Project Information

4.22% of the global population lives in the United States of America, but 20% of prisoners in the world are incarcerated in the U.S.A[^1]. The United States imprisons people at a disproportiantly high rate, so isn’t it important that we understand what health care looks like for the 2.3 million people who are incarcerated in our country?

The data represented in the project shows which states screen for prexisting conditions upon admission. It is important that prisons and jails in the US screen their incoming population for medical conditions, because the prisons and jails that hold the incarcerated are responsible for taking care of the health of their population.

Prison Admission Screenings by State

This map shows how many total health conditions that each state’s prisons screen for. The 10 total conditions that are screened federally include Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Tuberculosis, Elevated lipids, High blood pressure, Electrocardiogram (EKG), Mental health, Suicide risk, and Traumatic brain injury. The darker green color that the state is, the more conditions that state’s prisons screen for, as noted in the legend. States that are denoted as zero either screen for 0 conditions or there was no data available.

We see that every state with data screens for Tuberculosis (TB). TB is very contagious, so it makes sense that it is tested in every state. Additionally, suicide risk, mental health, and high blood pressure are screened for in every state. However, the remainder of prexisting conditions are not screened in every state. For example, traumatic brain injury appears to be screened in the fewest amount of states, even though police brutality during arrest is covered more than ever in the media. State and federal prisons and jails are not doing their due diligence when they do not screen incoming prisoners for all possible health conditions. This is problematic because prisoners do not have the same access to health care that free citizens do, so it is important to understand the needs of a prisoner, before they are incarcerated.

Data Sources

In 2016, the National Center for Health Statistics, a subsidary of the CDC, published a report called the “National Survey of Prison Health Care”[^2]. In this report, the authors surveyed 45 out of 50 states to see what type of health care facilities were offered at a state level. There were 5 tables in the document that reported information collected in the surveys. The first table, which is what is represented in the maps above, represented which states screened for 10 prexisting health conditions.

References

  1. Peter Wagner and Wanda Bertram, “What percent of the U.S. is incarcerated? (And other ways to measure mass incarceration)”, Prison Policy Initative, Accessed 2020-11-22, Online: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/01/16/percent-incarcerated/
  2. Karishma A. Chari, M.P.H., Alan E. Simon, M.D., Carol J. DeFrances, Ph.D., “National Survey of Prison Health Care: Selected Findings”, National center for Health Statistics, Accessed 2020-11-23, Online: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr096.pdf