Common Sense for Drug Policy Presents: Ridiculous Barriers For Rehabilitation Opportunities

To access rehabilitation programs in California women's prisons, often the choice comes down to tooth extractions. A variety of programs such as drug treatment, vocational training or parenting skill classes require female inmates to be cleared of any pre-existing health issues. Of the 12,000 female inmates, about 9,000 teeth are pulled per year. According to the San Jose Mercury News April 21, 2008 article,("Bad Teeth Become Barrier for Incarcerated Women") 'Just one badly damaged tooth will block them from entering a program."

The article states, "It's unconscionable,' said Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-San Jose, who has proposed legislation to shorten the waiting list for women wanting to get their teeth fixed by a prison dentist, a measure that passed its first committee hearing last week. 'We have women who are getting 16 and 18 out of 34 teeth pulled, and that really destroys their future job prospects,' Lieber said. 'We have to change the situation.' She introduced Assembly Bill 2877 after learning that a court settlement agreement, which calls for vastly improved dental care in all state prisons over the next three years, had left the three women's institutions near the bottom of the implementation schedule."

The article adds, "Relatively few inmates qualify for the program that allows mothers to serve their sentences with their infants because of the strict dental clearance and other reasons, such as a requirement that the prisoners retain legal custody of their children. Officials with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation say the dental and health clearance are necessary because the specialized programs are based at smaller community prisons and don't have dentists or doctors on site. Thousands of men also must pass the same screening to get into specialized programs scattered across California. About 900 women are enrolled in all of the specialized programs, which cost the state as little as $90 a day per inmate, Still said, a taxpayer bargain compared to the $121 daily tab of a traditional prison bed. But as helpful as the programs may be in preparing women for life after prison - and as useful as they are at reducing California's notoriously high recidivism rate - they also have a major downside on the personal lives of the inmates."

The article notes, "Rachel Roth, an independent scholar and national expert on the health issues of women in prison, said the dental clearance policy 'just shows how desperate women are to get out of the big prisons and be with their children that they would allow themselves to be treated in such an inhumane way.' It's also difficult to determine how California's dental clearance policy compares with the rest of the country, because not all states have similar women's housing programs; some institutions run nurseries within large prisons where health services are readily available. Advocates for female inmates who are familiar with prison policies nationwide say California's dental-clearance requirement seems rare."