Calif. Prison Health Care in Receivership

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Calif. Prison Health Care in Receivership
From: "David Evans" <...evans@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Wed, August 29, 2007 4:46 pm
To: pg@harvardsf.org

Perry,

On page A12 of Monday’s (8/27/07) issue of the New York Times there is a powerful article about the attempt to overhaul health care in the California Correctional System.  It is in such wretched shape that a class-action suit resulted in a federal court order placing the entire system in receivership.  The conditions described in the article read like something out of the Middle Ages and the receiver designated by the federal court is a hard-nose man by the name of Robert Sillen.  His designated authority is far-reaching and he isn't reluctant to exercise it.
 
The majority of the inmates in the California system are Black and Hispanic and, as I have said in the past, it is a multi-billion dollar enterprise.  Should this successful class-action suit and the resultant federal court order suggest the possibility of another to place the “correctional” (read educational) component of the prisons in receivership too?  The money is there to do much better, but these mostly young men are simply being hardened, embittered and released back into society with no more legitimate skills than they brought with them upon entry.



Best regards,



David