An Ignored Report by Surgeon General Predicted Prison System Health Crisis That's Rampant Today

Date:  05-23-2016 Criminalization instead of treatment of the mentally ill and people with addictions has cost untold damage to communities and budgets

From USA Today WASHINGTON — A government report, blocked from publication a decade ago, presciently warned of an advancing, double-barreled health crisis of mental illness and substance abuse that has currently swamped the nation’s vast prison systems. The 2006 document, prepared by then-Surgeon General Richard Carmona, urged government and community leaders to formulate a treatment strategy for thousands of sick and addicted inmates that also would assist them after release or risk worsening public health care burdens. “This (report) has demonstrated that, far from being geographically and metaphorically separated from the community as was the case with Alcatraz Island, correctional facilities and those who pass through them are an integral part of the larger community,’’ Carmona wrote in the document titled, “The Surgeon General’s Call to Action on Corrections and Community Health.’’ Read full article here.