Prisoners: A Highly Vulnerable Pop. In Australia: Mental Health, Drug Misuse & Chronic Conditions - Essay Sample

Introduction

Prisoners have poorer health than the general community, with particularly high levels of mental health issues, alcohol and other drug misuse, and chronic conditions. They are a vulnerable population with histories of unemployment, homelessness, low levels of education and trauma [ Beebee, J 2012 ].Basing on my research in these areas its quite clear that These prisoners are a highly vulnerable population. In all the prison in Australia, Half (49%) have a history of mental health issues, a quarter are currently taking medication for mental health issues, almost one-third (30%) have a long-term health condition or disability limiting their daily activities or participation in education or employment, one-third (32%) have a chronic condition such as diabetes or cardiovascular disease, three-quarters (74%) are current smokers, and 45% have injected drugs [Bailey, JW 2011, pp. 211-218].

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Majorities of prisoners in Australia have mental, cognitive and physical disabilities to clarify these mental disabilities includes disorder such as depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, personality disorders and psychosis. The prisoners can experience these for a short time or throughout their lives. While there are also prisoners with cognitive disabilities which includes intellectual disabilities, acquired brain injury, dementia and foetal alcohol spectrum disorder [FASD]. Long-term health conditions are those that have lasted, or are expected to last, for 6 months or more. Examples of long-term health conditions that might restrict a person's everyday activities include severe asthma, epilepsy, mental health conditions, hearing loss, arthritis, depression, autism, kidney disease, chronic pain, speech impairment or stroke [Young, J, Van, DK, Claudio, F, Cumming, C & Lennox, N 2016, pp. 1-12].

There are different causes of disability, including cognitive (intellectual) and physical. Adults with intellectual disability are significantly over-represented among prisoners, particularly for Indigenous prisoners. An Australian study looking at cognitive disability found that up to 12% of the prison population has intellectual disability, and up to 30% has borderline intellectual disability (Baldry et al. 2013). Those with intellectual disability are more likely to be male, Indigenous, have less than 10 years formal schooling, unstable accommodation immediately prior to imprisonment, a history of juvenile detention, poor self-assessed health status, depression and substance dependence (Dias et al. 2013).

Majorities of prisoner released from prison have intellectual disability and are experiencing a lot of challenges when leaving the prison. Some of the challenges they are facing includes lack of formal and informal education on how to integrate back to the community. Many prisoners with intellectual disability require educational supports to assist them to return to the community, and may require intensive one-to-one training about pro-social behaviour, which may not be readily available in and outside the prison system (Ellem, K 2012).

There is a huge percentage of prisoners in Australian prisons with physical disabilities than any other type of disabilities. Research shows in Australian 50 percent of the prison population have disabilities which are an overrepresentation. Physical disabilities including epilepsy, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, arms or legs amputation among others inhibit proper carrying out of daily routines. Physical disability can be caused by various factors such as congenital, spine injury, brain injury, inherited genetic disorders and serious illnesses affecting the brain. Some physical disease can be prevented while others cannot. Prisons such as In Australia, people with physical disabilities and their needs are not identified, and there is no access to equipment to meet their needs, and therefore they end up missing their basic needs and services like co bathrooms where they end up being humiliated, mistreated and even sexually abused by their inmates or other staff.

Psychosocial is another type of disabilities, Australian criminal justice system has a large number of persons with psychosocial disability with almost 50% of people entering prison (Meekosha, and Dowse, 1997). Unfortunately, there are no special needs for the disabled in these prisons which makes the disabled prisoners have a hard time carrying out their daily routine. Additionally, people with such disabilities are mistreated by the staff due to their conditions. Psychosocial prisoners end up being confined in restricted areas where their behaviors ate monitored and controlled.

Klimecki, Jenkinson, and Wilson, 1994 state that prisoners with intellectual disability face general lack of understanding of what is happening around them due to learning disability a condition referred to as mental retardation. People with this condition have difficulties with adaptive functioning that affect everyday life. Due to their low IQ, prisoners with intellectual disability requires trained staff with skills to understand the needs of such people. According to Klimecki, Jenkinson, and Wilson, (1994), the fact that individuals with low IQ, people take advantage of them especially relatives who are on their care and other prison staff. People living with the disability may be sexual, psychologically, physical or emotionally harassed leading to the worsening of his or her condition. One of the causal factors of intellectual disability is malnutrition where there is a deficiency of some nutrients in the food we take. Other causes include the following: environmental factors, metabolic where bilirubin levels in babies are very high, chromosomal imbalances, infections during a birth, , and trauma among others (Klimecki, et, 1994).

