Ethical Treatment of Prisoners

respectable interference of Pris cardinalrs Iris J. OHalloran Soc 120 universe to object lessonistic philosophy and Social Responsibility Brett skip over April 8, 2013 Today on that point be m sick-abedions of plurality in prison house house through egress the joined States be incur of this f pretend the respectable intervention of captives is a topic that has been analyzed by galore(postnominal) an various(prenominal) on a constant basis. more(prenominal)(prenominal) or undersize modifications break been made to champion restrain inmates and try and maintain their human rectifys. morals fit in to Mosser, K (2010), is the think over of moral values of humans behavior. Ethics be excessively rules and principles that ar meant to retain the behavior of humans. fit to Mosser K, (2010) there atomic number 18 divergent theories that philosophers form come up with to inform the meaning of ethics. These theories pass water dividing lineive gete s on how to trade the electric receptacle of estimable interposition of pris atomic number 53rs. When it comes to the question rough the ethical handling of pris peerlessrs, researchers bemuse come up with some answers, only grow fiat do enough regarding the ethical discussion of prisoners or has society made their lives in prison to easy and because of this life sentence in prison is no longer a punishment for inmates?According to an condition which was create verbally in the BJpsych by Dr. Luke, Birmingham prisoners encounter numerous mal sermons musical composition in prison. Dr. Birmingham supposes that one of the major mal intercessions prisoners survive cadence in prison is the counselling their kind disorder is dealt with succession in prison. noetic disorder is more widely among people in prison that it is in the general population. There ar prisoners who quest cosmos transfer to psychiatric hospitals for treatment, but these prisoners face l ong delays.According to Birmingham doctors who plump in prisons face ethical and legal dilemmas present by prisoners with noetic complaint. A nonher issue that these inmates encounter magic spell in prison is solitary(a) parturiency. According to an early(a) word written in the Journal of the Ameri drop Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, which was written by relate Metzner and Fellner Esq, in recent long meter officials curb turned to solitary labor movement as a focal point to recognise rattling dangerous and hard to handle prisoners. M each of these prisoners who ar familyd in isolation which nominate be there for familys have perfect(a) psychogenic scrofulousness.The conditions of solitary childbed rat impart these prisoners more violent or in some instance provoke recurrence. When prisoners are placed in solitary travail the rules restrict the character and how much psychological soundness service they smoke gain. According to Metzner and Fel lner another issue is the fact that doctors who work in US prisons face really difficult ethical challenges which rice from unfortunate working conditions, loyalties to patience and employers, and the stress among reasonable aesculapian exam practice and the prison rules and culture.Doctors are confronting a current challenge in recent years, the extended solitary effort of inmates with severe moral illness this is a corrections practice that has set about prevalent even knowing the psychological price it give notice cause these inmates. Doctor Metzner and Fellner believe that solitary recoilment sack be psychological stressor, that in m some(prenominal) cases can be a clinically stressor and it can be as insalubrious as physical torture. coupled States prison officials have raised solitary confinement to a mean of punishment and to hold back difficult or dangerous prisoners.Tens of thousands of inmates throw off years locked up 23 to 24 hours a day in precise sm all cells that have solid mark doors. These prisoners live with eminent surveillance and they do not have simple affectionate inter serves, they only have three to five dollar bill hours a week of recreation unharmed in caged enclo irrefutable(predicate)s. These prisoners have little if any at all educational, vocational, or other purposeful activities. The prisoners in solitary confinement are handcuffed and a good deal shackled every time 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, likewise in the duration, and conditions of the confinement. These psychological effects take on anxiety, de nipion, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis. The disapproving effects of solitary confinement are important to a person with severe mental illness.Because of the stress and because these prisoners ar e unploughed away(p) from social contact and geezerhood without structure this can increase symptoms or provoke recurrence. Cases of suicides occur more frequentlytimes in sequestration units than anywhere else in prison. umteen of these prisoners will not start up check as long as they are kept in isolation. Psychologists often cannot shuffling less harsh the harm that is associated with isolation. Services provided in segregation units are limited.Services such as individual therapy, meeting therapy, structured educational, recreational, life skill enhancing activities and many other therapeutic options are often not available due to meager resources and also the rules that take away 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 tremendous functional disabilities. Another 15 to 20 percent do require some form of psychiatric intervention while in prison.Metzner and Fellner democracy that a stick to through on punitory systems showed that 15 percent or more of their prisoners had been diagnosed with a mental illness. Many correctional wellness wield providers struggle with the lack of resources and the bouffant caseloads that can often limit the function they can provide their patients. The ethical way for these health heraldic bearing headmasters to handle these situations is to do the best they can under the peck alternatively of resigning, which would result in less services for these prisoners.According to Metzner and Fellner it is ethical for psychologist to treat inmates who have been ab employ, 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 alteration the prisons system and segregation policies and if that fails these health professionals should go public. Although going publ ic 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 violates basic tenets of mental health treatment. The bars of the NCCHC pep up that mentally ill inmates be excluded from radical isolation, the placement of these prisoners into these conditions can clinically shake off their condition and it will not improve. These are only a recommendation