PRISONERS, PUBLIC AT HEALTH RISK

High rates of disease and illness among inmates in the nation's jails
and prisons, coupled with inadequate funding for correctional health
care, has put the nation's 2.2 million prisoners at risk, along with
corrections officers and the public, a report said yesterday.

Every year, according to a report by the 21-member Commission on
Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, more than 1.5 million people
are released from jails and prisons nationwide carrying
life-threatening contagious diseases, and another 350,000 inmates
have serious mental illnesses.

"Protecting public health and public safety, reducing human suffering
and limiting the financial cost of untreated illness depends on
adequately funded, good quality correctional health care," the report
said. "Unfortunately, most correctional systems are set up to fail.

"They have to care for a sick population on shoestring budgets and
with little support from community health-care providers and public
health authorities," it said.

The commission, co-chaired by former Attorney General Nicholas de B.
Katzenbach, is based on a lengthy investigation and hearings, which
included testimony from corrections professionals, prison monitors
and litigators, former prisoners, scholars and others.

The inquiry focused on the "crucial role of oversight and
accountability" in creating safe conditions in U.S. prisons and
jails, and on the nature and prevalence of gang violence.

"The questions 'who's watching' and 'who's responsible' are at the
beginning and end of dealing with all of the problems we've
examined," Mr. Katzenbach said.

The report also concluded: Violence remains a serious problem in
the nation's prisons and jails, with "disturbing evidence" of
assaults and patterns of violence in some U.S. correctional
facilities. It said corrections officers reported a near-constant
fear of being assaulted, and prisoners recounted gang violence, rapes
and beatings.

Violence and abuse are not inevitable, but the majority of prisons
and many jails nationwide hold more people than they can accommodate
safely and effectively, creating a degree of disorder and tension
almost certain to erupt into violence.

Because lawmakers have reduced funding for programming in the
country's prisons and jails, inmates are largely inactive and unproductive.

The increasing use of high-security segregation is counterproductive,
often causing violence inside facilities and contributing to
recidivism after release.

People who pose no threat and those who are mentally ill are
"languishing for months or years" in high-security units and supermax prisons.

Better safety inside prisons and jails depends on changing the
institutional culture, which cannot be accomplished without enhancing
the corrections professional at all levels.

Because the exercise of power is a defining characteristic of
correctional facilities, there is a constant potential for abuse. The
report will be presented today at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary
subcommittee on crime, corrections and victims' rights.