story



i knew it was a problem in our prisons but i had no idea it was the highest in the nation.

now i have a question
who pays for the treatment of inmates i with AIDS? do they all get free care? or does it matter if HIV/AIDS was contracted by the inmate while in prison? are they housed differently? do they have the opportunity for counseling? hmmmm....

WE the taxpayer pay for the treatment....no matter what medical problem you have--ie. schizo, heart problems, bad teeth...you the taxpayer are on the hook.

Bad teeth too? Geez.

Maybe you should hire someone to brush their teeth for them.

yeah, regardless of which way you look at it, taxpayers are paying for their treatment. As for the housing conditions, I don't believe they are housed differently. I'm pretty sure they are a part of general population just like anyone else.

Heck, we even given them dialysis...last count we had 24 who needed this on a rotating basis...3x/wk..and that is just in this area's prisons.

It's no big secret that tax payers, pay for a lot of things.
So what's new? Government will get your money, one way or the other.

What's the alternative? Don't give them dialysis and let them die in prison?

Of course not! I was just making a point--we are spending alot of tax dollars on treating inmates. I guess if you are poor and need dialysis, you should make sure you end up in prison? Ha,ha..

Sorry, tx. I didn't mean to direct it right at you.

I see posts here about the govt. snatching our money, and I'll be the first to complain about govt. spending, but this is a necessary expenditure. Society put these people in prison for breaking the law, so as a reasonable society, we are responsible for ensuring the inmates care until release. Then they are on their own like the rest of us!

Sman-you have never to my recollection slammed me personally--I did not take it that way..

I do still have a question--what kind of counseling do you want to give them, CD?

And yes, until they are seriously ill, they are housed with the general population--you can only get AIDS by exchange of body fluids--and I don't want to know when & where they do that...

i dont wanna give them counseling! i just wanted to know if it was already available. ( i.e. are my taxes going to counseling programs for people with serious illness in prisons. ) you know, like, "you're gonna have to live the rest of your life like this... how does that make you feel" type of thing. support groups etc??

also, both my brother-in-law and father-in-law work out there as correctional officers, and they have BOTH been spit on by inmates AIDS. they had to undergo all this treatment, some shots and swallow a pill for like 90 days or something. VERY scary, people using themselves as biological weapons out there.

BIL & FIL both work there--poor guys..my neighbor does too..he is always telling me 'the poor inmates' who spit and throw things at them...he calls them INMATES..and says most belong there..

As far as Counseling goes--I know they have 'rehab' projects that have very little success rate but are trying to get more funding to 'rehab' more inmates--I know I was one of the people who challenged the project--asking-what is the reciv rate? And they said 66% & up--so I said, where are the hard #s? Turns out the reciv rate is the same as the other prisoners--33% will never be back in prison, 33% will never change...33% might...

I'm killing time folks, but since I didn't read EVERY post on the thread I apologize in advance if I rehash something.

Bottom line though is that MARYLAND has constantly placed among the top five states in the HIV/AIDS arena since it began. Recently we've been neck and neck with NY for #1. Now this is among the general population out there walking around with you. Our prison population being representative of the general unincarcerated population is only reflecting this statistic. Add in the many transient NY drug dealers who do business in MD - and get caught - and we see this figure possibly inflated by the influx from the reigning number one state! Is it any surprise our prison population is #1 in AIDS? Not at all.

As for all those "programs" offered inmates... I'm lukewarm on that subject. Anybody working there will tell you these guys are a lot easier to manage when they have SOMETHING to occupy them. For the small percentage that will actually use these programs to get themselves out of the rut and become productive citizens, I'm reluctant to deny them that chance. When they're successful they save us all money not to mention not preying on us anymore. By the same token though, what's the benefit of a college degree to a lifer? The only place he's going to use it is to challenge the system and make our burden even heavier. I think there could be better evaluation in regard to who gets what but then we run into constitutional issues... which brings us to the perennial debate of whether they should even have constitutional rights.