics and Social Responsibility Brett Cross April 8, 2013 Today there atomic numeral 18 cardinals of people in prison throughout the United States be feature of this f move the ethical treatment of captives is a topic that has been analyzed by many on a constant basis. Many modifications pay back been made to attention accommodate inmates and try and maintain their human rights. Ethics according to Mosser, K (2010), is the study of moral de circumstanceine of humans behavior. Ethics argon also rules and principles that are meant to control the behavior of humans.harmonize to Mosser K, (2010) there are different theories that philosophers bewilder come up with to relieve the meaning of ethics. These theories rescue different approaches on how to handle the issue of ethical treatment of prisoners. When it comes to the question more or less the ethical treatment of prisoners, researche rs have come up with many answers, but have society through enough regarding the ethical treatment of prisoners or has society made their lives in prison to easy and because of this aliveness in prison is no longer a punishment for inmates?According to an term which was written in the BJpsych by Dr. Luke, Birmingham prisoners encounter numerous maltreatments succession in prison. Dr. Birmingham states that one of the major maltreatments prisoners suffer while in prison is the way their mental illness is dealt with while in prison. Mental disorder is to a greater extent wide among people in prison that it is in the general population. There are prisoners who require cosmos transfer to psychiatric hospitals for treatment, but these prisoners face long delays.According to Birmingham doctors who trifle in prisons face ethical and legal dilemmas posed by prisoners with mental illness. A nonher issue that these inmates encounter while in prison is only(a) confinement. According to a nother article written in the Journal of the Ameri back Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, which was written by Doctor Metzner and Fellner Esq, in recent years officials have turned to solitary confinement as a way to manage very dangerous and hard to handle prisoners. Many of these prisoners who are placed in isolation which can be there for years have implike mental illness.The conditions of solitary confinement can make these prisoners more violent or in some instance provoke recurrence. When prisoners are placed in solitary confinement the rules restrict the nature and how much mental health service they can receive. According to Metzner and Fellner another issue is the fact that doctors who work in US prisons face very fractious ethical altercates which rice from poor functional conditions, loyalties to patience and employers, and the stress between reasonable medical practice and the prison rules and culture.Doctors are confronting a new challenge in recent years, the prol onged solitary confinement of inmates with severe mental illness this is a corrections practice that has become prevalent even knowing the psychological harm it can cause these inmates. Doctor Metzner and Fellner believe that solitary confinement can be psychological stressor, that in many cases can be a clinically stressor and it can be as harmful as physical torture. United States prison officials have raised solitary confinement to a mean of punishment and to control difficult or dangerous prisoners.Tens of thousands of inmates spend years locked up 23 to 24 hours a day in very small cells that have solid trade name doors. These prisoners live with high surveillance and they do not have simple social interactions, they only have three to five hours a week of diversion alone in caged enclo genuines. These prisoners have little if any at all educational, vocational, or other purposeful activities. The prisoners in solitary confinement are handcuffed and often shackled every car tridge clip they leave their cells.According to Metzner and Fullner confinement can cause psychological damage to any prisoner, the severity of the impact depends on the individual, also in the duration, and conditions of the confinement. These psychological effects include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis. The unfavorable effects of solitary confinement are important to a person with severe mental illness.Because of the stress and because these prisoners are unbroken away from social contact and days without structure this can increase symptoms or provoke recurrence. Cases of suicides occur more often in separationism units than anywhere else in prison. Many of these prisoners will not get better as long as they are kept in isolation. Psychologists often cannot make less harsh the harm that is associated with isolation. Services abided in segregation units are limited.Services such as individu al therapy, group therapy, organise educational, recreational, life skill enhancing activities and many other therapeutic options are often not available due to insufficient resources and also the rules that require the prisoners to remain in their cells. According to Metzner and Fellner studies have shown that eight to 19 percent of prisoners have psychiatric disorders, this can result in a large functional disabilities. Another 15 to 20 percent do require some form of psychiatric intervention while in prison.Metzner and Fellner state that a survey done on correctional systems showed that 15 percent or more of their prisoners had been diagnosed with a mental illness. Many correctional health care providers struggle with the lack of resources and the large caseloads that can often limit the services they can provide their patients. The ethical way for these health care professionals to handle these situations is to do the best they can under the constituent instead of resigning, w hich would result in less services for these