Welcome to the Center
The Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights seeks to advance the health and human rights of criminal justice populations through research, education, and advocacy. The Center identifies, initiates, and supports projects that respond to the epidemic of incarceration and recidivism in the criminal justice system and the associated complex public health crisis. At the epicenter of the crisis are individuals suffering from addiction, substance use, and mental illness whose treatable illnesses and diseases have been effectively, if not actually, criminalized. The Center is a collaboration of doctors and health care professionals, faculty, researchers, and students from a variety of academic disciplines and institutions, lawyers, community activists, and others who are dedicated to shaping and effecting the interdisciplinary response that the crisis demands. Harnessing the passion, skills, and training of these individuals, the Center strives to educate health professionals, students, policy and opinion makers, and the general public, and to translate world-class research into sound, evidence-based policies and practices that address the multiple dimensions of this public health and human rights crisis.
Drug Terms Reduced, Freeing Prisoners
U.S. | November 02, 2011
John Schwartz, New York Times
More than 1,800 prisoners are eligible for release under new sentencing rules for cocaine-related crimes that came into effect on Tuesday. You can find the article here.
Center Co-Director Dr. Josiah Rich is featured in a Channel 10 Health Check Report - Health Check: Epidemic of mass incarceration.
Supreme Court Upholds Order to Reduce Prison Overcrowding in California
On May 23, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that conditions in California’s overcrowded prisons are so bad that they violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and ordered the state to reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 prisoners. Read about the ruling in The New York Times here, or read the text of the decision here. You can read more about the horrendous condition of health care delivery in the California prison system here.
The Center’s response to the ruling, written by Center Executive Director Brad Brockmann, Center Director and Professor of Medicine and Community Health Dr. Josiah Rich, and Assistant Professor of Medicine Dr. Amy Nunn, both at Brown University’s Medical School, was published in The New York Times Opinion Pages. The letter can be found here, or the entire range of responses to the decision can be read directly on the New York Times website.
The featured article in the June 2011 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine was written by Center members Dr. Josiah D. Rich, Dr. Sarah Wakeman, and Sam Dickman.
Read the article here:
Medicine and the Epidemic of Incarceration in the United States
"Over the past 40 years, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased by more than 600% — an unprecedented expansion of the criminal justice system."
Read More...
Read The Patients No One Wants - published in the latest issue of the Brown Alumni Magazine and featuring the Center's Co-Directors Dr. Jody Rich and Dr. Scott Allen.
Read more recent and relevant articles in our NewsroomLast Updated: Nov 2, 2011