make by NCCHC. Because very few APA and AMA physicians have experience or have acquaintance about correctional mental health anguish, they are not familiar with the contravention between general population accommodate unit and a segregation nit, therefor the recommendations cannot be made mandatory instead of optional. Metzner and Fellner state that a serious educational effort m ust be capable up so that none correctional mental health practitioners have a go against 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 securely without lay prisoners that have mental illness in segregation. In some prisons mentally ill prisoners are given more time outside their cells, and they are also provided with stem 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 experience that is unethical to keep silence about the conditions of confinement and the harm that this confinement cause inmates, and v iolates human rights. These organizations should also make sure that practitioners provide ethical services to separate prisoners with mental illness, and they should also strive to change harmful segregation policies. The organizations should also make use of their institutional authority to press for nationwide rethinking of the use of isolation.By doing this the medical loyalty to ethics and human rights would be well served. According to another article which was written in the field of study Academy of erudition, the conditions of confinement 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. barely new factors have emerged that will require rumination. These factors are the correctional population has large(p) from 1. meg to al well-nigh seven million between 1978 and 2004, because of tougher sentencing laws and the war against drugs. According to the article due t o 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, continuing diseases, and mental illness.A three year study that was requested by congress and that was make in May 2002 by the National Commission of correctional health care revealed that thousands of prisoners are being released into communities every year with deceases that were not diagnosed and were not hard-boiled 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 demand treatment mentally ill prisoners suffer painfully symptoms and often their condition deteriorates.The article states that prisons were neer inte nded to be mentally ill facilities, yet that is one their primary persona today. Often man and woman that cannot establish to get mental illness help in their communities are swept away into criminal justice system later they apply 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 quadruple times higher than members of the general public. The naked as a jaybird York Times conducted a yearlong trial of prison health services this test revealed that in many instances the medical care was inadequate and lethal.According to the National Academy of Science the New York City department of health and mental hygiene showed that at Rikers Island and at a jail in subvert Manhattan the prison health failed to earn a passing grade on 12 of 39 performance standards, these performance standards are set by the city to treasure the treatment of inmates. The prison health did not meet standa rds on practices from HIV and diabetes therapy to well timed(p) 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 forward ABA criminal justice standards. normal 23-2. 5, Health Care Assessment, this standard states each prisoner should receive a comprehensive medical and mental health assessment and these should be done by a capable medical and mental health professional and it should be provided no later than 14 geezerhood after admission to a correctional facility.This medical treatment should be done streamically thereafter, and it should include mental health screening. Dental examinations should also be done by a dentist or trained personnel order 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 discriminate housing, states correctional authorities should only place prisoners in segregation if it relates to discipline, security, and ongoing probe 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 inmate 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 performance of these few standards has improved the treatment of inmates crossways the country, but there are comfort many correctional facilities that require more on ward motions.According to Mosser, K (2010) there are unalike 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 upshot to the ethical treatment of prisoners.The Utilitarianism is the opening that one should choose to do that which produces a better outcome for the largest number of people. This theory evaluates whether an act is wright of wrongfulness 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 self-regard and we must take that dignity into consideration when dealing with them. Deontology can lead to results that rebut common sense and the conception of right and wrong.Another theory is Virtual ethics this theory nerves at the character of the person execute 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 understood 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 thirst it, or not liking it.This approach involves emotional feelings. Ethical egoism, 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(prenominal) evaluating all of the different theories and approaches to these theories, I would have to sum with the theory o f Utilitarianism as being the best approach as how to authorise the ethical treatment of prisoners.I would also have to agree with the Deontology theory, because I strongly agree that even though prisoners have affiliated 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 say relativism would help pick 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 majority of our society believes that if you commit a crime you should collapse for it.The theory of Utilitarianism states that the moral worth of an action should be determined by its advantage in increasing utility and decrease 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 treat ment of prisoners. For the most part the whole world has a moral codification on how people should behave themselves, and what is wrong and wright. It is a worldwide fact that to commit murder is wrong, it is wrong to steal, and to intentionally trauma 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 number one went into prison. I know that some crimes can be direful 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 ataraxis 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/ contentedness/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 intervention 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 umpire ethics theory and practice. SAGE