“Lethal Abandonment” of Sick Prisoners Is Rampant, Sociologist Reveals

Newswise — Alabama's Limestone Prison segregated HIV+ prisoners in their own ward. Patients chained to beds shared Dorm 16 with insects and vermin. In the filthy, drafty rooms, contagious diseases spread like wildfire through the HIV+ population.

University of Delaware sociologist Ben Fleury-Steiner says this is not just one prison horror story. It's a nationwide human rights crisis.

Prison populations have exploded as Americans made mass incarceration the solution to crime, drugs and other social problems. Meanwhile, the privatization of prison services, especially health care, has resulted in an overcrowded, underfunded system. And, the most marginalized members of our society slowly wither from what Fleury-Steiner calls "lethal abandonment."

250 inmates were crammed into Limestone's Dorm 16. Over a 4-year period, 43 of them died.

Fleury-Steiner's book, "Dying Inside: The HIV/AIDS Ward at Limestone Prison," details the conditions of Limestone Prison's Dorm 16 as an example of this crisis. His research examines the complex issues that brought about the way HIV/AIDS inmates are treated.

"It is a systemic failure," he says, "a catastrophic failure of our penal institutions. These are zones of lethal abandonment where prisoners with HIV are turned into ticking time bombs, and prisons all across the country suffer from such institutional failures."

He says the situation is one of chaos, in which prisoners with HIV/AIDS are in need of highly specialized care but "are not even getting the fundamentals." As a result, many die, and Fleury-Steiner says they do so "in secret" because of shoddy record keeping.

Fleury-Steiner says the solution to the problem is a dramatic decrease in prison populations to enable administrators to cope with the public health crisis within their walls. Blocking this is a national will to punish and politicians who want to appear to be tough on crime.

Fleury-Steiner says he believes there must be a national debate on how America deals with marginalized populations, and particularly prisoners.

Fleury-Steiner received his doctorate in sociology from Northeastern University, where he also earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice and a master's degree in sociology. He joined the University of Delaware faculty in 2000.

He is the author of an earlier book "Jurors' Stories of Death: How America's Death Penalty Invests in Inequality," also published by the University of Michigan Press.

Former "Birmingham News" reporter, Carla Crowder, coauthored "Dying Inside." The pair intends to donate proceeds from the book to various charities.