Tuberculosis in Prison: Balancing Justice and Public Health

During the mid-nineteenth century the annual tuberculosis (TB) mortality in the penitentiaries at Auburn, N.Y., Boston, and Philadelphia exceeded 10 percent of the inmate population. At the beginning of the sanatorium era, 80 percent of the prison deaths were attributed to TB. As the mountain air wa...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of law, medicine & ethics medicine & ethics, 1993, Vol.21 (3-4), p.332-341
Main Authors: Greifinger, Robert B., Heywood, Nancy J., Glaser, Jordan B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
19th century
Bioethics
Civil rights
Correctional personnel
Criminal Law
Demographic aspects
Disease
Diseases
Female
Health aspects
Health care
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus
Humans
Justice
Male
Mandatory Programs
Mass Screening
Medical ethics
Medical treatment
Mountains
Nursing
Policy making
Prevalence
Prisoners
Prisons
Public Health
Risk Factors
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis - epidemiology
Tuberculosis - prevention & control
United States - epidemiology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:During the mid-nineteenth century the annual tuberculosis (TB) mortality in the penitentiaries at Auburn, N.Y., Boston, and Philadelphia exceeded 10 percent of the inmate population. At the beginning of the sanatorium era, 80 percent of the prison deaths were attributed to TB. As the mountain air was “commonly known” to be healthful, the first prison sanatorium was opened in the mountains near Dannemora, N.Y. in 1904. It served to isolate contagious prison inmates until the advent of effective chemotherapy for the disease in the 1950’s. Early antibiotic therapy for TB was such a great success that the public health aspects of TB in prisons remained dormant for the next 40 years. In 1991, a correctional officer from Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn, New York died as a result of multidrug-resistant TB. He had been posted to care for hospitalized patients, from whom he acquired his disease. This death, and the transmission of TB infection to health care workers in the same hospital, brought the nature and extent of modern inmate medical care into finer focus.
ISSN:1073-1105
1748-720X
DOI:10.1111/j.1748-720X.1993.tb01258.x