Let me actually expand upon my snarky comment, Lissa. I generally have no beef with you, can’t recall ever tangling with you. But the “My hubby works in a prison and thus blah blah blah” thing really gets annoying after awhile, especially since you tend to cite it as definitive knowledge even when arguing with someone like Jodi, who has actual experience of matters you know at best secondhand.
It’s time to give it a rest. You’re becoming a caricature on this issue. Seriously, is it even possible for you to go, say, an entire month on the boards and not drag your husband’s employment into any discussion of corrections, law enforcement, and such topics? Could you at least try?
I really think they should be called out on this habit they seem to have of thinking that some old arrest warrant for apparently minor issues is more important than investigating a rape. This can’t be SOP for a police department, can it?
Lissa, here are a few more cites to help bolster Jodi’s excellent rebuttal:
Deliberate indifference encompasses more than mere negligence on the part of prison officials. It requires that prison officials be both aware of specific facts from which the inference could be drawn that a serious medical need exists and then the prison official, perceiving the risk, must deliberately fail to act.
“Deliberate indifference is an extremely high standard to meet.”
Domino v. Texas Dep’t of Criminal Justice, 239 F.3d 752, 756 (5th Cir.2001).
As long as prison medical personnel exercise professional medical judgment, their behavior will not violate a prisoner’s constitutional rights.
Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 322-23, 102 S.Ct. 2452, 73 L.Ed.2d 28 (1982).
Finally, active treatment of a prisoner’s serious medical condition does not constitute deliberate indifference, even if treatment is negligently administered.
*Stewart v. Murphy, 174 F.3d 530, 534 (5th Cir.1999); Mendoza, 989 F.2d at 195; Varnado, 920 F.2d at 321. *
You know, I served on the County Civil Grand Jury, and one of the duties is to inspect the various jails and “facilities”. And our Grand Jury’s report and many prior and subsequent Grand Jury’s report on the jails had some problem with the adequacy of the medical help available.
So, although it’s nice and all that there are various rules and court cases out there that supposedly guarentee a certain standard of medical treatment, IRL those standards are too often not fully met. Often due to simple overcrowding.
And here, note that we did not inspect prisons in our County (there being none), we inspected Jails and “facilities”.
For some eye openers, I suggest you read several years of your own county’s Grand Jury report. (Note every State has a Civil Grand Jury like CA does, of course).