Essay on Walter Jordan: Negligence of Arizona Department of Correction Led to Skin Cancer Death

According to the United States district case, Walter Jordan was a Prisoner at the Arizona Department of Correction. He was a skin cancer patient and later succumbed to this sickness because of negligence from the health department within the institution (WILCOX, 2017). The Criminal Justice system should ensure competent specialists are deployed in their institutions, and they should as well settle all the debts owed to other health facilities for easy access of the specialists from these facilities. Since this does not seem to be happening over the years, it makes us want to know if inmates are supposed to receive the same medical attention as normal citizens.

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The Criminal Justice system should treat all the offenders as customers. That is because they are still living human beings who are entitled to other rights such as proper medical attention, a clean environment, and well-prepared meals. That should kill the notion the general public have that the prisoners are supposed to rot and die in prison cells. The Criminal Justice System has the mandate to ensure the normal procedures of delivering the minimal standards required to the prisoners are met. The criminal justice system is considered to hold many stakeholders hence very difficult to identify the customers (WILCOX, 2017). However, the victims are the ones identified at a glance. Most people tend to perceive the inmates as criminals through their offenses, and thus they are being punished for committing different crimes. However, the Constitution provides proper guidelines for any individual against inhuman treatment. On the other hand, since they are already lawbreakers and freedom guaranteed to them is already limited, it should be kept so.

Mr. Jordan, just like any other prisoner, deserved proper medical care. He was diagnosed with skin cancer a year earlier and had greater than 90% cure rate, if only he had received the treatments as prescribed (WILCOX, 2017). Thus, Mr. Jordan could have been referred to Oncologists for further medication as soon as possible when it was clear that his cancer had progressed beyond the little scope of a dermatologist. The nurse denied to do a refill of SPF 50 sunscreen and instead directed the purchase of SPF 30 from the prison store.

Mr. Jordan was as well issued with special Need Order (SNO) for a wide-brimmed hat, which he never received (WILCOX, 2017). The order was as well not renewed after one year. Unfortunately, a non-competent dermatologist who electrically fried the tissues causing a lot of pain and damage to his tissues and inflicted memory loss, attended to Mr. Jordan. The Dermatologists tried as much as he could to remove the tumor but was not able to succeed hence brought more harm to Jordan. Mr. Jordan was given Tylenol with Codeine for pain management with a wrong prescription of twice daily instead of the allowed standard of after every 4-6 hours.

This case is just one of the many cases we have seen in our Criminal Judicial systems, and the truth is said, this should not be encouraged. These inmates are still part of our society, and they are in there as a punishment to the wrongs they did and did not do for a specific period, after which we always embrace them back to society. Hence, those employed by the state to guard, protect, and take care of the inmates should not misuse this opportunity to manhandle them. Mr. Jordan was supposed to be treated as a customer to the Criminal Justice system and not as a prisoner. If this could have happened, Mr. Jordan would have still been alive today. If only the preventative measure had been taken into consideration, the cancer cells could not have spread, and if they did, an oncologist would have been involved from the word go. Proper preventive measures were not administered in time, their existed deficiencies in specialty care, and there was inadequate pain management by Corizon.

References

WILCOX, D. (2017). UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF ARIZONA. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT (CV 12-00601-PHX-DKD).