Settingup a New Prison Health Service

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Setting-up a New Prison Health Service

• Associate Professor Michael Levy
• Australia

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Canberra
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Australian Prisons

• 8 State / Territory jurisdictions
• No city or federal prisons
• 26,000 adult prisoners
• Incarceration rate 163 / 100,000 adults
• 42 increase in last 10 years
• 7 Females 24 Aboriginal
• 22 pre-trial

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Australian Capital Territory

• Population 323,000
• Incarceration rate approx 150 per 100,000 adult
  population decreasing
• Human Rights Act, 2004
• 80 adult remandees 10 youth offenders
• First adult prison to be commissioned in mid-2008.

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Overview

• Legislation
• Funding
• Staff
• Policies and Procedures
• Research and Teaching

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Legislation

• Independent
• Health
• Authority
• Inspection

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The Alexander Maconochie Centre

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Policies and Procedures

• Information Management
• Inpatient Services
• External Health Services (2o, 3o)
• Throughcare

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Funding

• Adequate to achieve equivalence of inputs, or
  equity of health outcomes?
• Room to grow (40 years)
• When health moves from custodial to health, the
  budget increases 4 6 times.

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Staff

• Health - medical and nursing, allied health
• The interface with custodial services
  operational, information sharing, emergencies
• Non-government organizations

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Policies and Procedures

• Addiction Services
• Mental Health Services
• Womens Health and Pregnancy care
• Dental Services
• Pharmacy
• (Indigenous health)
• (Children of Prisoners)

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Policies and Procedures

• Health promotion
• Harm minimisation
• Sexual health

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Research and Teaching

• Epidemiology of prisoner health
• Social determinants of health
• Human rights and public health
• Impacts of prisons on communities
• Children and families of prisoners
• Economics of incarceration

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• Understanding the spirit of our institutions to
  aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to
  whatever tends to degrade them.
• President Abraham Lincoln, in a May 1859 Letter

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• michael.levy_at_act.gov.au