Industry News
Clinical psychologist Nneka Jones Tapia will become the executive director of one of the country's largest jails - Cook County Jail in Chicago which houses 9,000 inmates, an estimated third of which are mentally ill.
For the first time since voting to form a union last year, medical staff at Allegheny County Jail in Pennsylvania reached a labor agreement with Corizon Health. The three-year agreement covers 116 workers.
An Urban Institute report points out that more than half of all inmates in jails and state prisons have a mental illness, the most common is depression, followed by bipolar disorder.
Judge Mary Hogan Sullivan, a Dedham District Court judge, is the director of specialty courts in Massachusetts, overseeing programs such as drug court. Drug court is intended to target substance abuse issues that may be the underlying causes of criminal behavior in some defendants.
According to MSNBC, 10,000 people have received health coverage as a result of applications that got started in Illinois's Cook County Jail, the largest single-site jail in the country.
Ohio is among a growing number of states working to enroll prisoners into Medicaid when they get sick and as they are being released.
Jails have become warehouses of people too poor to post bail or too ill with mental health or drug problems to adequately care for themselves, according to a report entitled Incarceration's Front Doo
As a result of a four-year, $1-million grant, a pilot program in Indiana's Marion County is screening ex-offenders seeking job and resume training and references for traumatic brain injuries in hopes of reducing the rate of rec
Pointing to issues with understaffing, increasing numbers of mentally ill prisoners and private healthcare providers that aren't fulfilling their contracts, the new head of the Florida Department of Corrections told state lawmakers the department needs more funding and oversight, the News Ser
From 2001 to 2008, the cost of providing healthcare per inmate increased nationally by an average of 28%, according to a 2013 report by the Pew Research Center that examined cost data from 44 states. During that period, Texas reduced the cost of healthcare per inmate by 12%.
A program aimed at decreasing the rate at which former Worcester County prisoners go back to jail will get a boost with a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Salinas Valley State Prison nurses expressed doubt that a proposed one-size-fits-all approach to medical staffing will work at the high-security facility.
New York will require mental health discharge planning for inmates who received treatment in prison. A law taking effect at the end of February says they will also get an appointment with a doctor who can prescribe interim medications.
The Illinois Department of Corrections has plans to hire a combination of 100 mental health and security workers at the Dixon Correctional Center for its expanded mental health unit. The goal is to have workers in place by the spring.
Prisons house a large number of hepatitis C patients and the Constitution guarantees prisoners the same medical care that's standard in the community but most prison budgets can't handle the price of expensive new treatments for the disease.
State Prisons Commissioner David Guice told lawmakers that needed reforms to the system's treatment of mentally ill inmates will cost an additional $20 million for more staffing. Guice was speaking before the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Justice and Public Safety at a meeting focused
UConn has recently established a new collaboration to improve healthcare for a vulnerable population with complex medical issues.
Federal prisoners will be prohibited from smoking under new rules from the Bureau of Prisons. The smoking ban in federal prisons will target more than 212,000 inmates who will be disciplined if they are caught with cigarettes, cigars, pipes or any other tobacco products, according to the bureau.
New York City plans to significantly expand public health services throughout the criminal justice process to reduce the growing number of inmates with mental health and substance abuse problems.