prisoners.According to Metzner and Fellner it is ethical for psychologist to treat inmates who have been abused, and that they should also take measures to end this abuse. These health professionals should not only provide services to mental ill prisoners, but they should also try and change the prisons system and segregation policies and if that fails these health professionals should go familiar. Although going public with these prison issues can be difficult to do for these health professionals because of the risk of losing their jobs, they should not do this task alone. Their professional organizations should help them.These organizations should realize that prolonged segregation of prisoners with severe mental illness strips basic tenets of mental health treatment. The measures of the NCCHC recommend that mentally ill inmates be excluded from extreme isolation, the placement of these prisoners into these conditions can clinically cut down their condition and it will not improve. These are only a recommendation done by NCCHC. Because very few APA and AMA physicians have experience or have knowledge about correctional mental health care, they are not familiar with the difference between general population housing unit and a segregation nit, therefor the recommendations cannot be made mandatory instead of optional. Metzner and Fellner state that a serious educational effort mustiness be established so that none correctional mental health practitioners have a better understanding of the world in which their correctional co-workers work in, and to better understand the challenges they face, including the isolation of severe mental ill patients for month at a time and sometimes years.According to Metzner and Fellner studies have shown that prisons can operate safely and they can be hard without putting prisoners that have mental illness in segregation. In some prisons mentally ill prisoners are given more time o utside their cells, and they are also provided with group therapy and other therapeutic interventions. These improved clinical responses to prisoners with mental illness have been achieved with little sacrifice to needed control of prisoners who willfully violate prison rules.Mental health organizations should acknowledge that is unethical to keep silence about the conditions of confinement and the harm that this confinement cause inmates, and violates human rights. These organizations should also make sure that practitioners provide ethical services to segregated prisoners with mental illness, and they should also strive to change harmful segregation policies. The organizations should also make use of their institutional self-assurance to press for nationwide rethinking of the use of isolation.By doing this the medical commitment to ethics and human rights would be well served. According to another article which was written in the home(a) Academy of Science, the conditions of con finement in todays prisons have the same features that were of concern to the national commission for the protection of human behavioral research about 30 years ago. However new factors have emerged that will require consideration. These factors are the correctional population has grown from 1. million to almost seven million between 1978 and 2004, because of tougher sentencing laws and the war against drugs. According to the article due to the closing of large state mental institutions, prisons have become the new mental illness asylums. wellness care in some of these prisons is very poor. Many class actions have been put in place about the inadequate of state prisons health-care system. According to the article a high number of prisoners suffer from infectious deceases, chronic diseases, and mental illness.A three year study that was requested by congress and that was done in May 2002 by the National Commission of correctional health care revealed that thousands of prisoners are b eing released into communities every year with deceases that were not diagnosed and were not treated while they were in prison. According to the article while in prison white inmates were more likely than black and Hispanic inmates to receive mental health treatment. Without the indispensable treatment mentally ill prisoners suffer painfully symptoms and often their condition deteriorates.The article states that prisons were never intended to be mentally ill facilities, yet that is one their primary role today. Often man and woman that cannot afford to get mental illness help in their communities are swept away into felonious legal expert system after they commit a crime. In the United States there three times more mentally ill people in jail than in mental hospitals, inmates have mental issues that are two to four times higher than members of the general public. The New York Times conducted a long examination of prison health services this examination revealed that in many inst ances the medical care was inadequate and lethal.According to the National Academy of Science the New York metropolis department of health and mental hygiene showed that at Rikers Island and at a jail in lower Manhattan the prison health failed to earn a flip grade on 12 of 39 performance standards, these performance standards are set by the city to evaluate the treatment of inmates. The prison health did not meet standards on practices from HIV and diabetes therapy to timely distribution of medication to properly conducting mental health evaluations.An article written in the American Bar Association, standard of treatment of prisoners, (2010) states that in February 2010, the ABA House of Delegates approved a set of ABA criminal justice standards on treatment of prisoners. The new standards supplant prior ABA criminal justice standards. Standard 23-2. 