Identifying Nursing Home Availability to Individuals Granted Compassionate Release
Justin Berk, MD, MPH, MBA
The Rhode Island Department of Corrections currently detains individuals who have been granted medical parole but have been unable to transfer to community resources due to unavailability or unwillingness to care for justice-involved individuals. Consequently, these seriously ill individuals remain incarcerated despite a Parole Board finding them to pose no substantial public safety risks. This significant public health problem affects multiple state departments of corrections though lacks characterization in existing literature.
Addressing this research gap is essential to meet the urgent need for impact-oriented policy and litigation to facilitate better health outcomes for these individuals. Indeed, the lack of successful discharge planning for the aging incarcerated population can severely limit new and existing “compassionate release” laws designed to support geriatric patients behind bars.
To address this critical gap, we propose a rapid, responsive, and time-sensitive research project aimed at generating the necessary data to understand the lack of community resources for this patient population. This information could then support evidence-based policies for improving the health outcomes of individuals eligible for compassionate release throughout the United States. Our findings will serve as a foundation for policymakers to enact more meaningful policies and interventions that can better accomplish the underlying goals of compassionate release, geriatric parole, and other legislation targeted at the aging incarcerated population.