Disabilities come in many forms including the vision and hearing impairment. People with these kinds of limitations are also under the law and are subject to imprisonment if they are convicted so according to the law. Prisons in Australia do not have special treatment for such people, and they are put together with the rest of the inmates. When a blind person is put in a cell where he or she experiences difficulties in accessing necessities such as toilets, showers food and other basic needs. Since there is no consideration for the disabled, the prisons should allow the prisoner to have a carer to assist them whenever they get stuck and also for protection services. Blind prisoners fall as the target of physical, sexual and emotional harassment by the others. It even becomes worse for a blind Aboriginal Strait Islanders prisoner as he or she is discriminated depending on his origin and would receive more than what a native would get. One of the most common causes of deaf-blindness is known as Usher Syndrome (Creasey, Sulway, Dent, Broe, Jorm, and Tennant, 1999). Usher syndrome makes individual to have hearing loss and a continuous vision condition known as retinitis pigmentosa. The state starts with a night problem or in a poorly lit environment, and then eventually someone becomes blind. Fortunately, if begun early, the Usher syndrome can be treated [ Creasey, H.,1999, pp. 60-64].

The justice system should end solitary confinement for prisoners with disabilities. Solitary confinement not only causes psychological torture but can cause detrimental to the health of a person with a disability. Furthermore, prisons should put in an effective screening of disabilities to prisoners as they come in. this will help offer the needed support before the condition worsen in their detention cells. Besides, measures should be put forward to make prisons a better environment for prisoners with disabilities to stop victimization and stigma.

In most of Australian prisons there are thousands of Aboriginal peoples with mental and cognitive disabilities and a widespread lack of understanding and action underpins this shameful breach of human rights. Majority of people with mental and cognitive disability are poor, disadvantaged and Aboriginal are overrepresented in this increase. The most common disabilities that are associated with the Aboriginal people includes depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, personality disorder and psychosis. While cognitive disability covers impartment such as intellectual disabilities, acquired brain injuries, dementia, and fatal alcohol spectrum. Majorities of Aboriginal people with mental and cognitive disabilities are forced into the criminal justice system early in life. Coming from poor and disadvantaged background they receive little support from community and disabilities services or the educational system. These people are often seen As badly behaved or too hard to control and left to police to manage [Augustyn, MB & Kovera, MB 2015, pp. 388-401].

In excess of 30,000 Australians are detained each year. Many have inabilities, many are Indigenous and the framework can't adapt. Eileen Baldry contends the issues are both unsurprising and preventable, and plots an arrangement to start settling them. Australian jail populaces have detonated in the course of recent years, in spite of a general decrease in many announced wrongdoings. Somewhere in the range of 2013 and 2015, 5,000 additional individuals were detained.

In the most recent year alone, the detainee populace ascended by six percent, to 36,000. Not sentenced or remand detainee numbers ascended by 11 percent over a similar period. Indigenous Australians are multiple times more prone to be detained than non-Indigenous individuals, and Indigenous ladies are the quickest developing gathering of detainees.

The Expense of Imprisonment

Imprisonment is a most genuine hardship, and these phenomenal increments ought not to go unexamined. They speak to an enormous development in expenses to people in general tote. The social expense of rejection on a huge number of families and networks is boundless. The greater part of the general population who circle through our state and region jail frameworks are on short sentences or are not sentenced. This implies the quantity of individuals moving through our penitentiaries over a year is a lot higher than the evaluation, a static depiction, proposes.

Amid 2015, somewhere around 65,000 individuals streamed all through Australian penitentiaries. Half of these detainees have inabilities. Individuals with inabilities who are poor, distraught, and Aboriginal are overrepresented in the jail populace. It's turned out to be evident that numerous detainees have a psychological or intellectual inability (or, usually, different handicaps) and are exceptionally distraught; that is, they have complex help needs. These individuals as a rule go under the look of the police, at first because of their inability and regularly as casualties of maltreatment.

What Sort of Mental Handicaps Do We See?

Mental inabilities incorporate disarranges, for example, clinical melancholy, schizophrenia, uneasiness and psychosis. Individuals can encounter these for a brief timeframe or for the duration of their lives. Subjective inability covers weaknesses, for example, scholarly incapacity, procured mind damage, dementia and fetal liquor range issue. These are progressing weaknesses in appreciation, reason, judgment, learning or memory.

A man with either of these incapacities may have poor authority over their conduct, not anticipate the aftereffects of their conduct, follow up on false or mutilated convictions and respond indiscreetly in an unpleasant or undermining circumstance. The consequences of an examination I and my associates at the University of NSW discharged as of late difficulties the basic view that everybody sent to jail is a willful and perilous guilty party. We demonstrate that individuals with numerous inabilities have altoget...