5, Health Care Assessment, this standard states each prisoner should receive a comprehensive medical and mental health assessment a nd these should be done by a qualified medical and mental health professional and it should be provided no later than 14 days after admission to a correctional facility.This medical treatment should be done periodically thereafter, and it should include mental health screening. Dental examinations should also be done by a dentist or trained personnel directed by a dentist and they should be done within 90 days of admission this if the prisoners confinement exceeds one year and it should be done annually thereafter. Standard 23-2. 6 Rationales for Segregated housing, states correctional authorities should only place prisoners in segregation if it relates to discipline, security, and ongoing investigation of misconduct or crime, protection from harm, medical care, or mental health care.This segregation should be for a brief time and under the least restrictive conditions practicable. When necessary due to an investigation, correctional facilities should be permitted to confine an inma te to segregation for a period of no more than 30 days. Standard 23-2. 8, Segregated housing and mental health, this standard states no inmate who is diagnosed with serious mental illness should be placed in long term segregated housing. The implementation of these few standards has improved the treatment of inmates across the country, but there are still many correctional facilities that require more improvements.According to Mosser, K (2010) there are different ways in which the ethical treatment of prisoners can be dealt with. Mosser states that there are different theories that philosophers have come up with to explain ethics. Three main theories are Utilitarianism, Deontology, and Virtue ethics. There are also three different approaches to these ethics theories, Relativism, Emotivism and ethical Egoism. All of them give a different approach and a different solution to the ethical treatment of prisoners.The Utilitarianism is the opening that one should choose to do that which p roduces a better outcome for the largest number of people. This theory evaluates whether an act is wright of wrong in terms of the acts consequences. Mosser, (2010). Deontology states that are ones duty an obligation to threat other people with respect, human beings have dignity and we must take that dignity into consideration when dealing with them. Deontology can lead to results that contradict common sense and the conception of right and wrong.Another theory is Virtual ethics this theory opinions at the character of the person performing the act. There are three different approaches to the theories according to Mosser, K. (2010), these are Relativism, Emotivism, and Ethical Egoism. Relativism according to Mosser is ones beliefs and values are understand in terms of ones society, culture, and ones individual values. Emotivism according to Mosser, it sees our moral evaluations as the expression of whether we respond to a given act by liking it, or not liking it.This approach invo lves emotional feelings. Ethical self-conceit, this approach contrast with ethical theories of utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and most religions. Ethical egoism according to Mosser states that our moral evaluations should be made in terms of our desires and goals. After evaluating all of the different theories and approaches to these theories, I would have to agree with the theory of Utilitarianism as being the best approach as how to solve the ethical treatment of prisoners.I would also have to agree with the Deontology theory, because I strongly agree that even though prisoners have committed a crime they should be treated with dignity after all they are still humans. From the three approaches to the main theories, relativism, emotivism, and ethical egoism, I would hypothesise relativism would help resolve the problem with a more positive outcome. Because relativism indicates that ones beliefs and values are understood in terms of ones society and culture, the majori ty of our society believes that if you commit a crime you should pay for it.The theory of Utilitarianism states that the moral worth of an action should be determined by its returns in increasing utility and reducing negative utility. The ethical treatment of prisoners has for the most part improved. Standards have been put in place to aid these issues and help the improvement of the treatment of prisoners. For the most part the whole world has a moral code on how people should behave themselves, and what is wrong and wright. It is a oecumenic fact that to commit murder is wrong, it is wrong to steal, and to intentionally hurt another human being physically.The utilitarian theory can be used in jails to help prisoners correct their behavior, and when prisoners do not have a life sentence they can come out into society with a better look on life and not a negative one like when they first went into prison. I know that some crimes can be horrific in nature and once we have looked at those horrific crimes we can become outraged and very angry, but if we can keep an open mind and be humanitarian towards those criminals we can find some kind of peace in our hearts. References Jeffrey L. Metzner. M. D and Jamie Fellner Esq.Solitary Confinement and Mental Illness in US prisons A challenge for medical ethics. www. jaapl. org/content/38/1/104. full Mark, Earthrowl, John, OGrady, and Luke Birmingham. Providing treatment to prisoners with mental disorders development of a policy. Bjp. rcpsych. org/content/182/4/299. short Standards on Treatment of Prisoners. http//www. americanbar. org/publications Mosser, K. (2010). Introduction to Ethics and Social Responsibility. San Diego, CA Bridge point Education, Inc. Banks, C. (2004) Criminal Justice ethics theory and practice. SAGE