Fact Check Essay

Prison reform is at the forefront of many political debates in the United States- and for good reason. In her February 2019 opinion piece for the Washington Post entitled The measure of a country is how it treats its prisoners. The U.S. is failing, Jennifer Lackey- a Philosophy Professor at Northwestern University and the director of the Northwestern Prison Education Program- argues that the prison system in the United States sends “the message that inmates are less than human”. To prove this point she highlights several key examples of inmate mistreatment in her article including: inadquate mental healthcare, solitary confinement, exposure to violent weather conditions, and sexual harassment and assault.

When discussing the relationship between mental health and incarceration, Lackey writes, “Mental-health issues more generally are often ignored behind bars. About 2 million people with mental illness are incarcerated each year; at least 83 percent lack access to necessary treatment”. A peer-reviewed article published in the American Journal of Public Health written by David H. Cloud, JD, MPH, Ernest Drucker, PhD, Angela Browne, PhD, and Jim Parsons, MsC, corroborates Lackey’s claim saying, “access to quality psychiatric care in most correctional facilities is severely limited” (22). Cloud et al. also note that due to “a shortage of quality treatment, prisons route people with psychiatric conditions to disciplinary segregation for minor rule infractions or to administrative segregation to protect or control them” (20).

Protection and control are both very different from treatment, further substantiating Lackey’s claim that mental health issues are largely ignored in prison.

The primary purpose of Cloud et al.’s aforementioned article entitled Public Health and Solitary Confinement in the United States, is to address the widespread use of solitary confinement in American prisons and its consequences. Lackey writes, “More than 60,000 Americans are in solitary confinement, spending 22 to 24 hours in their cells per day. Prisoners who are isolated for this number of hours, sometimes for decades at a time, are often driven to the brink of insanity. They experience delusions, engage in desperate acts of self-mutilation and attempt suicide at alarming rates”. One major difference between what she says and in what Cloud et al. say is in the number of individuals in solitary confinement. Cloud et al. argue that “the best data available suggest that about 84,000 individuals endure extreme conditions of isolation, sensory deprivation, and idleness in US correctional facilities” (18). Given that 84,000 is technically “more than” 60,000, Lackey’s claim is not entirely incorrect by Cloud et al’s standards. But, since Lackey’s article was published in 2019 and Cloud et al.’s piece was published in 2015, it is possible that this discrepancy is based upon new data sets. When checking the sources of each figure, Lackey’s estimate came from 2017 reports by Association of State Correctional Administrators (ASCA) and the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School and Cloud et al.’s number from a 2012 piece on solitarywatch.com.

Given the source of Lackey’s data, her claim appears to be more reliable than that of Cloud et al, who based their claim on numbers that were reported 3 years before the publication of their article, making it hard to believe that that was “the best data available.”

Lackey’s assertion that inmates in solitary confinement are “often driven to the brink of insanity”, is largely supported by Cloud et al’s piece that cites two studies from 1843 and 1913

as the basis for their claim that physicians observed “distinct patterns of symptoms- labeled prison psychosis and solitary confinement psychosis- caused by prolonged isolation with a lack of natural light, poor ventilation, and lack of meaningful human contact” (19). This suggests that Lackey’s claim is both accurate and capable of standing the test of time. As the basis for her statement, Lackey cites a 2019 Chicago Tribune article by Jeff Coen and Stacy St. Clair that as the title- How Solitary Confinement Drove a Young Inmate to the Brink of Insanity- would suggest, details one man’s life in solitary and the effects that it had on his mental health.

Therefore, Lackey’s claim in the primary article is not only factually correct as proven by Cloud et al., but also a modern day reality as illustrated by her source.

In The measure of a country is how it treats its prisoners. The U.S. is failing, Jennifer Lackey makes the broad statement that “the men and women incarcerated in the United States continue to suffer from the weather in shockingly deplorable conditions”. To support this, she mentions examples of prison conditions in the states of New York, Rhode Island, Texas, and Louisiana. For example, she reports that during a cold snap in New York, “1,200 prisoners were left sick and frantic in freezing cells in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal prison. Despite the frigid conditions, they were reportedly denied access to extra clothing and blankets.” To support this claim, she links readers to a website from an ABC News affiliate in New York. Unfortunately, this link takes readers to a webpage that reads “page not found,” thereby requiring readers to dig a little deeper to determine the validity of what Lackey has said. Regardless, it is worth noting that Lackey did attempt to cite her source.

An article published in the American Journal of Public Health on January 1, 2020 written by authors Julianne Skarha, BA&Sc, Meghan Peterson, MPH, Josiah D. Rich, MD, MPH, David Dosa, MD, MPH, entitled An Overlooked Crisis: Extreme Temperature Exposures in

Incarceration Settings, provides a literature review essentially summarizing existing research on the impact of extreme temperature exposure on incarcerated persons. The authors reported searching the Westlaw law databases for all cases pertaining to temperature-related 8th Amendment violations that occurred from 1980-2019 and then evaluating a random sample from that case set. While their work does not directly corroborate Lackey’s claim and data, it does support it saying, “In the cold-related cases, plaintiff briefs mentioned cells with broken heating systems, temperatures below freezing, ice forming on the walls and in toilet bowls, and frost on metal. More than 30% of the cold-related cases specified inadequate clothing or blankets” (S41). Therefore, despite not being able to find direct evidence from a scholarly source that Lackey’s claim that prisoners in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center were left to freeze without extra clothing and blankets is factual, I do believe that she was reporting the truth and that these conditions are indicative of the widespread problem that Lackey hopes to highlight in her piece.

Ultimately, it is my belief that the article entitled The measure of a country is how it treats its prisoners. The U.S. is failing by Jennifer Lackey is a credible and accurate source based upon what I have found in the aforementioned supporting texts. Her piece has a clear critical bias with regard to the United States Criminal Justice System and the way those incarcerated in the United States are treated, but it provides a factual basis for those claims that I chose to investigate. Given Lackey’s credentials and the credentials of those who authored my supporting texts, I would recommend this piece to readers interested in learning more about the prison conditions in the United States, so long as they are aware that this was an opinion piece and that the facts were purposefully presented in support of one woman’s negative view. While data does not lie, it can be manipulated and both under-played and over-played in terms of its significance.

With that in mind, I recommend this particular piece to readers, but I caution them in the future to always consider the perspective of the author.

Works Cited

Cloud, David H et al. “Public Health and Solitary Confinement in the United States.”

American Journal of Public Health vol. 105,1 (2015): 18-26. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2014.302205

Lackey, Jennifer. “Opinion | The Measure of a Country Is How It Treats Its Prisoners.

The U.S. Is Failing.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 6 Feb. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-measure-of-a-country-is-how-it-treats-its-prisoners-the-

us-is-failing/2019/02/06/8df29acc-2a1c-11e9-984d-9b8fba003e81_story.html.

Skarha, Julianne et al. “An Overlooked Crisis: Extreme Temperature Exposures in Incarceration Settings.” American Journal of Public Health vol. 110,S1 (2020): S41-S42. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2019.305453