Judge: Arizona violates prisoners’ rights with poor care
PHOENIX (AP) — A judge ruled Arizona has been violating the constitutional rights of incarcerated people in state-run prisons by providing them with inadequate medical and mental health care, saying the state has known about the problem for years but refused to correct its failures.
In a blistering verdict Thursday, U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver concluded the state’s inaction showed it is acting with “deliberate indifference” to the risks of inadequate care and said the state has adopted a health care system for prisoners that has led to preventable deaths.
She said there aren’t enough health employees to care for the roughly 25,000 incarcerated people housed in state-run prisons and that corrections officials have made no significant attempts to fix the understaffing problem.
The judge criticized Corrections Director David Shinn for pressing the state’s prison health care contractor hard enough to better staff its operations and for testifying that prisoners often have greater access to health service than people who aren’t locked up.
Shinn’s claim that access to care is greater in state prisons “is completely detached from reality,” Silver wrote. “Given the overwhelming evidence and repeated instances of insufficient care leading to suffering and death, Defendant Shinn could not possibly believe prisoners have the same access to care as people in the community.”
The ruling said prisoners aren’t getting timely access to emergency treatment, medications, treatment for chronic diseases and specialty care. Under the current system, nurses are the first — and often the only -- medical professionals available to see prisoners. Sometimes the nurses, who may be insufficiently trained to diagnose and treat a given condition, miss obvious signs that should lead to a...