Study Faults Women’s Prison Healthcare

Some prisoners held at the California Institution for Women in Corona failed to get basic health and dental care and told researchers they had often waited months to see a doctor or get their prescriptions filled, according to a study conducted by an advocacy group and the San Bernardino County Department of Health.

The inmates, interviewed in July and August of 2005, also told researchers they had often skipped visits to the prison doctor because of a $5 mandatory co-payment, which they say they cannot afford when they are making 28 to 30 cents an hour.

One woman said that there was no follow-up after she had surgery, and others reported they had never had a PAP smear, a standard test for cervical cancer.

The study, released Friday, was conducted by Kim Carter, who cycled in and out of prison 20 times before she got her life on track and became an advocate for women in prison.

Carter’s report focused both on women in prison and those out on parole -- and she is calling for more attention from public officials to the difficulties the women face when they reenter society.

She enlisted the help of statisticians at the county Department of Health, who helped her develop the questions for the prison focus groups and analyzed the data from both prisoner and parolee interviews.

“I was looking at women who are recycling in and out of prison, like I was, and their story wasn’t being told,” Carter said.

A number of inmates interviewed for the study said they faced major hurdles when they tried to enroll in drug rehabilitation programs, either because their offenses did not make them eligible or because the programs were full.

There have been major changes in the state’s prison healthcare system since Carter conducted the interviews.

In February, a U.S. district judge seized control of the state’s $1.2-billion prison healthcare system and transferred it to the jurisdiction of a federal receiver to improve conditions.

At the women’s prison, Warden Dawn Davison said the institution was already addressing many of the problems highlighted in Carter’s report. In the last several years, Davison said, she has hired more medical, dental and mental health staff to deal with the long waits for care. The prison also brought in a community college program and added five teachers to respond to complaints about the lack of access to education.

The prison plans soon to allow some pregnant inmates to keep their babies with them in prison for as long as 18 months before the inmates are paroled into special community centers.

“We’ve done a lot of good things at CIW to really improve those conditions that the ladies were talking about,” Davison said.

Carter, who serves on a special commission within the California Department of Corrections that is working on improving conditions for female inmates, said she is heartened by the attention that prison healthcare is getting at the state level but hopes that city, state and county officials will pay more attention to the fact that women on parole are continually denied jobs and housing on the basis of their criminal records -- often leading them to return to crime.

She is pushing for a new “re-entry commission” that would help track parolees in San Bernardino County, which has one of the largest parolee populations in the state.

“Right now, nobody is doing anything.... This hasn’t been a priority for anyone,” Carter said. “People tend to only want to look at the prison system itself, when the prison system is just one piece.”

Carter began the study, “Invisible Bars,” after launching her foundation, Time for Change, in 2002, and opening two sober-living homes for women on parole in San Bernardino. With $25,000 in seed money from the California Endowment, a private health foundation that gives money to community organizations, she launched another phase of her project: face-to-face interviews with 152 women on parole in the county.

She asked them about many of the same issues discussed with women in the prison -- including health needs, living conditions and their experience trying to find a job after prison.

Of the female parolees interviewed, researchers found:

* More than 80% said they did not have jobs -- often because prospective employers refused to consider them after finding out they had been in prison.

* 41% said they were homeless.

* More than 60% said they did not have health coverage, and the majority of the women covered were on Medi-Cal or local programs for indigents.

* 38% said they went to emergency rooms for healthcare.

San Bernardino County Supervisor Josie Gonzales, who attended Carter’s presentation Friday, said county and city officials are beginning to focus on providing a more supportive environment for former inmates to help cut crime.

maeve.reston@latimes.com