Subpar Prison Healthcare Gives New Meaning to ‘Cruel and Unusual Punishment’

Anyone locked up in jail or prison in the U.S. is supposed to be entitled to receive necessary healthcare under the Constitution. But the officials who run our nation’s corrections agencies are not doing enough to preserve that right.

All too often, we see terrible stories of prisoners becoming seriously ill and dying, or female inmates being forced to deliver babies alone in their cells after their complaints (or even screams of pain) were ignored by staff.

When they do receive access to medical professionals in their facilities, prisoners are often subjected to substandard treatment. For-profit healthcare contractors to jails and prisons, under pressure to keep costs low, are usually incentivized to provide as little care as possible.

In one terrible case, a woman incarcerated in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn lost her eyesight as a result of cruel neglect by medical staff. Carolyn Richards, a 45-year-old Black woman, serving a 15-year sentence on nonviolent drug charges, sought treatment when her eyes started hurting.

She went to the infirmary every week over the course of six or seven months to beg for a consultation with an ophthalmologist. Her eyes appeared more and more inflamed with each visit. She was denied for months.

The source of Richards’ pain was likely a condition related to iris implants she had previously received. In a cosmetic procedure, surgeons can artificially change a person’s eye color by inserting a piece of colored silicone into the iris. Thus brown eyes can be made to appear green or blue, or vice-versa. The procedure carries heavy risks, however, including potential complications leading to blindness.

In Richards’ situation, she likely developed close-angle glaucoma, which eventually cost her almost all of her vision. Blindness could have been averted, though, had she received emergency surgery soon enough.

Instead of taking her condition seriously, prison medical officials’ mocked her pain and blamed her for it. Disgustingly, they showed that they knew exactly why she was suffering — and still did nothing about it.

“I bet you wish you didn’t put those implants in,” a medical director told her on one occasion. Another medical official said: “We didn’t tell you to put those things in your eyes.”

Eventually, Richards did receive surgery to remove the implants, but until more than half a year of constantly making requests. By the time she went under the knife, it was too late. She had irreversible loss of sight in her right eye, and ended up with almost total loss in the other.

This story has a somewhat happier ending. Richards filed a lawsuit, and on Oct. 27, 2020 it was revealed that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons would pay her $2 million to settle her case. One could say, though, that’s still far from enough compensation for her loss of sight. The mother of six won’t be able to see her children’s and grandchildren’s faces. She will struggle to work and care for herself for the rest of her life — all because of cruel and terrible prison healthcare. When the system treats people like this, it must be held accountable.